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Title: MAR: Mobile Augmented Reality in Indoor Environment.
Creator: Alahmadi, Mohammad Neal, Yang, Jie, Mascagni, Michael, Haiduc, Sonia, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Computer Science
Abstract/Description: For decades, augmented reality has been used to allow a person to visualize an overlay of annotations, videos, and images on physical objects using a camera. Due to the high computational processing cost that is required to match an image from among an enormous number of images, it has been daunting to use the concept of augmented reality on a smartphone without significant processing delays. Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) can be very useful for the outdoor localization of an...
Show moreFor decades, augmented reality has been used to allow a person to visualize an overlay of annotations, videos, and images on physical objects using a camera. Due to the high computational processing cost that is required to match an image from among an enormous number of images, it has been daunting to use the concept of augmented reality on a smartphone without significant processing delays. Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) can be very useful for the outdoor localization of an object, GPS is not suitable for indoor localization. To address the problem of indoor localization, we propose using mobile augmented reality in an indoor environment. Since most smartphones have many useful sensors such as accelerometers, magnetometers and Wi-Fi sensors, we can leverage these sensors to locate the phone’s location, the phone’s field of view, and the phone’s angle of view. Using Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) based on processing data from several smartphone sensors, we can achieve indoor localization with reduced processing time. We tested MAR in simulated environments, and deployed the system in the Love building (LOV) at Florida State University. We used 200 images in the simulated environment, and compared the matching processing time between multiple object recognition algorithms and reduced the matching time from 2.8 seconds to only 0.17 second using a brisk algorithm.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Alahmadi_fsu_0071N_13939
Format: Thesis

Title: Faculty and Administrators' Sensemaking of Faculty Research Policies: A Case of a Saudi University.
Creator: Almubarak, Samaa H., Akiba, Motoko, Myers, John P. (John Patrick), Gawlik, Marytza, Jones, Tamara Bertrand, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of...
Show moreAlmubarak, Samaa H., Akiba, Motoko, Myers, John P. (John Patrick), Gawlik, Marytza, Jones, Tamara Bertrand, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
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Abstract/Description: The increasing pressure to increase research productivity in higher education institutions (HEIs) has led many universities to regulate faculty research activities through various accountability and incentive policies around the globe. However, few empirical studies have been conducted to understand how university administrators and faculty make sense of these policies and implement them. The study sought to understand how faculty and administrators from two disciplinary areas (health and...
Show moreThe increasing pressure to increase research productivity in higher education institutions (HEIs) has led many universities to regulate faculty research activities through various accountability and incentive policies around the globe. However, few empirical studies have been conducted to understand how university administrators and faculty make sense of these policies and implement them. The study sought to understand how faculty and administrators from two disciplinary areas (health and arts/science/education), at a Saudi university, understand, perceive and make sense of the university faculty research policies, while highlighting variation among the different levels of institutional actors. The use of the sensemaking theory provided an in-depth analysis of how research policies unfold at the practice level, while accounting for the power structure based on the faculty nationalities. The findings revealed divergent perceptions among the different levels of institutional actors, which resulted in resistance among the implementers, and negative consequences on the faculty’s morale and commitment. Furthermore, it highlighted the lack of involvement of faculty in decision-making as well as the lack of organizational changes as barriers to policy implementation.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_AlMubarak_fsu_0071E_14208
Format: Thesis

Title: Understanding the "Microwave" in Microwave Chemistry.
Creator: Ashley, Bridgett Alicia, Strouse, Geoffrey F., Hill, S. (Stephen Olof), Stiegman, Albert E., Shatruk, Mykhailo, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreAshley, Bridgett Alicia, Strouse, Geoffrey F., Hill, S. (Stephen Olof), Stiegman, Albert E., Shatruk, Mykhailo, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Abstract/Description: Microwave chemistry has long been a subject of interest in both the organic and inorganic synthesis communities. Microwave heating has the potential to become a powerful force for green synthesis in industry as it uses much less power to accomplish the same goals, but a lack of understanding in how to translate traditional convective reactions into microwave reactions is hampering this progress. In this manuscript an overview of microwave physics and mathematics is given first. Then the role...
Show moreMicrowave chemistry has long been a subject of interest in both the organic and inorganic synthesis communities. Microwave heating has the potential to become a powerful force for green synthesis in industry as it uses much less power to accomplish the same goals, but a lack of understanding in how to translate traditional convective reactions into microwave reactions is hampering this progress. In this manuscript an overview of microwave physics and mathematics is given first. Then the role of microwave source and choice of microwave reaction vessel, along with precursor and solvent choice in the design of a microwave chemical reaction is explored. Next, synthesis of nickel and gold nanoparticles—chosen because of their ubiquitous nature in the literature—in a microwave is explored, and the kinetics examined. Additionally, the role of size dependent properties of the nanoparticles, as well as the role of the oxide layer on the nanoparticle, are explored in relationship to how the reaction heats in a standard laboratory microwave. Lastly, the role of power and frequency of the microwave radiation in the synthesis of nickel nanoparticles is examined, and relationships between the kinetics of the synthesis and the applied power and frequency of the microwave is extracted.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Ashley_fsu_0071E_14230
Format: Thesis

Title: Structural and Functional Characterization of Escherichia Coli Assimilatory Sulfite Reductase.
Creator: Del Carmen, Isabel Askenasy Flores, Stroupe, M. Elizabeth (Margaret Elizabeth), Stagg, Scott, Dennis, Jonathan Hancock, Jones, Kathryn M., Yu, Hong-Guo, Florida State University...
Show moreDel Carmen, Isabel Askenasy Flores, Stroupe, M. Elizabeth (Margaret Elizabeth), Stagg, Scott, Dennis, Jonathan Hancock, Jones, Kathryn M., Yu, Hong-Guo, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biological Science
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Abstract/Description: Assimilatory NADPH-dependent sulfite reductase (SiR) is the enzyme responsible for the six-electron reduction of sulfite to sulfide. In Enterobacteria, SiR is a dodecameric complex with two subunits: an octameric flavin-containing SiRFP, and four copies of a monomeric iron-containing subunit (SiRHP). SiRFP is a homologous to cytochrome P-450 reductase (CYP), each of which has three main domains: NADPH/FAD-binding domain, FMN-binding domain and a connecting domain that is responsible of the...
Show moreAssimilatory NADPH-dependent sulfite reductase (SiR) is the enzyme responsible for the six-electron reduction of sulfite to sulfide. In Enterobacteria, SiR is a dodecameric complex with two subunits: an octameric flavin-containing SiRFP, and four copies of a monomeric iron-containing subunit (SiRHP). SiRFP is a homologous to cytochrome P-450 reductase (CYP), each of which has three main domains: NADPH/FAD-binding domain, FMN-binding domain and a connecting domain that is responsible of the relative orientation of the other two domains. However, SiRFP differs from CYP because SiRFP is a soluble protein that forms an octamer through its first 51 residues and is a stable complex with the oxidase subunit. SiRHP has a Fe4S4 cluster and a siroheme cofactor in its active site. In the SiR holoenzyme electrons flow from NADPH to FAD to FMN in SiRFP and from the FMN cofactor to SiRHP. SiRFP, SiRHP, and PAPS sulfotransferase, another enzyme required for sulfate assimilation, are encoded by three genes in the cysJIH operon, therefore, they can be independently expressed and purified. In this way, each subunit has been characterized structural and functionally, however the structure of the SiR holoenzyme remains ill defined. Therefore, the main aim of this dissertation is to understand SiR assembly and the mechanism of electron transfer between subunits. I made important advances in understanding SiR’s subunit interactions by the use of a variety of biochemical and structural techniques. First, we confirmed the stoichiometry of the holoenzyme as an α8β4 complex. I further discovered that in this complex, SiRFP has two interfaces with SiRHP. The Region 1, is in SiRFP’s C-terminus and it is responsible for forming the stable interaction between each SiR subunits. Region 2 is in SiRFP’s N-terminus and we hypothesize that it is involved in a transient interaction with SiRHP and, such as, is the one required for electron transfer between subunits. My more detailed characterization shows that complex formation depends on hydrophobic interactions between the subunits. In further characterization this interaction, I identified three regions of predicted intrinsically disorder/disorder-based binding sites in each subunit that are required for SiR assemble and function. First, the N-terminus of SiRHP has characteristics of a disorder-base binding region, and it is required for holoenzyme complex formation. Second, the N-terminus of SiRFP is required for octamerization of this subunit. Third, the linker between the FMN-binding domain and FAD/NADPH binding domain is also an intrinsically disorder region that orients the FMN-domain relative to rest of the complex. As result of my experiments, I propose a model for electron transfer in which all SiRFP subunits participate in electron transfer to SiRHP. This model explains the high efficiency of the complex that is observed by the absence of partially reduced sulfur-oxygen intermediates. Additionally, advances were made to prepare cryo-electron microscopy samples of SiR based in the new insights into SiR’s structural characteristics. Additionally, a new reductionist approach using x-ray crystallography is proposed to better study SiR subunits interactions.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_AskenasyFlores_fsu_0071E_14225
Format: Thesis

Title: Segmentation and Structure Determination in Electron Microscopy.
Creator: Banerjee Mukherjee, Chaity, Liu, Xiuwen, Taylor, Kenneth A., Barbu, Adrian G., Kumar, Piyush, Tyson, Gary Scott, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreBanerjee Mukherjee, Chaity, Liu, Xiuwen, Taylor, Kenneth A., Barbu, Adrian G., Kumar, Piyush, Tyson, Gary Scott, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Computer Science
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Abstract/Description: One of the goals of biology is to be able to understand the structure and interaction of macromolecules, to be able to better understand life at a macromolecular level. One of the most important inventions that revolutionized the study of macromolecular structures is that of the electron microscope. Electron microscopes are used for studying three dimensional structures of macromolecular assemblies using 2D and 3D geometry. The underlying principle of 3D reconstruction from 2D projections is...
Show moreOne of the goals of biology is to be able to understand the structure and interaction of macromolecules, to be able to better understand life at a macromolecular level. One of the most important inventions that revolutionized the study of macromolecular structures is that of the electron microscope. Electron microscopes are used for studying three dimensional structures of macromolecular assemblies using 2D and 3D geometry. The underlying principle of 3D reconstruction from 2D projections is well understood and forms the basis of electron microscopy. Depending on the type of structure under investigation, either electron tomography is used where the structures are heterogeneous or in case that they are homogeneous single particle electron microscopy is used. Whatever be the underlying source of the data, tomography or single particle, they involve significant amounts of computational problems. Many of these problems have been studied in other branches of computer science, like in computer vision and machine learning. However, until very recently, there has not been a significant exchange of ideas between these two disparate communities. This work is a step in that direction. We study two problems: the first related to the well-studied problem of segmentation but in the context of electron tomography. The second relates to that of studying the macromolecular structure of actin-myosin interaction using 3D reconstruction of single particle electron microscopic data. We hope that this would be the beginning of a formal interaction between the two fields that has the potential to enrich each other tremendously.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_BanerjeeMukherjee_fsu_0071E_14065
Format: Thesis

Title: Morphometric Analysis of Shape Differences in Windover and Point Hope Archaic Human Mandibles.
Creator: Boren, Seth B., Slice, Dennis E., Shanbhag, Sachin, Beerli, Peter, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Scientific Computing
Abstract/Description: The mandible can provide valuable information on both the life history and genetic makeup of Archaic human populations. If two genetically separated Homo sapiens populations practice differing dietary behaviors, one may expect to see significant variation in mandibular morphology. The following analysis tests two hypotheses: (1) that there are significant differences in morphology in mandibular shape between the sexes amongst Archaic North American H. sapiens and (2) that there is a...
Show moreThe mandible can provide valuable information on both the life history and genetic makeup of Archaic human populations. If two genetically separated Homo sapiens populations practice differing dietary behaviors, one may expect to see significant variation in mandibular morphology. The following analysis tests two hypotheses: (1) that there are significant differences in morphology in mandibular shape between the sexes amongst Archaic North American H. sapiens and (2) that there is a significant difference in variance in mandibular shape between Archaic Floridian and Alaskan H. sapiens. The Archaic Floridian H. sapiens are taken from the Windover burial site and the Alaskan H. sapiens are taken from the Point Hope burial site. A sample made from mandible specimens taken from both populations is subjected to Principal Component Analyses (PCA). The component scores from the PCAs are subjected to both a Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and general Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) to determine whether significant differences in variance exist between the sexes and the populations. The MANCOVA found that there were no significant interactions between the PC scores between populations, sexes, or size. Significant differences in variance were found between males and females and between the Windover and Point Hope populations. Differences in variance observed between the populations are suspected to be due to differences in subsistence strategies. Differences in variance between the sexes are suspected to be genetic in origin.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Boren_fsu_0071N_14264
Format: Thesis

Title: Characterization of Supersonic Flow Around a Hemispherical Model.
Creator: Carnrike, Daniel Andrew, Kumar, Rajan, Cattafesta, Louis N., Collins, E. (Emmanuel), Florida State University, College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Abstract/Description: Propagation of laser beams through complex flow field caused by radar system housing has been an important topic for many years dating back to the mid 1960s. Applications for radar systems range from missile defense, directed energy to target designation and tracking. Complications are introduced when laser systems are no longer stationed on the ground, but instead mounted on airplanes traveling at subsonic, transonic and supersonic speeds. Housing systems have been developed with a variety...
Show morePropagation of laser beams through complex flow field caused by radar system housing has been an important topic for many years dating back to the mid 1960s. Applications for radar systems range from missile defense, directed energy to target designation and tracking. Complications are introduced when laser systems are no longer stationed on the ground, but instead mounted on airplanes traveling at subsonic, transonic and supersonic speeds. Housing systems have been developed with a variety of different designs with some designs more optimal for decreasing laser aberrations than others. The work presented strives to characterize flow around a hemispherical configuration (D = 10.16 cm) for a turret housing system in the supersonic flow regime. Multiple diagnostic tests were conducted at the Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion in the Polysonic Wind Tunnel Facility. Shadowgraph visualization, surface oil flow visualization, static pressure and unsteady pressure data characterized the complicated supersonic flow field around a hemisphere. Observations were conducted at Mach 2 while Reynolds number changed, ReD = 1.8 ∗ 106 and ReD = 3.6 ∗ 106. Complex shock system consisting of a lambda shock and detached bow shock were observed upstream of the hemisphere center through shadowgraph images. While a shock-let system was developed between the foot of the lambda shock and the detached bow shock from the unsteady boundary layer shockwave interaction. Surface oil flow visualization accented the development of an axisymmetric horseshoe vortex and the presence of a secondary shock location upstream of the hemisphere. A centerline static pressure distribution quantified the visualization techniques. A stagnation point of 30◦ was observed on the body for both ReD case. While, flow separation occurred at slightly different locations on the hemisphere; flow separated at 103◦ for ReD = 1.8∗106 and 107◦ for the ReD = 3.6 ∗ 106. Location of flow separation is further strengthen by the unsteady pressure data as the energy fluctuations are less on the separation line for the different Re cases. The study found that flow structures for different ReD cases were similar, except for the strength of the different flow features; as the flow feature magnitudes were greater for ReD = 3.6 ∗ 106 case. Also observed from the unsteady pressure measurement data, the wake structure behind the hemisphere were different in nature as the wake structure for the ReD = 1.8 ∗ 106 case was larger than the ReD = 3.6 ∗ 106 case. Planar Particle Image Velocimetry was conducted in the Pilot Wind Tunnel Facility at the Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion on a dynamically similar flow (M = 2,ReD = 1.8∗106). Planar PIV for different Z/D planes were also measured on a D = 19.05 mm hemisphere, which highlighted the presence of an expansion fan at the apex of the hemisphere with decreasing effects on the external flow field as flow moved further away from the centerline of the hemisphere. The results presented in this work characterized supersonic flow around a hemisphere and has laid the groundwork for the development of active or passive flow control techniques in order to minimize flow structures, which ultimately lead to less aero-optical aberrations.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Carnrike_fsu_0071N_14262
Format: Thesis

Title: Art, History, and the Creation of Monastic Identity at Late Medieval St. Albans Abbey.
Creator: Carter, Deirdre Anne, Emmerson, Richard Kenneth, Jones, Lynn, Johnson, David F. (David Frame), Killian, Kyle L., Leitch, Stephanie, Florida State University, College of Fine...
Show moreCarter, Deirdre Anne, Emmerson, Richard Kenneth, Jones, Lynn, Johnson, David F. (David Frame), Killian, Kyle L., Leitch, Stephanie, Florida State University, College of Fine Arts, Department of Art History
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Abstract/Description: Although later medieval St. Albans Abbey has long been renowned as a preeminent center for the writing of historical chronicles, previous studies have not acknowledged that the monastic community also had a sustained tradition of visually representing the house’s institutional history. This dissertation demonstrates that between the late eleventh and early sixteenth centuries, the monks of St. Albans depicted and evoked their abbey’s past in a large and diverse collection of artworks, ranging...
Show moreAlthough later medieval St. Albans Abbey has long been renowned as a preeminent center for the writing of historical chronicles, previous studies have not acknowledged that the monastic community also had a sustained tradition of visually representing the house’s institutional history. This dissertation demonstrates that between the late eleventh and early sixteenth centuries, the monks of St. Albans depicted and evoked their abbey’s past in a large and diverse collection of artworks, ranging from illuminated manuscripts and pilgrim badges to monumental paintings and architecture. Monastic historical imagery was rarely produced during the Middle Ages, but the images and objects from St. Albans present a remarkably rich and complete account of the abbey’s history from the time of its illustrious origins through the eve of its dissolution. Using an interdisciplinary approach to contextualize these artworks within the monastery’s history and traditions, this study argues that the visual historiography of St. Albans served as a potent vehicle for the expression and self-fashioning of the abbey’s corporate identity and historical memory. As will be demonstrated, this vast corpus of imagery focuses on three fundamental elements of the monastery’s past: Saint Alban and his early cult, the eighth-century foundation of the monastery by King Offa of Mercia, and the house’s post-foundation history. Through these artworks, many of which have not previously received the attention of art historians, the monks of St. Albans documented, celebrated, and occasionally manipulated their abbey’s long and distinguished history, thereby providing a compelling justification for its continued prosperity and prestige.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Carter_fsu_0071E_14200
Format: Thesis

Title: Regulation of the Transcription Factor Yin Yang 1 by Tyrosine Phosphorylation.
Creator: Daraiseh, Susan Ibrahim, Hurt, Myra M., Chadwick, Brian P., Gunjan, Akash, Levenson, Cathy W., Florida State University, College of Medicine, Department of Biomedical Sciences
Abstract/Description: Yin Yang 1 (YY1) is a multifunctional transcription factor that can activate or repress transcription depending on the promotor and/or the co-factors recruited. YY1 is phosphorylated in various signaling pathways and is critical for different biological functions including embryogenesis, apoptosis, proliferation, cell-cycle regulation and tumorigenesis. Here we report that YY1 is a substrate of two different tyrosine kinases. First, c-Abl kinase phosphorylates YY1 at conserved residue Y254 in...
Show moreYin Yang 1 (YY1) is a multifunctional transcription factor that can activate or repress transcription depending on the promotor and/or the co-factors recruited. YY1 is phosphorylated in various signaling pathways and is critical for different biological functions including embryogenesis, apoptosis, proliferation, cell-cycle regulation and tumorigenesis. Here we report that YY1 is a substrate of two different tyrosine kinases. First, c-Abl kinase phosphorylates YY1 at conserved residue Y254 in the spacer region. Pharmacological inhibition of c-Abl kinase by imatinib, nilotinib and GZD824, knock-down of c-Abl using siRNA and the use of c-Abl kinase-dead drastically reduces tyrosine phosphorylation of YY1. Both radioactive and non-radioactive in vitro kinase assays, as well as co-immunoprecipitation in different cell lines, show that the target of c-Abl phosphorylation is tyrosine residue 254. c-Abl phosphorylation has little effect on YY1 DNA binding ability or cellular localization in asynchronous cells. However, functional studies revealed that c-Abl mediated phosphorylation of YY1 regulated YY1’s transcriptional ability in vivo. Secondly, we show that YY1 is phosphorylated by non-receptor tyrosine kinase Src and this phosphorylation is mediated by the receptor tyrosine kinase c-Kit signaling pathway at tyrosine residue 251. Computational prediction using GPS 3.0 identified Src as a possible kinase that could target YY1 for tyrosine phosphorylation. The use of a highly sensitive phospho-specific antibody against phosphorylated Y251 in combination with non-radioactive in vitro kinase assay show that Src phosphorylates YY1 in vitro. Pharmacological inhibition of both c-Kit and Src kinase caused a great reduction in tyrosine phosphorylation of YY1 at Y251. The use of SCF ligand to stimulate c-Kit kinase show that YY1 may be a target of Src kinase phosphorylation under the c-Kit signaling cascade at Y251. Ongoing research includes the generation of phospho-mutations at tyrosine 251 using the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing tool to uncover the biological significance of this phosphorylation. In conclusion, we demonstrate the novel role of c-Abl kinase in regulation of YY1’s transcriptional activity, linking YY1 regulation with the c-Abl tyrosine kinase signaling pathways. We also link YY1 phosphorylation to the c-Kit receptor tyrosine kinase signaling pathway. Because errors in signaling result in cancer growth and other disease, understanding the dynamic cellular processes of YY1 phosphorylation by tyrosine kinases will lead to a better understanding of the signaling networks within the cell leading to more effective treatment for disease.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Daraiseh_fsu_0071E_14214
Format: Thesis

Title: Complex Carbides, Nitrides and Hydrides Grown from Highly Reducing AE/Li Flux Mixtures (AE = Ca, Yb).
Creator: Dickman, Matthew J. (Matthew Jansen), Latturner, Susan, Siegrist, Theo, Albrecht-Schmitt, Thomas E., Alabugin, Igor V., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreDickman, Matthew J. (Matthew Jansen), Latturner, Susan, Siegrist, Theo, Albrecht-Schmitt, Thomas E., Alabugin, Igor V., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Abstract/Description: Flux synthesis of new complex compounds uses an excess of molten metals or salts as a reaction medium. This solution-based method is a valuable tool in materials synthesis, enabling the solid-state chemist to achieve reactivity at relatively low temperatures compared to traditional solid-state reactions. A growing effort in the field of flux synthetic chemistry is to enable the directed synthesis of materials. This entails being able to predict products that will form, or at least the...
Show moreFlux synthesis of new complex compounds uses an excess of molten metals or salts as a reaction medium. This solution-based method is a valuable tool in materials synthesis, enabling the solid-state chemist to achieve reactivity at relatively low temperatures compared to traditional solid-state reactions. A growing effort in the field of flux synthetic chemistry is to enable the directed synthesis of materials. This entails being able to predict products that will form, or at least the building blocks that will be incorporated into the products. It is therefore necessary to explore various flux systems in order to develop trends that will better help chemists understand the mechanisms by which compounds and their building blocks form. To this end, two flux mixtures, Ca/Li and Yb/Li, were explored and several new complex compounds were discovered which feature a range of structural and electronic properties. Calcium and ytterbium commonly form solid solutions in compounds due to similarities in their ionic radii and valence. Calcium melts above 800°C, but the addition of lithium lowers this melting point drastically to around 300°C. Unfortunately, there is no phase diagram for mixtures of ytterbium and lithium, so attempts to grow new crystals in this melt was largely speculative on the basis that ytterbium may behave similarly to calcium and produce a low-temperature solution when mixed with sufficient lithium. This is supported by the fact that ytterbium has a similar melting point to calcium, and binary phase diagrams incorporating ytterbium or calcium mixed with other metals feature similar trends. Ca/Li flux is able to dissolve refractory elements such as carbon, as well as salts such as Ca3N2 and CaH2. New carbide and hydride compounds formed from Yb/Li flux suggest similar capabilities, however reactivity with nitride salts is still undetermined. Electropositive fluxes in general are useful solvents for the growth of new complex carbides, nitrides and hydrides. Compounds containing these light elements are extremely important for many industrial applications. Therefore, further exploration into making new complex compounds incorporating them is merited. Several new compounds including Ca12InC13-x, Ca6Te3N2, Ca6(LixFe1-x)Te2N3, Ca8In2SiN4, Ca3SiN3H, and Yb~51In13H27 were synthesized from either Ca/Li or Yb/Li flux mixtures. Their synthesis, structural and electronic properties, as well as potential applications are discussed herein.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Dickman_fsu_0071E_14197
Format: Thesis

Title: Brazilian Portuguese Lyric Diction for American Singers and Antônio Carlos Gomes: His Life and Musical Style within the Transitional Period from Bel Canto to Verismo.
Creator: Godoi, Guilherme Coelho, Trujillo, Valerie, Jones, Evan Allan, Fisher, Douglas L., Kraus, Joseph Charles, Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: The purpose of this document is to make the reader aware of two areas of vocal Brazilian music that have long been neglected, and are now receiving the attention of researchers and performers: Brazilian Portuguese lyric diction and the operas of Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes. Many people are familiar with popular genres of Brazilian music. The samba, bossa nova, choro and the driving rhythms associated with carnival dances are widely popular among the general public. However, few...
Show moreThe purpose of this document is to make the reader aware of two areas of vocal Brazilian music that have long been neglected, and are now receiving the attention of researchers and performers: Brazilian Portuguese lyric diction and the operas of Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes. Many people are familiar with popular genres of Brazilian music. The samba, bossa nova, choro and the driving rhythms associated with carnival dances are widely popular among the general public. However, few are familiar with the classical vocal repertoire. The first section is dedicated to pedagogical tools for teaching Brazilian Portuguese diction. American singers will find the process of preparing Brazilian repertoire more accessible with this concise but objective guide. The second half is a discussion of the operatic works of Antônio Carlos Gomes, with focus on Gomes as a transitional figure from the bel canto to verismo in Italy in the second half the 19th century, as well as his contributions to the operatic repertoire.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Godoi_fsu_0071E_14188
Format: Thesis

Title: Twisted Cycloalkynes in Click Chemistry and Traceless Directing Groups in Radical Cascade Cyclizations.
Creator: Harris, Trevor Michael, Alabugin, Igor V., Ma, Teng, Hanson, Kenneth G., Kennemur, Justin Glenn, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry...
Show moreHarris, Trevor Michael, Alabugin, Igor V., Ma, Teng, Hanson, Kenneth G., Kennemur, Justin Glenn, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Abstract/Description: This dissertation discloses the work of two research projects: the synthesis and study of twisted cycloalkynes for click chemistry and traceless directing groups used in radical cascade cyclizations. The structural design of the cycloalkynes incorporates a “twisted and bent” motif that disrupts the interaction between donor and acceptor groups. This accumulation of electronic energy in the twisted cycloalkyne is released in the transition state when the backbone structurally reorganizes and...
Show moreThis dissertation discloses the work of two research projects: the synthesis and study of twisted cycloalkynes for click chemistry and traceless directing groups used in radical cascade cyclizations. The structural design of the cycloalkynes incorporates a “twisted and bent” motif that disrupts the interaction between donor and acceptor groups. This accumulation of electronic energy in the twisted cycloalkyne is released in the transition state when the backbone structurally reorganizes and restores optimal conjugation at a remote location from the reacting alkyne center, providing a new way to control click reactivity through remote activation. An experimental confirmation of the proposed connection between structural changes and electronic effects was investigated by UV-Vis spectroscopy of the starting 2,2’-biaryl nucleophiles, cyclodecynes, and the triazole products. Furthermore, these twisted cycloalkynes make axial chirality a new molecular property that can be introduced by click chemistry. The synthesis of the cycloalkynes has been optimized to a gram-scale, one-step protocol that involves a strategically simple nucleophilic substitution reaction. The cyclization step avoids the use of alkyne protecting groups and six of the endogenous atoms come from commercially available 2,2’-biaryl sources and purification is accomplished through recrystallization. Because the cyclization proceeds without chiral racemization under basic conditions, synthesis of enantiopure cycloalkynes can be made from chiral starting materials. Circular dichroism spectroscopy demonstrated the biaryl backbone of the starting materials controls the chiroptical properties of the cycloalkynes. Several representative cyclodecynes were investigated to compare the reactivity with activated cyclononynes and seminal cyclooctyne. The click cycloaddition rate constants of cyclodecynes outcompete the smaller activated cyclononynes and even approach the reactivity of cyclooctyne. Rate enhancement in the cyclodecynes stems from the endocyclic heteroatoms that provide dual transition state (TS) stabilization via hyperconjugative (direct) and conjugative (remote) effects. Oligoalkynes are precursors that can be used for the preparation of carbon-rich polyaromatics. They can undergo radical cascade cyclizations in the presence of a Sn-radical source through chemo- and regioselective initiation. To assist the attack of the Sn-radical at the xii correct alkyne, a propargylic alkoxy group was installed. Through a sequence of exo-cyclizations that “zip up” the oligoalkyne backbone, the radical returns to the site of initial attack in a “boomerang” fashion. The key radical intermediate, the radical adjacent to the alkoxy group stabilized by an electron rich alkyltin group, furnishes the aromatized product through β-scission to form an alkoxy radical, rendering the directing group, traceless. Though computational analysis rendered the sequence of transformations favorable and a plausible mechanistic pathway, generation of an alkoxy radical is an unlikely scenario considering the barrier for C–O scission is relatively high. Because this pathway was a mechanistic ambiguity, a second termination step was considered: H-abstraction followed by elimination of an alcohol coupled with aromatization. This indirect route included an additional step in the overall cascade but avoids formation of the alkoxy radical intermediate. However, several key experiments and computational evidence demonstrated the direct route, formation of the alkoxy radical, is the preferred outcome. One experiment used a traceless directing group which was designed to incorporate a “weak-link” tether and radical stabilizing group to help facilitate β-scission of the alkoxy radical. This fragmentation generates formaldehyde and a radical that is finally quenched to a non-volatile product that is characterized by NMR spectroscopy. The alternative route does not occur because the alcohol product of the indirect path was not observed. Additionally, a separate trapping experiment used an electron rich vinyl silyl ether to trap the putative alkoxy radical.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Harris_fsu_0071E_14198
Format: Thesis

Title: Organic Ligand Design for Use in Spin Crossover Materials.
Creator: Hrudka, Jeremy James, Shatruk, Mykhailo, Hill, S. (Stephen Olof), Dalal, Naresh S., Kennemur, Justin Glenn, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of...
Show moreHrudka, Jeremy James, Shatruk, Mykhailo, Hill, S. (Stephen Olof), Dalal, Naresh S., Kennemur, Justin Glenn, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Abstract/Description: Spin crossover (SCO) is a physical phenomenon whereby certain transition metal ions exhibit a change in magnetic state under the influence of external stimuli such as temperature, pressure, or light. SCO is most commonly observed in complexes of the Fe(II) cation when an intermediate-strength ligand field is achieved, most commonly with six coordinating nitrogen atoms. New organic molecules synthesized in this work belong to the 2,2’-bisimidazole (bim) family of ligands and are sought to...
Show moreSpin crossover (SCO) is a physical phenomenon whereby certain transition metal ions exhibit a change in magnetic state under the influence of external stimuli such as temperature, pressure, or light. SCO is most commonly observed in complexes of the Fe(II) cation when an intermediate-strength ligand field is achieved, most commonly with six coordinating nitrogen atoms. New organic molecules synthesized in this work belong to the 2,2’-bisimidazole (bim) family of ligands and are sought to induce SCO in a variety of Fe(II) complexes. Several novel bim derivatives were targeted to afford different functionality. Their synthesis required careful reaction optimization studies, which were conducted on a small scale and analyzed primarily using 1H-NMR spectroscopy. After optimizing and scaling up the ligand synthesis, the resulting purified bim derivatives were reacted with various Fe(II) salts to furnish mononuclear complexes, which were characterized by single crystal x-ray diffraction and SQUID magnetometry, as well as high-resolution mass spectrometry and elemental analysis. Both homoleptic and heteroleptic complexes of newly obtained bim derivatives were synthesized. In the case of homoleptic complexes, a range of SCO behaviors was observed, with spin transitions taking place at significantly different temperatures and with varying degree of abruptness. These differences can be explained by intricate structure-property relationships uncovered by the complimentary results provided by single-crystal x-ray diffraction and magnetic measurements. Various heteroleptic Fe(II) complexes containing a bim-type ligand and a tetradentate “capping” ligand were also synthesized and characterized for potential SCO behavior. The tetradentate capping ligands used included N4-donating ligands, leading to the typical N6 coordination environments, as well as N2S2-donating ligands, leading to the N4S2 coordination, which is more exotic among known SCO complexes. The spin-state energetics in these complexes was also assessed with electronic structure calculations at the density-functional level of theory. Insight into forecasting SCO behavior in homoleptic complexes of bidentate ligands was achieved via data-mining of the Cambridge Structural Database. This analysis led to an empirical rule, which uses the N-N chelating distance in bidentate ligands to predict the spin-state of the Fe(II) complex. This empirical rule was backed by DFT calculations. The combination of experimental design and theoretical investigations into novel Fe(II) SCO complexes with functionalized bisimidazole-type ligands, as presented in this Thesis, advances the knowledge of spin-state switching in transition metal complexes and inches towards more applied studies of functionalized SCO materials.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Hrudka_fsu_0071E_14255
Format: Thesis

Title: Neuromodulation of Mitral Cells by Serotonin and GLP-1 Neurons in the Olfactory Bulb and the Consequences of Gene Deletion of Kv1.3.
Creator: Huang, Zhenbo, Fadool, Debra Ann, Logan, Timothy M., Gilbert, David M., Lyons, Lisa C., Wang, Zhi, Wang, Zuoxin, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreHuang, Zhenbo, Fadool, Debra Ann, Logan, Timothy M., Gilbert, David M., Lyons, Lisa C., Wang, Zhi, Wang, Zuoxin, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biological Science
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Abstract/Description: Neuromodulation plays important roles in adjusting our nervous system to produce behaviors. The same neuromodulator could have different effects on different targets, or the same target could be modulated by multiple neuromodulators. In the first project of my dissertation I investigated differential modulation of mitral cells (MCs) contained in the main (MOB) and accessory (AOB) olfactory bulb by serotonin (5-HT) using an in vitro, brain slice approach in postnatal (P15-30) day mice. In the...
Show moreNeuromodulation plays important roles in adjusting our nervous system to produce behaviors. The same neuromodulator could have different effects on different targets, or the same target could be modulated by multiple neuromodulators. In the first project of my dissertation I investigated differential modulation of mitral cells (MCs) contained in the main (MOB) and accessory (AOB) olfactory bulb by serotonin (5-HT) using an in vitro, brain slice approach in postnatal (P15-30) day mice. In the MOB, 5-HT elicited three types of responses in 94% of 158 cells tested. Cells were either directly excited (73%, n = 115), inhibited (9%, n = 15), or showed a mixed response −first inhibition followed by excitation (12%, n = 19). In the AOB, 83% of 115 cells were inhibited with 17% of cells showing no response. Albeit located in parallel partitions of the olfactory system, 5-HT largely elicited excitation of MOB MCs while it evoked two different kinetic rates of inhibition in MCs of the AOB. Using a combination of pharmacological agents, I found that the excitatory responses in MOB MCs were mediated by 5-HT2A receptors through a direct activation. In comparison, 5-HT-evoked inhibitory responses in the AOB arose due to a polysynaptic, slow-onset inhibition attributed to 5-HT2 receptor activation exciting GABAergic interneurons. The second type of inhibition had a rapid onset as a result of direct inhibition mediated by the 5-HT1 class of receptors. The distinct serotonergic modulation of MCs between the MOB and AOB could provide a molecular basis for differential chemosensory behaviors driven by the brainstem raphe nuclei into these parallel systems. In the second project of my dissertation, I explored the modulation of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) neurons in the olfactory bulb (OB). A population of GLP-1 neurons was recently discovered in the OB. The functions of these neurons remain incompletely understood. Herein, I used an in vitro, brain slice approach to investigate the modulations of GLP-1 neurons. Juvenile mice (P20 to P45) of both sexes were used to examine the involvement of centrifugal projections from higher brain areas including serotonergic, cholinergic, and noradrenergic afferents. Bath application of serotonin (40 µM, n = 4) and norepinephrine (100 µM, n = 4) had no effect on the evoked firing frequency. Acetylcholine (ACh; 100 µM), however, led to either inhibition or excitation of GLP-1 neurons. For inhibition, ACh induced a small outward current (5.1 ± 1.8 pA, n = 9) recorded by voltage-clamp when neurons were held at −70 mV. When recorded in current-clamp mode, ACh delayed the latency to first spike (control: 253 ± 30 ms, ACh: 396 ± 4 ms; n = 2). For excitation, bath application of ACh resulted in 1.9 ± 0.6-fold increase in firing frequency (n = 21). Previous evidence showed that GLP-1 neurons in the brainstem could be modulated by metabolic-related hormones such as leptin and cholecystokinin (CCK). I found that GLP-1 neurons could be modulated by CCK, but not by leptin. Bath application of CCK (0.8 µM) led to either cessation of firing (n = 10) or an increase in firing of 1.7 ± 0.4-fold (n = 11). Lastly, mice were injected intraperitoneally with the GLP-1 analogue Exendin-4 (0.4 µM /kg) or control saline and tested 30 minutes post injection in a habituation-dishabituation odor test. Mice receiving Exendin-4 failed to show significant dishabituation, demonstrating impaired ability to discriminate a novel odor from a familiar odor. One primary target of neuromodulation is ion channels. Depending on which group of neurons and in which brain region it is expressed, the same type of ion channel can contribute to multiple functions. In the third project of my dissertation I examined the consequences of loss of function of voltage-gated potassium channel Kv1.3. It has long been recognized that olfaction and emotion are linked. My study aimed to investigate the roles of olfaction in modulating anxiety. Kv1.3 knockout mice (Kv1.3-/-), which have heightened olfaction, and wild-type (WT) mice were examined for anxiety-like behaviors. Because Kv1.3-/- mice have also been observed to show increased locomotor activity, which is one behavior reported in animal models of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), inattentive behavior was quantified for both genotypes. Kv1.3-/- mice showed increased anxiety levels compared to their WT counterparts and administration of methylphenidate (MPH) via oral gavage alleviated their increased anxiety. Object-based attention testing indicated Kv1.3-/- mice had attention deficits and treatment with MPH also ameliorated this condition. My data suggest that heightened olfaction does not necessarily lead to decreased anxiety levels, and that Kv1.3-/- mice may be used as a behavioral model of the inattentive subtype of ADHD.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Huang_fsu_0071E_14226
Format: Thesis

Title: Top-down and Middle-down Proteomics by Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry.
Creator: Jiang, Tingting, Marshall, Alan G. (Alan George), Tang, Hengli, Dorsey, John G., Yang, Wei, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and...
Show moreJiang, Tingting, Marshall, Alan G. (Alan George), Tang, Hengli, Dorsey, John G., Yang, Wei, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Abstract/Description: Mass spectrometry (MS) has become an important analytical method for proteomic research due to its high mass accuracy, resolution, and selectivity. Even though the traditional bottom-up MS-based method is still a widespread routine for proteomic analysis, middle- and top-down approaches should provide more comprehensive characterization of proteins isoforms and post-translational modifications (PTMs) due to their capabilities of maintaining the connectivity between modifications. The Fourier...
Show moreMass spectrometry (MS) has become an important analytical method for proteomic research due to its high mass accuracy, resolution, and selectivity. Even though the traditional bottom-up MS-based method is still a widespread routine for proteomic analysis, middle- and top-down approaches should provide more comprehensive characterization of proteins isoforms and post-translational modifications (PTMs) due to their capabilities of maintaining the connectivity between modifications. The Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometer equipped with multiple efficient fragmentation techniques offers the ultrahigh mass accuracy and resolution to enable separation and assignment of overlapped precursor and fragment spectral peaks from extremely complex spectra without ambiguity, which gives us great advantages in middle- and top-down MS-based proteomic analysis.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Jiang_fsu_0071E_14207
Format: Thesis

Title: Insights into the Complex Formation between Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase and a Highly Polymorphic DNA G-Quadruplex.
Creator: Kopylov, Mykhailo, Stroupe, M. Elizabeth (Margaret Elizabeth), McGinnis, Karen M., Bass, Hank W., Yang, Wei, Li, Hong, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreKopylov, Mykhailo, Stroupe, M. Elizabeth (Margaret Elizabeth), McGinnis, Karen M., Bass, Hank W., Yang, Wei, Li, Hong, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in Molecular Biophysics
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Abstract/Description: Non-canonical forms of DNA like the guanine quadruplex (G4) play important roles in regulating transcription and translation through interactions with their protein partners. G4s comprise a class of nucleic acid structures formed by stacking of guanine base quartets in a quadruple helix. This G4 DNA can form within or across single stranded DNA molecules and is mutually exclusive with duplex B-form DNA. The core of a G4 is formed in G-rich stretches of DNA by Hoogsteen base-paired guanines...
Show moreNon-canonical forms of DNA like the guanine quadruplex (G4) play important roles in regulating transcription and translation through interactions with their protein partners. G4s comprise a class of nucleic acid structures formed by stacking of guanine base quartets in a quadruple helix. This G4 DNA can form within or across single stranded DNA molecules and is mutually exclusive with duplex B-form DNA. The core of a G4 is formed in G-rich stretches of DNA by Hoogsteen base-paired guanines that assemble as planar stacks, stabilized by a central cation like K+. These structures are reversible and structurally diverse, which makes them highly versatile genetic structures, as demonstrated by their roles in various functions including DNA replication, transcription, translation and telomere metabolism. The structural information on protein-G4 complexes remains scarce, especially little is known about G4-interacting proteins in the plant kingdom. In the present study, we addressed the following aims to tackle this deficiency: 1. Bioinformatically determine the abundance and localization of putative G4s in maize, a model organism for plant species; 2. Identify plant G4-binding proteins by expression library screening. 3. Analyze the structural heterogeneity of a polymorphic G4-forming oligonucleotide hex4_A5U. 4. Structurally characterize complex formation between hex4_A5U G4 and a G4-binding protein ZmNDPK1 using cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM). G4 forming sequences were first identified in telomeres and then recognized in other genomic loci. To investigate their potential roles in a large-genome model plant species, we computationally identified 149,988 canonical non-telomeric putative G4s in maize, 29 percent of which were in non-repetitive genomic regions. Putative G4 hotspots exhibited non-random enrichment in genes at three locations: one on the antisense strand in the 5‘UTR (A5U class); second one also on the antisense strand at the 5’ end of the first intron (A5I class); and third one on the sense strand adjacent to transcription start site (ATG class). Maize hexokinase4 gene has one G4 from each class (hex4_A5U, hex4_A5I and hex4_AUG) which we shown to form G4s in vitro. Overall the G4 motifs were prevalent in key regulatory genes associated with hypoxia, oxidative stress, and energy status pathways. Putative G4 elements have been identified in, or near, genes from species as diverse as bacteria, mammals, and plants, but little is known about how they might function as cis-regulatory elements or as binding sites for trans-acting protein partners. In fact, until now, no G4 binding partners have been identified in the plant kingdom. Here, we report on the identification, cloning and characterization of the first plant-kingdom gene known to encode a G4-binding protein, maize (Zea mays L.) Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase1 (ZmNDPK1). Structural characterization by X-ray crystallography reveals that it is a homohexamer, akin to other known NDPKs like the human homolog NM23-H2. Further probing into the G4-binding properties of both NDPK homologs shows that ZmNDPK1 possesses properties distinct from that of NM23-H2, which is known to interact with a G-rich sequence element upstream of the c-myc gene and, in doing so, modulate its expression. We also demonstrate that the G4-binding activity of ZmNDPK1 is independent of nucleotide binding and kinase activity, suggesting that the G4-binding region and the enzyme active site are separate. Together, these findings establish a broad evolutionary conservation of some NDPKs as G4-DNA binding enzymes, but with potentially distinct biochemical properties that may reflect divergent evolution or species-specific deployment of these elements in gene regulatory processes. A single G4-forming sequence can adopt a variety of 3D structures depending on: strand order and orientation (parallel, antiparallel), number of tetrads in a core (two, three, four), identity of the central cation (K+, Na+) and presence of bulges in G-tracts. Here I investigate the conformational heterogeneity of a hex4_A5U. This sequence adopts extensive polymorphic G4 conformations including non-canonical bulged G4 folds that co-existed in solution. The nature of this polymorphism depends, in part, on the incorporation of different sets of adjacent guanines into a G4 core that allowed formation of the different conformations. Additionally, I show that the ZmNDPK1 specifically recognizes and promotes formation of a subset of these conformations.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Kopylov_fsu_0071E_14171
Format: Thesis

Title: Interpretation Bias Modification for Body Dysmorphic Disorder: Evaluation of an Internet-Based Treatment.
Creator: Matheny Wilver, Natalie L., Cougle, Jesse R. (Jesse Ray), Joiner, Thomas, Boot, Walter Richard, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology
Abstract/Description: The current study extended upon previous research efforts by evaluating the utility and feasibility of an eight-session internet-based interpretation training protocol targeting evaluation- and appearance-related threat biases characteristic of the disorder compared to a progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) control condition. Assessments were administered at pre-treatment, one week post-treatment and three-month follow-up. Compared to the PMR group, individuals in the IBM condition reported...
Show moreThe current study extended upon previous research efforts by evaluating the utility and feasibility of an eight-session internet-based interpretation training protocol targeting evaluation- and appearance-related threat biases characteristic of the disorder compared to a progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) control condition. Assessments were administered at pre-treatment, one week post-treatment and three-month follow-up. Compared to the PMR group, individuals in the IBM condition reported less negative/threat interpretation biases and greater positive/benign interpretation biases at post-treatment and follow-up. Among individuals low in pre-treatment depression symptoms, IBM led to lower BDD symptoms and lower negative/threat interpretation biases compared to PMR. There was no effect of condition for those with high pre-treatment depression symptoms for most outcomes. Further, among those with no depression diagnosis, IBM led to lower BDD symptoms at post-treatment, while the opposite was found among those with a depression diagnosis. IBM also led to lower negative/threat interpretation bias among those without a depression diagnosis compared to PMR, though there was no effect of condition for those with a depression diagnosis. Finally, moderated mediation analyses revealed that among individuals with no depression diagnosis, the effects of condition on symptom severity were accounted for by changes in threat interpretation bias. Overall, these findings provide helpful future directions for IBM research and provide an additional lens through which to examine its potential effectiveness for BDD.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_MathenyWilver_fsu_0071N_14242
Format: Thesis

Title: The Changing Face of Opera in America: Musical Theatre on the American Operatic Stage.
Creator: Moniz, Justin John, Jones, Evan Thomas, Thomas, André J. (André Jerome), Chandler, Yuell, Okerlund, David, Seaton, Gayle E., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: The publication and exchange of information surrounding musical theatre on the American operatic stage has previously focused on only a small sample of top-tier opera houses within the United States. There is a lack of comprehensive information that explicates the increasing occurrence of the musical theatre repertory within the twenty-first century’s operatic seasons. Qualitative and quantitative research of American opera companies adopting such models helps increase the transparency of...
Show moreThe publication and exchange of information surrounding musical theatre on the American operatic stage has previously focused on only a small sample of top-tier opera houses within the United States. There is a lack of comprehensive information that explicates the increasing occurrence of the musical theatre repertory within the twenty-first century’s operatic seasons. Qualitative and quantitative research of American opera companies adopting such models helps increase the transparency of industry trends and their effects on opera’s evolving twenty-first century programming models. The main portion of this research focused on interviews with six industry professionals from recognized American opera houses known to produce musical theatre. Data was collected from company archives in conjunction with OPERA America’s membership directory and Operabase in order to identify the frequency with which musical theatre is programmed in these opera houses. Directors provided reasoning and explanations for programming selections and their effects on their respective organizations, highlighting any changes in audience size or demographic and the impact on the production and casting processes. Results show a significant increase in the number of musicals produced by American opera companies within the last ten years. The most frequently performed titles include Sweeney Todd, Candide, Show Boat, Man of La Mancha, and Carousel. Musical theatre is becoming more prevalent in twenty-first century operatic programming; for example, Lyric Opera of Chicago recently committed to producing all of the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein. If these types of trends continue, musical theatre may well find a new permanent home on the American operatic stage. Titles including Carousel, A Little Night Music, Man of La Mancha, South Pacific, and The King and I continue to be included within the operatic repertoire and may soon be as common an offering as La bohème or La traviata.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Moniz_fsu_0071E_14192
Format: Thesis

Title: Grotesque Bodies in the Art and Literature of Mina Loy.
Creator: Patrick, Anna Marie, Gardner, Joann, Wakamiya, Lisa Ryoko, Epstein, Andrew, Kavka, Martin, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in Interdisciplinary...
Show morePatrick, Anna Marie, Gardner, Joann, Wakamiya, Lisa Ryoko, Epstein, Andrew, Kavka, Martin, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities
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Abstract/Description: With reference to her poetry, prose, and visual arts from the 1910s to the 1950s, this dissertation considers Mina Loy’s representation of grotesque bodies within the context of the theory and artistic practice of early twentieth century avant-garde movements, particularly those most influential to her—Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. With a focus on Loy’s representation of bodily processes, functions, or excretions and the unstable boundaries of aberrant bodies (e.g., women’s bodies, deformed...
Show moreWith reference to her poetry, prose, and visual arts from the 1910s to the 1950s, this dissertation considers Mina Loy’s representation of grotesque bodies within the context of the theory and artistic practice of early twentieth century avant-garde movements, particularly those most influential to her—Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. With a focus on Loy’s representation of bodily processes, functions, or excretions and the unstable boundaries of aberrant bodies (e.g., women’s bodies, deformed or disabled bodies, dead bodies), the present work argues that Loy’s deployment of the grotesque constitutes a strategy in negotiating a place between traditional and avant-garde cultures, or what Susan Suleiman calls the “double margin.” On the one hand, Loy’s grotesque bodies challenge the Victorian sanitized bodily ideal opposed to the unrestrained female or savage body. Yet they also parody the tendency of Futurist, Dadaist, and Surrealist art to reinforce the perception of woman as Other to a stable, male norm by gendering female the uncanny, abject, irrational, primitive, and deviant. Unlike a majority of her male counterparts, Loy intimates identification with the grotesque body. In addition to articulating her sense of difference, the grotesque body, with its precarious borders and mutability, often serves in Loy’s work as concrete manifestation of a confusion and interpenetration of categories presumed distinct. Since they undermine the symbolic scaffolding of Western patriarchal culture, these “conceptual” grotesques, or slippages between categories (e.g., self and other, domestic and public, the cerebral and carnal), have a powerful subversive potential.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Patrick_fsu_0071E_14153
Format: Thesis

Title: Perceptions of Personalization for Academic and Social-Emotional Learning in High Schools: Social Cognitive and Ecological Perspectives.
Creator: Roberts, Ronnie Linley, Rutledge, Stacy A., Reynolds, John R., Iatarola, Patrice, Schrader, Linda B., Perez-Felkner, Lara, Florida State University, College of Education,...
Show moreRoberts, Ronnie Linley, Rutledge, Stacy A., Reynolds, John R., Iatarola, Patrice, Schrader, Linda B., Perez-Felkner, Lara, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
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Abstract/Description: This dissertation highlights the experience of personalization in schools in the context of high-stakes test-based education accountability policy. Historically, personalization has been understood to be essential to the teaching-learning enterprise. However, there have been variable understandings and applications of personalization in schools. Given education policy and core school activities, personalization tends to be slanted toward an academic focus and, consequently, its social...
Show moreThis dissertation highlights the experience of personalization in schools in the context of high-stakes test-based education accountability policy. Historically, personalization has been understood to be essential to the teaching-learning enterprise. However, there have been variable understandings and applications of personalization in schools. Given education policy and core school activities, personalization tends to be slanted toward an academic focus and, consequently, its social-emotional core—social support based on adult-student relationships—tends to be downplayed. Also, students are usually viewed as passive recipients of school-related social support, rather than active agents in the shaping of their own school experiences. There is also a failure to adequately acknowledge the influence of external environments. This study subscribes to an expansive, yet integrative view of personalization, as it considers multiple interrelated concerns/facets and goals of education and development. The twin goals of this study are to explore students’ and school personnel’s perceptions of high school students’ personalization experiences in a high stakes accountability context and to understand how social-cognitive factors and ecological conditions might shape adults’ personalization practices and students’ personalization experiences. For this study, I adopted a relational-developmental systems framework, particularly as it is represented in Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory. Applying elements of this Bandura-Bronfenbrenner lens and related literature, I advanced the assumption that the reciprocal interplay among student characteristics (viz., self-concept, agentic beliefs/actions, future aspirations, engagement, sense of belonging), interpersonal processes (viz., adult-student relationships, social support, adult/teacher expectations), and sociostructural factors (viz., school-home interactions, accountability policy/demands) informs students’ personalization experiences and academic and social-emotional development. Working through a critical realist lens, I interrogated qualitative data drawn from the dataset of the National Center on Scaling up Effective Schools’ work in two higher-performing and two lower-performing Florida high schools with specific performance and accountability statuses. I used a qualitative multiple-case study approach. I conducted three forms of qualitative content analysis (directed, conventional, summative) to recode a subset of data from semi-structured interviews with 23 students, 48 teachers, and 12 guidance counselors across the four participating high schools. Findings are discussed in terms of the literature and limitations of the data. The study uncovered several consequential personalization practices, structures, and related experiences across the four case study schools. Most of these aspects were more evident in the higher-performing schools, with variations between schools of similar performance statuses. Important personalization structures included small learning communities (SLCs), looping, and extracurriculars; salient personalization practices involved reciprocal sharing and club sponsorship. The study demonstrates the personal-structural nature of personalization and the centrality of intentional social-emotional connections. However, further research is needed to understand the extent to which particular social support classifications reflect the emotional core of personalization. The findings in this study also indicate the presence of several notable student characteristics and experiences: universalized, positive academic self-conceptions; mastery experiences and social models as major sources of self-concept formation; widespread college-going aspirations; and differences in behavioral engagement and agency. These findings underscore students’ personal contributions to their school experiences and development in concert with their interactions with school personnel and other significant others. Schools and school personnel are therefore encouraged to provide needed “external assets” to foster students “self-concept formation,” enhance self-regulatory strategies, and establish structures geared toward the development of student agency. The study also found that patterns of school-home interactions/parental involvement were demarcated by the schools’ performance statuses. How and what schools communicate with families are likely issues that need to be addressed, particularly as it involves parental role constructions and academic socialization. Lastly, the findings identified consistently strong perceptions of pervasiveness in accountability demands with some variability in negative affect. Relatedly, evidence of accountability effects on teachers’ personalization practices was limited. The findings suggest that schools can transpose the experience of external accountability—through shared norms, values, and expectations—to high internal accountability reflective of school personnel’s strong sense of personal accountability. However, this study also highlights the need to consider the potential for “depersonalization” associated with the impingement of teachers’ professional integrity and identity due to high stress accountability demands. Limitations in the data suggest that more research is needed to clarify the accountability-personalization linkage. Other implications for practice, research, and policy are also discussed in terms of a relational-developmental perspective on personalization in high schools. Overall, this study adds to the resurgent set of research that examines students’ nonacademic skills and needs and contributes significantly to the theoretical and empirical foundations of Personalization for Academic and Social Learning (PASL).
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Roberts_fsu_0071E_14239
Format: Thesis

Title: I/O Latency in the Linux Storage Stack.
Creator: Stephens, Brandon, Wang, An-I Andy, Wang, Zhi, Wang, Zuoxin, Whalley, David B., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Computer Science
Abstract/Description: As storage device performance increases, the lifespan of an I/O request becomes throttled more-so by data path traversal than physical disk access. Even though many computer performance analysis tools exist, a surprisingly small amount of research has been published documenting bottlenecks throughout the Linux storage stack. What research has been published focuses on results found through tracing, glossing over how the traces were performed. This work details my process of developing a...
Show moreAs storage device performance increases, the lifespan of an I/O request becomes throttled more-so by data path traversal than physical disk access. Even though many computer performance analysis tools exist, a surprisingly small amount of research has been published documenting bottlenecks throughout the Linux storage stack. What research has been published focuses on results found through tracing, glossing over how the traces were performed. This work details my process of developing a refined tracing method, what that method is, and how the research can be applied to measure I/O latency at any layer of the Linux storage stack. Sample results are given after examining the filesystem layer, the block layer, and the memory management system. Among these three components of the storage stack, the filesystem layer is responsible for the longest duration of an I/O request's lifespan.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Stephens_fsu_0071N_14270
Format: Thesis

Title: Elemental.
Creator: Talbert, Robert, Belieu, Erin, Kavka, Martin, Kimbrell, James, Epstein, Andrew, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English
Abstract/Description: The following poems focus upon fundamental experiences with technologies, physical forms, obsessions, and ideas in order to reveal an inherent unity in humanity. These “artifacts” are found in ancient, but also contemporary, contexts, and are used as a foundation for building primal, empathic connections meant to override the acrimonious division of people by historical, economic forces, et al. This dissertation begins by focusing on the ancient artifacts before turning its attention to...
Show moreThe following poems focus upon fundamental experiences with technologies, physical forms, obsessions, and ideas in order to reveal an inherent unity in humanity. These “artifacts” are found in ancient, but also contemporary, contexts, and are used as a foundation for building primal, empathic connections meant to override the acrimonious division of people by historical, economic forces, et al. This dissertation begins by focusing on the ancient artifacts before turning its attention to artifacts produced by contemporary ideas, practices, and technologies. This dissertation ends with a group of poems that collectively focus on the single artifact of labor, specifically, the antagonism between personal value and capitalism.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Talbert_fsu_0071E_14212
Format: Thesis

Title: Gods of Fire.
Creator: Thomas, Danilo John, Winegardner, Mark, Pietralunga, Mark, Stuckey-French, Elizabeth, Horack, Skip, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Gods of Fire uses linked stories to illustrate the connections between Birch, Montana’s brief, glorious mining history, and the hardships the present generation faces as a direct result of that history. From one story to the next, whether it is in the fables that have been made of the past, or in the small town pressures and anxieties of the addled, violent present, Birch unfolds as a one-time copper giant whose glamorous and burgeoning population helped turn the tide of World War II and...
Show moreGods of Fire uses linked stories to illustrate the connections between Birch, Montana’s brief, glorious mining history, and the hardships the present generation faces as a direct result of that history. From one story to the next, whether it is in the fables that have been made of the past, or in the small town pressures and anxieties of the addled, violent present, Birch unfolds as a one-time copper giant whose glamorous and burgeoning population helped turn the tide of World War II and electrified the country. The prices for these successes were paid by the natural environment, and by the castes of people who had to work the mines. In future generations, left to dwell among cracked pastoral landscapes, choked with dust and poison, the majority of the mines have closed, the glamour has faded, and most of the people have fled. Those who remain glorify a complicated past because the present does not offer them much. Concerned with the dissent of history, the evolution of perspective, and the dissemination of prosperity, Gods of Fire, through anecdote, fable, vignette and traditional narrative, attempts to fracture place in order to formally represent the broken landscapes, histories, and people who dwell among the narrative ruins. By fracturing, single aspects may be studied in their isolation, or considered as a whole, and by considering both views, we can discover how the individual contributes to a larger context, historical and geographical. Gods of Fire, in this regard, attempts to create a mosaic of place that spans generations, and attempts to tell a more complete story.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Thomas_fsu_0071E_14155
Format: Thesis

Title: Violent Sexual Victimization Effects on Adolescent Friendship Networks.
Creator: Tomlinson, Tiffaney A., Mears, Daniel P., Turanovic, Jillian J., Stewart, Eric Allen, Florida State University, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Abstract/Description: Studies have found that sexual victimization adversely affects an individual’s psychological wellbeing, physical health, and behavior. The current study examines the effects of sexual victimization on adolescent social networks. In particular, it seeks to determine whether sexual victimization has an adverse influence on adolescent victims’ friendship networks. The study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the effects of sexual victimization during...
Show moreStudies have found that sexual victimization adversely affects an individual’s psychological wellbeing, physical health, and behavior. The current study examines the effects of sexual victimization on adolescent social networks. In particular, it seeks to determine whether sexual victimization has an adverse influence on adolescent victims’ friendship networks. The study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the effects of sexual victimization during childhood and early adolescence on adolescent friendship networks. Multivariate regression models are estimated to assess whether sexual abuse is negatively associated with the victims’ popularity, centrality, and density of their friendship networks. The analyses indicated that sexual victimization was associated with a decrease in victims’ level of popularity and centrality within their friendship networks; there was no effect on the density of these networks. The results suggest that sexual victimization adversely affects victims’ level of popularity and centrality within their friendship networks. Combined with prior research, the results suggest that sexual victimization may exert harmful effects that extend across diverse psychological and social domains.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Tomlinson_fsu_0071N_14191
Format: Thesis

Title: Sex Differences in the Addiction-like Properties of Ketamine.
Creator: Wright, Katherine Nicole, Kabbaj, Mohamed, Keller, Laura R., Bhide, Pradeep, Horabin, Jamila I., Feng, Jian, Florida State University, College of Medicine, Department of...
Show moreWright, Katherine Nicole, Kabbaj, Mohamed, Keller, Laura R., Bhide, Pradeep, Horabin, Jamila I., Feng, Jian, Florida State University, College of Medicine, Department of Biomedical Sciences
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Abstract/Description: Depression is a devastating disease that is the leading cause of disability worldwide. One reason for its massive disease burden is that classical antidepressants require several weeks of administration to take effect, and they are only effective in roughly half of patients. Ketamine, previously known as primarily a veterinary anesthetic, rapidly alleviates treatment-resistant depressive symptoms at sub-anesthetic doses. Indeed, a single intravenous (i.v.) infusion of ketamine elicits an...
Show moreDepression is a devastating disease that is the leading cause of disability worldwide. One reason for its massive disease burden is that classical antidepressants require several weeks of administration to take effect, and they are only effective in roughly half of patients. Ketamine, previously known as primarily a veterinary anesthetic, rapidly alleviates treatment-resistant depressive symptoms at sub-anesthetic doses. Indeed, a single intravenous (i.v.) infusion of ketamine elicits an antidepressant effect within 2 hours and can last up to 2 weeks. Furthermore, this therapeutic effect of ketamine can be prolonged with repeated intermittent treatments. However, there are still many unanswered questions regarding ketamine’s safety, especially with respects to the long-term effects of prolonged, repeated exposure. Since ketamine is also a popular club drug with addictive properties, it is critical to characterize the safety and abuse liability of this drug. Additionally, women have twice the prevalence rates of depression as compared to men, and they progress more rapidly through the phases of drug addiction than men. Despite these known sex differences, females have been heretofore underrepresented in clinical and pre-clinical research. We sought to determine if intermittent self-administration of ketamine in rats can trigger drug-seeking behavior, at a dose that is close to the therapeutic human dose, and if the stage of the four-day estrous cycle can influence this behavior, as antidepressant-like effects of ketamine in females depends on estrous cycle stage (Dossat 2016). To that end, rats were trained to self-administer ketamine (0.1 mg/kg/infusion) in an operant chamber once every fourth day for males, while females’ self-administration sessions coincided with either diestrus 1 (when estradiol and progesterone are low), or proestrus (when these hormones are high). Ketamine intake in diestrus-trained females rapidly declined, while proestrus-trained females and males were stable across the acquisition phase of the experiment. After extinction training, proestrus-trained females and males (but not diestrus-trained females) displayed reinstated ketamine-seeking behavior when re-exposed to discrete cues that were previously paired to ketamine availability. Interestingly, a ketamine priming injection in the absence of cues did not reinstate ketamine-seeking behavior as is consistently seen with a priming injection of cocaine, a drug with very high abuse potential. Together, this indicates not only that ketamine-paired cues are more salient precipitators of relapse than the pharmacological effects of ketamine on its own, but also that the stage of estrous cycle associated with high levels of gonadal hormones supports female’s ketamine intake and subsequent ketamine relapse. To address comorbid depression and ketamine addiction, we assessed ketamine addictive-like behaviors in males and females previously exposed to unpredictable chronic mild stress (CMS), a procedure shown to induce a depressive-like phenotype in rodents. They were treated with four intermittent therapeutic i.v. ketamine infusions, designed to mimic infusion protocols used in clinics. They were then given access to self-administer 0.5 mg/kg/infusion ketamine and tested for their motivation to obtain ketamine using progressive ratio schedule (PR) and persistence of incubated ketamine craving after a period of forced abstinence, which is a major factor in the precipitation of relapse. CMS decreased sucrose intake in both sexes, but ketamine had no effect on anhedonia like-behaviors. Ketamine treatment reduced anxiety-induced neophagia, measured by the novelty-suppressed feeding test, suggesting that i.v. ketamine’s antidepressant-like effects may be symptom- and species-specific. While prior ketamine exposure and CMS had no effect on subsequent ketamine addiction-like behavior in males, females that underwent CMS displayed more addiction-like behavior than non-stressed females, suggesting that chronic stress can increase the risk for ketamine abuse in females. Additionally, ketamine pre-exposed females displayed lower ketamine intake, with no alterations in motivated responding or craving. Finally, dendritic spine density and morphology was assessed in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), the central processor for rewarding stimuli that is affected by both depression and addiction. Females with prior ketamine exposure regardless of stress condition had an increase in spine density that was primarily driven by the formation of immature thin spines; there were no changes in males. Together this suggests that although ketamine pre-treatment may alter NAc plasticity in a sex-dependent manner, it does not potentiate ketamine addiction-like behavior. Taken together, this work demonstrates that although ketamine and drug-paired cues have strong reinforcing effects, prior exposure to therapeutic ketamine infusions do not increase the risk of abuse. Estrous cycle stage and prior exposure to chronic stress influences the reinforcing properties of ketamine in females, suggesting an influence of ovarian hormones. The fact that ketamine-seeking behavior was dependent on the drug-paired cues rather than the acute pharmacological effects of ketamine, and that prior therapeutic ketamine did not increase the subsequent development of addiction-like behavior, suggests that there may be little overlap in ketamine’s antidepressant effects and addictive effects. It is possible that ketamine, if administered under the appropriate conditions, may have limited abuse potential, but research is necessary to determine if these sex-specific effects in rats translate to humans.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Wright_fsu_0071E_14202
Format: Thesis

Title: Can Playing a Video Game Foster Computational Thinking Skills?.
Creator: Zhao, Weinan, Shute, Valerie J. (Valerie Jean), Dennis, Lawrence Carl, Reiser, Robert A., Ke, Fengfeng, Almond, Russell G., Florida State University, College of Education,...
Show moreZhao, Weinan, Shute, Valerie J. (Valerie Jean), Dennis, Lawrence Carl, Reiser, Robert A., Ke, Fengfeng, Almond, Russell G., Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
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Abstract/Description: Computational thinking is increasingly recognized as an important skill set to learn for people living in the 21st century, and the middle school years comprise a critical stage to introduce children to computational thinking. Video game based learning is a promising way to foster computational thinking among middle school students, however, it is relatively less researched compared to other methods. In this dissertation study, I evaluated the effectiveness of a video game Penguin Go on...
Show moreComputational thinking is increasingly recognized as an important skill set to learn for people living in the 21st century, and the middle school years comprise a critical stage to introduce children to computational thinking. Video game based learning is a promising way to foster computational thinking among middle school students, however, it is relatively less researched compared to other methods. In this dissertation study, I evaluated the effectiveness of a video game Penguin Go on developing middle school students’ computational thinking skills, as well as on improving their attitudes toward computer science. I designed Penguin Go to cover the core components of computational thinking, including problem decomposition, abstraction, algorithmic thinking, conditional logic, iterative thinking, and debugging. I implemented the game based on Blockly, a block-based programming language. The game was evaluated with 43 middle school students during two weeks. In addition to the overall effectiveness of the game, I aimed to investigate the impact of a specific game feature—constraints on the number of blocks in a solution—on both students’ computational thinking skills and their attitudes toward computer science. Results showed that after playing Penguin Go for less than two hours, students’ computational thinking skills improved significantly, however, the additional constraints did not generate a significant impact on learning gains. Also, the game did not bring about significant attitudinal changes among students. The additional constraints, however, resulted in a significant negative change in students attitudes toward computer science. Implications of the findings and possible directions for future research regarding using these types of games to foster computational thinking are discussed.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Zhao_fsu_0071E_14222
Format: Thesis

Title: Haciendose un Líder: Leadership Identity Development of Latino Men at a Predominantly White Institution.
Creator: Acosta, Alan A., Guthrie, Kathy L., Ueno, Koji, Jones, Tamara Bertrand, Perez-Felkner, Lara, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Leadership...
Show moreAcosta, Alan A., Guthrie, Kathy L., Ueno, Koji, Jones, Tamara Bertrand, Perez-Felkner, Lara, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
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Abstract/Description: Research on college student leadership is evolving, with more scholars studying the influence of social identities on the development of student leaders. Gaps exist in the literature on how race influences leadership identity development for many social identities in numerous institutional contexts, including for Latino men at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Using a case study methodology, this dissertation studied the influence of race on the leadership identity development of...
Show moreResearch on college student leadership is evolving, with more scholars studying the influence of social identities on the development of student leaders. Gaps exist in the literature on how race influences leadership identity development for many social identities in numerous institutional contexts, including for Latino men at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Using a case study methodology, this dissertation studied the influence of race on the leadership identity development of Latino men at a PWI at Southeastern University using the Leadership Identity Development (LID) Model (Komives et al., 2005) and Ferdman and Gallegos’s (2001) Latino Orientations as a conceptual framework. The study also used Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) to honor the voices and experiences of the participants and disrupt the dominant narrative on leadership identity development for college students. A sample of 13 Latino men at a PWI in the Southeastern U.S. were selected and interviewed. Though the participants indicated their racial identity did not influence their views of themselves as leaders, they did share their respective cultures (Mexican, Colombian, Puerto Rican, etc.) did have an influence on how they saw themselves as leaders. Based on the themes that emerged, the study illustrated a merged leadership identity development process for Latino men at SU. The LID Model was mostly applicable to participants, with Yosso’s (2005) cultural wealth and cultural heritage identified as missing components in the Developmental Influences and Developing Self categories, respectively.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Acosta_fsu_0071E_14131
Format: Thesis

Title: Experimenting with Art-Infused Civic Activities to Promote School and Community Engagement among Disaffected Adolescent Students.
Creator: Agama, Marisa Victoria, Van Lith, Theresa, Easton, Peter, Fendler, Rachel Loveitt, Shields, Sara Scott, Florida State University, College of Fine Arts, Department of Art Education
Abstract/Description: Engagement among adolescents is a crucial factor for identity formation and positive youth development (Barker, 2015; Kegan, 1994). To help address disengagement, socially engaged art education (SEAE) practices have emerged, combining art with action-oriented curricula to critically examine the community and connect to it through meaningful experiences (Helguera, 2011). This current study aimed to better understand how the social dynamics at school and in the student’s own neighborhood...
Show moreEngagement among adolescents is a crucial factor for identity formation and positive youth development (Barker, 2015; Kegan, 1994). To help address disengagement, socially engaged art education (SEAE) practices have emerged, combining art with action-oriented curricula to critically examine the community and connect to it through meaningful experiences (Helguera, 2011). This current study aimed to better understand how the social dynamics at school and in the student’s own neighborhood impacted the roots of engagement, particularly from school and the larger community, and to address the need to understand interventions that engage, such as those led by art. To study youth engagement in the context of disenfranchised school environments, I designed a pragmatic informed participatory research study, which included six art-infused civic activities that incorporated reflection, action, and artful dialogue framed by Reason’s (1994) co-operative inquiry process. Through this research approach, I explored the perceptions that 16 12th-grade high school students had about their community and their desire to connect and to serve. Using an embedded mixed-methods design (Creswell, 2014), the art-infused civic activities and data collection took place simultaneously. The methods used included questionnaires and surveys, field observations, participant-produced documents, visual methods, interviews, and focus groups. An analysis of the data yielded several findings regarding the participants’ perceptions and connections to their community. For the participants in this study, community was the product of finding and discovering commonalities and feeling safe, as well as having opportunities to attain new skills. The students identified a lot of deficiencies at school, which led them to feel that school was not part of their community. However, despite this apathy, the students expressed appreciation for opportunities that allowed them to bond with their peers and teachers. Engagement in the art-infused civic activities resulted in students attaining newly formed perspectives about their peers and the school staff. The participants reported viewing them as having the capacity to show a caring side. Through these activities, they also saw themselves as more empathetic and able to make an impact in their community. Although some of the participants had been involved in service activities prior to this study, they felt that in this study the experiences were more meaningful because they were able to reflect and understand the magnitude of their contribution. Even though most participants expressed having a desire to help both their community and school, they also felt that this could not be accomplished until they became financially stable. This study contributes to the field of art education by examining the viability of art projects that aim to address youth disengagement, and to better understand the impact that art education has on youth engagement dynamics in the context of low-SES communities.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Agama_fsu_0071E_13788
Format: Thesis

Title: Essays on Corruption and Group Decision-Making.
Creator: Ahloy, James, Hamman, John R., Coleman, Eric A., Goerg, Sebastian J., Isaac, R. Mark (Robert Mark), Florida State University, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy,...
Show moreAhloy, James, Hamman, John R., Coleman, Eric A., Goerg, Sebastian J., Isaac, R. Mark (Robert Mark), Florida State University, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, Department of Economics
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Abstract/Description: Evidence suggests that corruption in the administering of driver's licenses has the potential to create large social harm by allowing incompetent drivers on the road, but these drivers are not guaranteed to cause accidents. Similarly, contractors for a building may be permitted to do shoddy work as long as an inspector is paid a bribe. The building may not collapse with certainty, but it may do so in the face of a natural disaster that it should have been able to withstand. While we know that...
Show moreEvidence suggests that corruption in the administering of driver's licenses has the potential to create large social harm by allowing incompetent drivers on the road, but these drivers are not guaranteed to cause accidents. Similarly, contractors for a building may be permitted to do shoddy work as long as an inspector is paid a bribe. The building may not collapse with certainty, but it may do so in the face of a natural disaster that it should have been able to withstand. While we know that individuals will engage in corruption when its negative effects are probabilistic, little is known about the underlying reasons for doing so. The second and third chapters of this dissertation explore the effects that individuals' beliefs have on the decision to bribe when social harm is probabilistic. In Chapter 2, I introduce a game that captures some of the key elements of the environments in which exchanges that generate probabilistic negative externalities occur. This chapter seeks to establish a basic understanding of behavior in these types of environments, given that previous corruption experiments have focused on situations where negative externalities occur with certainty. I find that subjects are more likely to offer a bribe when they believe that others are going to bribe. When subjects are at risk of causing themselves and others to incur losses, the beliefs that they form about the likelihood of experiencing losses are inaccurate, even when they have the information necessary to form accurate beliefs. However, these beliefs do not appear to affect the decision to offer a bribe. In Chapter 3, I apply my bribery game to the study of bribing for a driver's license. I supply subjects with context-rich instructions and induce types among potential bribers to reflect drivers of different natural ability. Some drivers can bribe for a license while increasing social efficiency, because the formalities of obtaining a license are unnecessary for them, while other drivers lower social efficiency, in expectation, when they bribe, since formal licensing procedures are necessary for them. I find that subjects once again are more willing to offer a bribe when they believe that others are going to bribe. Inaccurate beliefs about the likelihood of experiencing losses are also commonplace, even in the face of full information, but in contrast to Chapter 2, these beliefs enter into the decision to offer a bribe. Beliefs about type indicate non-rationalizable overconfidence, but these beliefs are not predictive of bribing behavior. Finally, in Chapter 4, I turn my attention to the topic of group formation. Using a public goods game in which participants can select their groups, I investigate the role that personality plays in contribution behavior and group selection as the information available to participants about groups varies. I find that when participants only have access to information about the average personality profiles of groups, personality predicts contribution behavior, and participants select groups based on high measures of certain personality traits. However, when participants have access to historical contribution information about groups, both by itself and along with personality information, personality has little predictive power for contribution behavior, and groups are selected on the basis of past contribution levels.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Ahloy_fsu_0071E_14206
Format: Thesis

Title: Community Search and Detection on Large Graphs.
Creator: Akbas Da Silvia, Esra, Zhao, Peixiang, Mio, Washington, Kumar, Piyush, Liu, Xiuwen, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Modern science and technology have witnessed in the past decade a proliferation of complex data that can be naturally modeled and interpreted as graphs. In real-world networked applications, the underlying graphs oftentimes exhibit fundamental community structures supporting widely varying interconnected processes. Identifying communities may offer insight on how the network is organized. In this thesis, we worked on community detection and search problems on graph data. Community detection ...
Show moreModern science and technology have witnessed in the past decade a proliferation of complex data that can be naturally modeled and interpreted as graphs. In real-world networked applications, the underlying graphs oftentimes exhibit fundamental community structures supporting widely varying interconnected processes. Identifying communities may offer insight on how the network is organized. In this thesis, we worked on community detection and search problems on graph data. Community detection (graph clustering) has become one of the most well-studied problems in graph management and analytics, the goal of which is to group vertices of a graph into densely knitted clusters with each cluster being well separated from all the others. Classic graph clustering methods primarily take advantage of topological information of graphs to model and quantify the proximity between vertices. With the proliferation of rich, heterogeneous graph contents widely available in real-world graphs, such as user profiles in social networks, it becomes essential to consider both structures and attributive contents of graphs for better quality graph clustering. On the other hand, existing community detection methods focus primarily on discovering communities in an apriori, top-down manner with the only reference to the input graph. As a result, all communities have to be exhaustively identified thus incurring expensive time/space cost and a huge amount of fruitless computation, if only a fraction of them are of special interest to end-users. In many real-world occasions, however, people are more interested in the communities pertaining to a given vertex. In our first project, we work on attributed graph clustering problem. We propose a graph embedding approach to cluster content-enriched, attributed graphs. The key idea is to design a unified latent representation for each vertex of a graph such that both the graph connectivity and vertex attribute proximity within the localized region of the vertex can be jointly embedded into a unified, continuous vector space. As a result, the challenging attributed graph clustering problem is cast to the traditional data clustering problem. In my second and third projects, we work on a query-dependent variant of community detection, referred to as the community search problem. The objective of community search is to identify dense subgraphs containing the query vertices. We study the community search problem in the truss-based model aimed at discovering all dense and cohesive k-truss communities to which the query set Q belongs. We introduce a novel equivalence relation, k-truss equivalence, to model the intrinsic density and cohesiveness of edges in k-truss communities and based on this equivalence we create 2 different space-efficient, truss-preserving index structure, EquiTruss and TEQ. Community search for one query or multiple queries can thus be addressed upon EquiTruss and TEQ without repeated, time-demanding accesses to the original graph, G, which proves to be theoretically optimal. While query set includes one query vertex in our first project, it includes multiple query vertices in our second project. As a summary, to get better quality on attributed graph clustering, the attribute-aware cluster information is well preserved during graph embedding. While we use Skip-Gram method for embedding, there are other embedding methods. We can use them to see the effect of different embedding methods on attributed graphs. In addition, our index structure is good for community search on large graphs without considering attribute information. Using attribute information in addition to the structure may give better communities for given query nodes. So, we can update our index structure to support community search on attributed graphs.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Akbas_fsu_0071E_14173
Format: Thesis

Title: The Impact of Unbalanced Designs on the Performance of Parametric and Nonparametric DIF Procedures: A Comparison of Mantel Haenszel, Logistic Regression, SIBTEST, and IRTLR Procedures.
Creator: Alghamdi, Abdullah Ahmed, Paek, Insu, Huffer, Fred W. (Fred William), Becker, Betsy Jane, Yang, Yanyun, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational...
Show moreAlghamdi, Abdullah Ahmed, Paek, Insu, Huffer, Fred W. (Fred William), Becker, Betsy Jane, Yang, Yanyun, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
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Abstract/Description: The current study examined the impact of unbalanced sample sizes between focal and reference groups on the Type I error rates and DIF detection rates (power) of five DIF procedures (MH, LR, general IRTLR, IRTLR-b, and SIBTEST). Five simulation factors were used in this study. Four factors were for generating simulation data and they were sample size, DIF magnitude, group mean ability difference (impact), and the studied item difficulty. The fifth factor was the DIF method factor that included...
Show moreThe current study examined the impact of unbalanced sample sizes between focal and reference groups on the Type I error rates and DIF detection rates (power) of five DIF procedures (MH, LR, general IRTLR, IRTLR-b, and SIBTEST). Five simulation factors were used in this study. Four factors were for generating simulation data and they were sample size, DIF magnitude, group mean ability difference (impact), and the studied item difficulty. The fifth factor was the DIF method factor that included MH, LR, general IRTLR, IRTLR-b, and SIBTEST. A repeated-measures ANOVA, where the DIF method factor was the within-subjects variable, was performed to compare the performance of the five DIF procedures and to discover their interactions with other factors. For each data generation condition, 200 replications were made. Type I error rates for MH and IRTLR DIF procedures were close to or lower than 5%, the nominal level for different sample size levels. On average, the Type I error rates for IRTLR-b and SIBTEST were 5.7%, and 6.4%, respectively. In contrast, the LR DIF procedure seems to have a higher Type I error rate, which ranged from 5.3% to 8.1% with 6.9% on average. When it comes to the rejection rate under DIF conditions, or the DIF detection rate, the IRTLR-b showed the highest DIF detection rate followed by SIBTEST with averages of 71.8% and 68.4%, respectively. Overall, the impact of unbalanced sample sizes between reference and focal groups on the performance of DIF detection showed a similar tendency for all methods, generally increasing DIF detection rates as the total sample size increased. In practice, IRTLR-b, which showed the best performance for DIF detection rates and controlled for the Type I error rates, should be the choice when the model-data fit is reasonable. If other non-IRT DIF methods are considered, MH or SIBTEST could be used, depending on which type of error (Type I or II) is more seriously considered.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Alghamdi_fsu_0071E_14180
Format: Thesis

Title: Offshore Wind Turbines Subjected to Hurricanes.
Creator: Amirinia, Gholamreza, Jung, Sungmoon, Liu, Xiuwen, Spainhour, Lisa, Rambo-Roddenberry, Michelle Deanna, Florida State University, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Department of...
Show moreAmirinia, Gholamreza, Jung, Sungmoon, Liu, Xiuwen, Spainhour, Lisa, Rambo-Roddenberry, Michelle Deanna, Florida State University, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Abstract/Description: Hurricane Andrew (1992) caused one of the largest property losses in U.S. history, but limited availability of surface wind measurements hindered the advancement of wind engineering research. Many studies have been conducted on regular boundary layer winds (non-hurricane winds) and their effects on the structures. In this case, their results were used in the standards and codes; however, hurricane winds and their effects on the structures still need more studies and observations. Analysis of...
Show moreHurricane Andrew (1992) caused one of the largest property losses in U.S. history, but limited availability of surface wind measurements hindered the advancement of wind engineering research. Many studies have been conducted on regular boundary layer winds (non-hurricane winds) and their effects on the structures. In this case, their results were used in the standards and codes; however, hurricane winds and their effects on the structures still need more studies and observations. Analysis of hurricane surface winds revealed that turbulence spectrum of hurricane winds differs from that of non-hurricane surface winds. Vertical profile of wind velocity and turbulence intensity are also important for determining the wind loads on high-rise structures. Vertical profile of hurricane winds is affected by different parameters such as terrain or surface roughness. Recent studies show that wind velocity profile and turbulence intensity of hurricane winds may be different from those used in the design codes. Most of the studies and available models for analyzing wind turbines subjected to high-winds neglect unsteady aerodynamic forces on a parked wind tower. Since the blade pitch angle in a parked wind turbine is usually about 90°, the drag coefficient on blade airfoils are very small therefore the along-wind aerodynamic forces on the blades are smaller than those on the tower. Hence, the tower in parked condition plays an important role in along-wind responses of the wind turbine. The objectives of this study are, first, to explore the nature of the hurricane surface winds. Next, to establish a time domain procedure for addressing structure-wind-wave-soil interactions. Third, investigating the behavior of wind turbines subjected to hurricane loads resulted form hurricane nature and, lastly, to investigate reconfiguration of turbine structure to reduce wind forces. In order to achieve these objective, first, recent observations on hurricane turbulence models were discussed. Then a new formulation for addressing unsteady wind forces on the tower was introduced and NREL-FAST package was modified with the new formulation. Interaction of wind-wave-soil-structure was also included in the modification. After customizing the package, the tower and blade buffeting responses, the low cycle fatigue during different hurricane categories, and extreme value of the short-term responses were analyzed. In the second part, piezoelectric materials were used to generate perturbations on the surface of a specimen in the wind tunnel. This perturbation was used to combine upward wall motion and surface curvature. For this purpose, a Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) material was mounted on the surface of a cylindrical specimen for generating perturbation in the wind tunnel. Four different perturbation frequencies (1 Hz, 2 Hz, 3 Hz, and 4Hz) as well as the baseline specimen were tested in a low-speed wind tunnel (Re= 2.8×104). Results showed that recently observed turbulence models resulted in larger structural responses and low-cycle fatigue damage than existing models. In addition, extreme value analysis of the short-term results showed that the IEC 61400-3 recommendation for wind turbine class I was sufficient for designing the tower for wind turbine class S subjected to hurricane; however, for designing the blade, IEC 61400-3 recommendations for class I underestimated the responses. In addition, wind tunnel testing results showed that the perturbation of the surface of the specimen increased the turbulence in the leeward in specific distance from the specimen. The surface perturbation technique had potential to reduce the drag by 4.8%.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Amirinia_fsu_0071E_14157
Format: Thesis

Title: The Percussion Music of Michael W. Udow: Composer Portrait and Performance Analysis of Selected Works.
Creator: Baldauff, Brian C. (Brian Christopher), Parks, John Will, Gunderson, Frank D., Moore, Christopher, Dunnigan, Patrick, Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: This treatise focuses on the percussion music of pioneering performer, pedagogue, and composer Michael Udow, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan from 1982 to 2011. Michael Udow occupied a unique position as performer, teacher, and composer. His access to a vast personal and academic instrument inventory coupled with dedicated students allowed for high-quality workshops and performances of his compositions, producing numerous examples of new/unique sound sources and instrument...
Show moreThis treatise focuses on the percussion music of pioneering performer, pedagogue, and composer Michael Udow, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan from 1982 to 2011. Michael Udow occupied a unique position as performer, teacher, and composer. His access to a vast personal and academic instrument inventory coupled with dedicated students allowed for high-quality workshops and performances of his compositions, producing numerous examples of new/unique sound sources and instrument setups/combinations. Areas of focus include a brief biography of Professor Udow, performance analyses of three works selected as examples of his eclectic compositional style, and finally a comprehensive list of Dr. Udow’s works for solo percussion and chamber percussion ensembles. Pedagogical and performance issues are addressed at the conclusion of each analysis to encourage compelling interpretations of Udow’s music.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Baldauff_fsu_0071E_14218
Format: Thesis

Title: Belief Systems and Executive Functioning.
Creator: Berry, Cassie Stutts, Kaschak, Michael P., Sunderman, Gretchen L., Boot, Walter Richard, Kelley, Colleen M., Conway, Paul, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences...
Show moreBerry, Cassie Stutts, Kaschak, Michael P., Sunderman, Gretchen L., Boot, Walter Richard, Kelley, Colleen M., Conway, Paul, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology
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Abstract/Description: Perceiving our world is an active process. We actively explore and investigate the environment rather than passively registering the objects and events we encounter. Our perception and attention reflect our moods, expectations, and beliefs. Recent evidence supporting this approach comes from studies that focus on the impact of individual differences on human perception and attention. Characteristics about the world we live in, like culture or religion, may drive these differences in...
Show morePerceiving our world is an active process. We actively explore and investigate the environment rather than passively registering the objects and events we encounter. Our perception and attention reflect our moods, expectations, and beliefs. Recent evidence supporting this approach comes from studies that focus on the impact of individual differences on human perception and attention. Characteristics about the world we live in, like culture or religion, may drive these differences in perception and attention. One of the ways this has been looked at is by examining executive functioning. Inhibitory control, the ignoring of irrelevant information, is an important component of executive functioning. The Simon, Flanker, and Stroop tasks are all common measures of inhibitory control. They all require to some degree the inhibition of irrelevant information when selecting an appropriate response to stimuli. Several studies have reported a bilingual advantage on these tasks. Previous research has indicated differences in cognitive functioning for those of different political beliefs. Differences are seen in perception of multi-level stimuli in people of different cultures and religions and for people with different political leanings. Previous research has found similar differences in performance on a measure of executive functioning for people of different religions. The expected effects for the Simon and Flanker task were found in this sample. Differences in the size of the Simon and Flanker effect were not found in this sample for those of different religious beliefs or political beliefs
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Berry_fsu_0071E_14233
Format: Thesis

Title: Dissipation of Mesoscale Energy by Vortex-Topography Interaction.
Creator: Bishnu, Siddhartha, Dewar, William K., Chassignet, Eric P., Clarke, Allan J., Kopriva, David A., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Earth,...
Show moreBishnu, Siddhartha, Dewar, William K., Chassignet, Eric P., Clarke, Allan J., Kopriva, David A., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science
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Abstract/Description: Energy is introduced into the oceans primarily at large scales by means of wind, tides and surface buoyancy forcing. This energy is transferred to the smaller mesoscale eld through the geostrophic instability processes. The mesoscale eld appears not to have accelerated appreciably over the last several decades, so we can assume that the mesoscale loses energy at roughly the same rate it receives energy. Interestingly, how the mesoscale loses energy is not quite clear. We have been exploring...
Show moreEnergy is introduced into the oceans primarily at large scales by means of wind, tides and surface buoyancy forcing. This energy is transferred to the smaller mesoscale eld through the geostrophic instability processes. The mesoscale eld appears not to have accelerated appreciably over the last several decades, so we can assume that the mesoscale loses energy at roughly the same rate it receives energy. Interestingly, how the mesoscale loses energy is not quite clear. We have been exploring topographic interaction as a pathway by which the mesoscale may lose energy to unbalanced forward cascading flows. To demonstrate this phenomenon, an approximate model theory is developed which consists of solving a reduced set of the momentum equations in density coordinates for any topographic conguration. The equations are solved using a high order spectral element technique and the results are similar to already published MITgcm simulations.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Bishnu_fsu_0071N_14263
Format: Thesis

Title: Like a Rolling Stone: Moving Toward Methodologies for Analysis of Multimodal Musical Performance.
Creator: Burgess, Andrew D. (Andrew David), Fleckenstein, Kristie S., Houck, Davis W., Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Neal, Michael R., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreBurgess, Andrew D. (Andrew David), Fleckenstein, Kristie S., Houck, Davis W., Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Neal, Michael R., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English
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Abstract/Description: As a means for understanding a wide range of multimodal phenomena, multimodal analysis poses methodological challenges for the novice researcher intent on investigating multimodal communication, especially communication that involves multimodal musical performance (MMP), an understudied communicative act. As a response to these challenges, this project examines three approaches to multimodal analysis identified by Carey Jewitt in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis as central to...
Show moreAs a means for understanding a wide range of multimodal phenomena, multimodal analysis poses methodological challenges for the novice researcher intent on investigating multimodal communication, especially communication that involves multimodal musical performance (MMP), an understudied communicative act. As a response to these challenges, this project examines three approaches to multimodal analysis identified by Carey Jewitt in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis as central to studying multimodality writ large: social-semiotic multimodal analysis (SSMA), multimodal discourse analysis (MDA), and multimodal interactional analysis (MIA). However, while these approaches each provide a theory and key concepts for analysis, they lack a practicable methodology—necessary for the novice research—and, thus, provide no concrete way to pursue multimodal analysis or to assess the strengths and deficits of a particular approach when applied to the analysis of MMPs. In this project, I conduct a critical analysis that includes a theoretical and pragmatic examination of these approaches to multimodal analysis and assess them for strengths and deficits in terms of a particular MMP because such a performance is an important and under-explored variety of multimodal text. Thus, this project asks three questions of each approach and its methods: 1) What are the strengths of each approach to multimodal analysis of musical performance as multimodal communication? 2) What are the deficits of each approach to multimodal analysis of musical performance as multimodal communication? 3) And, finally, given the strengths and deficits of competing approaches to multimodal analysis of musical performance as multimodal communication, what do we need moving forward in order to fully, robustly, and capaciously analyze and understand musical performance as multimodal communication? I respond to these questions by devising a synthesized, practicable methodology for each approach, one derived from the work in key chapters in The Routledge Handbook identified by Jewitt as employing a specific approach. I apply each of these methodologies to a single musical performance: video footage from Bob Dylan’s July 25, 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival—which is often seen as a pivotal moment in popular music history—collected on the 2011 blu-ray release of Murray Lerner’s concert film The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965. I assess the results of my application of each methodology and its methods to determine the strengths and deficits of each approach for analyzing MMPs. Finally, I offer two options to bolster strengths and address deficits of these three approaches to the multimodal analysis of MMPs, one crafted from combining approaches, and one crafted from a new perspective—that of sonic imaginations (Sterne)—thus informing methodology with attention to the sonic aspects of MMPs. This dissertation offers three key results important for the novice researcher. First, it provides a practicable methodology for each approach, a necessary step in the process of assessing an approach's strengths and deficits. Second, it offers the novice researcher insight into each methodology’s potential. For instance, analyses indicated that SSMA possesses, among its five strengths, a focus on the sign-maker, while at the same time, it possesses, among its three deficits, no mechanism through which to consider the multiple sign-makers involved in an MMP. Similarly, MDA possesses, among its six strengths, a focus on the multimodal phenomenon, while at the same time, it possesses, among its four deficits, a lack of a systematic means for delineating levels of discourse. And, MDA possesses, among its five strengths, a focus on interaction between social actors involved in an MMP, while at the same time, it possesses, among its five deficits, a requirement for a considerable amount of guesswork on the part of the researcher. Third, while demonstrating that no approach to multimodal analysis offers a “best” methodology for the analysis of MMPs, this dissertation offers two directions for methodological inspiration. It concludes that, through a deliberate courting of emotion by tapping into elements of music criticism and through a deliberate courting of messiness by embracing the union of emotion and analysis, methodologies for analysis can be crafted that align with the demands of MMPs.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Burgess_fsu_0071E_14194
Format: Thesis

Title: Fossil Excavation, Museums, and Wyoming: American Paleontology, 1870-1915.
Creator: Cameron, Marlena Briane, Doel, Ronald Edmund, Ruse, Michael, Buhrman, Kristina Mairi, Varry, Sandra, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in History...
Show moreCameron, Marlena Briane, Doel, Ronald Edmund, Ruse, Michael, Buhrman, Kristina Mairi, Varry, Sandra, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in History and Philosophy of Science
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Abstract/Description: Displays of dinosaurs have become a staple of modern natural history museums, but these did not emerge until the turn of the twentieth century. Through the work of Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in this field (despite their intense rivalry), paleontology grew as a discipline and, after losing federal funding, found a new home in museums and universities. Recognizing the potential of large dinosaurs for display and education, major natural history museums such as the American...
Show moreDisplays of dinosaurs have become a staple of modern natural history museums, but these did not emerge until the turn of the twentieth century. Through the work of Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in this field (despite their intense rivalry), paleontology grew as a discipline and, after losing federal funding, found a new home in museums and universities. Recognizing the potential of large dinosaurs for display and education, major natural history museums such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York under Henry Osborn began competing for their own specimens. Much work has been done on the efforts of these emerging large museums. Smaller museums such as the University of Wyoming Museum, however, have been much less studied. Through its proximity to immense, rich fossil fields, the university became directly connected to the major events shaping paleontology at the time. Yet differences in the pedagogy and intentions behind its formation—a sense of state pride rather than the concerns of wealthy, elite sponsors—served to set it apart from larger, more well-known institutions.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Cameron_fsu_0071N_14117
Format: Thesis

Title: Understanding Magnetic Exchange Behavior in Core@Shell Nanoparticles.
Creator: Carnevale, David J. (David John), Shatruk, Mykhailo, Strouse, Geoffrey F., Xiong, Peng, Schlenoff, Joseph B., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department...
Show moreCarnevale, David J. (David John), Shatruk, Mykhailo, Strouse, Geoffrey F., Xiong, Peng, Schlenoff, Joseph B., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Abstract/Description: As green technology advances, the need for cheaper, stronger permanent magnets becomes more and more vital everyday. Electric motors, like those used in wind turbines and electric cars, rely heavily on Dy doped Nd2Fe14B in order to achieve the required efficiencies to be successful, however both Nd and Dy are expensive rare-earth elements that the field is trying to move away from relying on. In order to approach this issue, many are trying to combine these powerful permanent magnets with...
Show moreAs green technology advances, the need for cheaper, stronger permanent magnets becomes more and more vital everyday. Electric motors, like those used in wind turbines and electric cars, rely heavily on Dy doped Nd2Fe14B in order to achieve the required efficiencies to be successful, however both Nd and Dy are expensive rare-earth elements that the field is trying to move away from relying on. In order to approach this issue, many are trying to combine these powerful permanent magnets with cheaper and more abundant soft magnetic materials in order to create exchange-spring magnets. While exchange coupling behavior has been studied for several decades now, there are major issues with controlling the uniformity in the generated materials leading to a limited understanding of the properties of these assemblies. In order to address both of these issues at the same time, we devised an approach to create a hard magnetic nanoparticle of fcc-FePt, which was then shelled with the soft magnet Co. In order to gain the desired control of the final core@shell particles, a mix and round bottom and microwave heating was utilized, the synthetic details of which are laid out in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 lays out the results from applying a layer-by-layer shell of Co onto a constant 5 nm FePt particle. From this shelling, the transition from hard-exchange to exchange-spring to decoupling of the core@shell system can be observed. The limit of these regions were found to be very small, with the hard-exchange regime only being in the case of shell sizes smaller than 1.4 nm and decoupling occurring in the materials with >2nm of Co shelled on. This limited range is due to cobalt’s short range coupling, which can not support strong coupling beyond 3-4 layers of Co.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Carnevale_fsu_0071E_14044
Format: Thesis

Title: Designing Time Efficient Real Time Hardware in the Loop Simulation Using Input Profile Temporal Compression.
Creator: Chatterjee, Sourindu, Faruque, Md Omar, Steurer, Mischa, Li, Hui, Florida State University, College of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Abstract/Description: The modern day smart grid technology relies heavily on data acquisition and analysis. A distributed controller governs smart microgrid functions with one or more renewable sources and smart controllable loads. This sort of intelligent, scalable system is the primary drive for the Energy Internet (EI). Hence, in modern-day power systems engineering to analyze, understand and make efficient system design choices that capture robustness and scalability, Hardware in the Loop (HIL) simulations are...
Show moreThe modern day smart grid technology relies heavily on data acquisition and analysis. A distributed controller governs smart microgrid functions with one or more renewable sources and smart controllable loads. This sort of intelligent, scalable system is the primary drive for the Energy Internet (EI). Hence, in modern-day power systems engineering to analyze, understand and make efficient system design choices that capture robustness and scalability, Hardware in the Loop (HIL) simulations are required. Real-Time Simulations (RTS) is the state of the art technology thrusting the capstone of innovation for this industry. As engineers, we can model, simulate and validate smart grids operations more rapidly, robustly and reliably using RTS. With enough smaller time step for the simulation, the boundary between the real and the simulated systems slowly vanishes. It also enables the system to be simulated as Controller Hardware in the Loop (CHIL) or Power Hardware in the Loop (PHIL) setups, evolving and imitating the real physical world. The HIL (Hardware in the Loop) setup also enables a real data source or sink to be in the system to form the loop of exchange between the simulated system and real-world hardware which is most often a control hardware. The implementation of such a setup is made possible at Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS), named as Hardware in the Loop Test-Bed (HIL-TB). This evaluation architecture provides a systematic solution to HIL simulations. Now the sampling time for real-world sensors is generally in the order of microseconds, enabling this collected data to emulate the cyber-physical domain accurately. Thus, the challenge previously was to address the throughput of real-world input data into the simulated system efficiently and correctly. The quality of the Design of Simulation (DoS) using the real world data in the form of Real Time Input Profile (RTIP), improves, affects the quality of response of the real-time cyber-physical system simulation. Thus great care needs to be taken to prepare, prune and project the RTIPs to improve and enhance the system performance evaluation index. To solve this problem, partially successful attempts have been made in the direction of machine learning by using methods like clustering and regression to characterize large input profiles or by breaking them into subsections using fixed length sliding window techniques. These classic methods then perform data analysis on those sub-pieces to distinguish among a variety of input profiles and assign an index. These sub-profiles or sections would be then loaded into the simulation as environmental input to represent the physical system in the HIL simulations. This traditional procedure is observed to be arbitrary because clustering algorithms and metrics for methods like regression or classification are user-defined and there exists no standard practice to deal with huge input profiles. There have also been confusions regarding the size of the sliding window to create subsections, subsection joining logic, etc. Thus, to address this issue, the primary focus of this study is to present a systematic, controlled, reliable procedure to explore, screen, crop large input profiles and then to compress the same by selecting sections with most relative importance using a modified version of “knapsack” dynamic programming algorithm. This compression primarily aims to shrink down the total simulation time without much loss of information. The latter part of this study focuses towards response driven performance evaluation of the HIL simulations. This is ensured by targeted compression of original input profile based on the certain requirement of the simulation. This approach ensures that the control algorithm (CHIL simulations) or any other system operator is driven in a specific direction in the simulation response space by effectively sampling the input parameters space. The fully automated HIL-TB evaluation framework aided with Input Profile Time Compression (IPTC) module delivers a fast-convergent validation for the performance evaluation with relatively similar system response. In this study, the IPTC module has been applied to seven load profiles to compress their temporal length by a third. The case study used for the simulation with these RTIPs is the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) IEEE seven node system. The test results show great coherence between the uncompressed and compressed response and validate the performance of the IPTC module applied to real-world HIL simulations. Thus, it can conclude that the functionality of the IPTC module is validated by the quality of simulation response gained out of the compressed simulation as compared to uncompressed simulation. In future, endeavors can be made in this path by expanding the functionality of this compression module to not only identifying and managing important sections based on some initial assumption about the objective of the control application but also providing cognitive, autonomous understanding of the behavior of the controls and using that knowledge accomplishing compression of large input profiles.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_CHATTERJEE_fsu_0071N_14274
Format: Thesis

Title: Using Social Network Analysis (SNA) Feedback to Explore Patterns of Participation and Interaction in Online Discussions.
Creator: Chauhan, Amit, Dennen, Vanessa P., Sypher, Ulla, Klein, James D., Darabi, Aubteen, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and...
Show moreChauhan, Amit, Dennen, Vanessa P., Sypher, Ulla, Klein, James D., Darabi, Aubteen, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
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Abstract/Description: Motivating learners to participate and interact in online discussions is a challenge faced by many instructors. Despite clear guidelines, learners do not always participate in online discussions and do not meet the expected participation criteria or requirements for the course. Because online interactions are integral to social constructivist learning, little or no learner participation can be a barrier to social dialogue process for knowledge building and learning. While learner...
Show moreMotivating learners to participate and interact in online discussions is a challenge faced by many instructors. Despite clear guidelines, learners do not always participate in online discussions and do not meet the expected participation criteria or requirements for the course. Because online interactions are integral to social constructivist learning, little or no learner participation can be a barrier to social dialogue process for knowledge building and learning. While learner participation in online discussions can be attributed to several contextual factors, formative feedback is important to motivate learner participation and interaction. One reason why students might not be motivated to participate could be little or no awareness of how to effectively interact in a course discussion. In this context, SNA can be used to visualize the structure and patterns of interaction in online discussions. Such information can be used to create self-awareness as well as an awareness of other students’ participation. This study explored if structural indicators e.g., participant location in the discussion and relational information about their interaction with others when provided as SNA-based feedback, can motivate learner participation and interaction in online discussion. For the purposes of providing SNA-based feedback, the study used Ego network and two centrality measures—Degree and Eigenvector. The ego network is the neighborhood of a participant and showed direct connections with others in the discussion network. Degree centrality was a measure of the total number of messages sent or received from different interaction partners. Eigenvector centrality was a measure of interaction with partners who in turn, have more interaction partners. Participants with a high centrality score are those who interact more with other participants as they send messages and receive replies. This study addressed student reactions to the SNA-based feedback. Of particular interest was motivational reactions of students and whether they would use the feedback to optimize their discussion participation and interaction. The two research questions that guided this study are: 1) What are learner perceptions of the SNA-based feedback? 2) How do learners participate and interact in the course discussion before and after receiving SNA-based feedback? The participants in the study were 10 students enrolled in a graduate level online course at a large southern research university. The 10 participants agreed to receive feedback and complete a survey at the end of the study. Of these 10 students, three agreed to participate in a follow-up interview. A modified version of Deci and Ryan’s (2007) Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) for pre- and post-survey was used in the study to measure learner motivation to participate in online discussions. Scores on the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction subscales in a modified version of Keller’s (1987) IMMS survey were used to measure motivational reactions of students to SNA-based feedback. Prompted interviews were conducted with the three participants who indicated willingness to participate. The results of the IMI survey indicated that the students were motivated regarding their beliefs about online discussion. Regarding the perceptions of the SNA-based feedback, the results of the modified IMMS survey showed three of the 10 participants with high motivational reactions, two with low motivational reactions, and the remaining five showing medium motivational reactions regarding their perception of the SNA-based feedback. The Contribution Index (CI) showed that four participants each received more messages than the total number of messages sent. The remaining six participants sent more messages than the number of messages each participant received. While the motivational reactions to SNA-based feedback did not encourage the participants to post more messages, a visible change in behavior was noticeable in early discussion postings by the participants. Findings from this study indicate that the participants actively participated and engaged in the discussions throughout the entire discussion week. The participants appreciated the feedback as it provided them an opportunity to reflect on their behavior and also used to guide how they wanted to participate in the discussion. The participants also noticed a greater sense of connectedness with the whole class after receiving SNA-based feedback.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Chauhan_fsu_0071E_14220
Format: Thesis

Title: Assessing the Clinical Utility of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation in the Treatment of Anxious Arousal and Sensory Hypersensitivity: A Targeted Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation Study.
Creator: Clancy, Kevin J., Li, Wen, Sachs-Ericsson, Natalie J., Eckel, Lisa A., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology
Abstract/Description: The ability of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to augment underlying rhythmic fluctuations of neuronal activity provides meaningful implications in the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by aberrations in neural oscillations. However, in evaluating its clinical utility, evidence is lacking for the efficacy of tACS to induce long-term (> 24 hours) plastic changes that translate to lasting behavioral outcomes. Here, we repeatedly administered alpha...
Show moreThe ability of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to augment underlying rhythmic fluctuations of neuronal activity provides meaningful implications in the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by aberrations in neural oscillations. However, in evaluating its clinical utility, evidence is lacking for the efficacy of tACS to induce long-term (> 24 hours) plastic changes that translate to lasting behavioral outcomes. Here, we repeatedly administered alpha-frequency tACS across 4 consecutive days in 38 healthy adults to evaluate lasting changes in local alpha power and directed connectivity as well as clinically-relevant indices of anxious arousal and affective sensory processing. Replicating previous findings, participants who received active stimulation (vs. a sham control group) demonstrated transient increases in resting occipito-parietal alpha power that lasted 30 minutes post-stimulation, reflecting acute entrainment to the exogenous electrical stimulation. However, these effects were short-term, returning to baseline levels 24 hours after stimulation. Conversely, long-term increases in intrinsic posteriorfrontal alpha-frequency connectivity emerged and persisted across all 4 days, reflecting plastic-changes in directed cortico-cortical networks. These lasting connectivity changes were paralleled by sustained decreases in anxious arousal and increases in perceived pleasantness of auditory stimuli. These findings suggest that while local oscillatory activity may be constrained by a self-sustaining thalamo-cortical loop that restores cortical oscillations to baseline, long-range oscillatory connectivity may strengthen over time through plastic synaptic changes in intrinsic cortico-cortical networks. The lasting augmentation of this inter-areal oscillatory network via tACS provides meaningful implications in an array of affective and cognitive processes that are orchestrated through the integrity of these global networks. This provides novel extensions of tACS applications, shifting neuromodulatory targets from local oscillations to global oscillatory networks to progress the clinical utility of this technology.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Clancy_fsu_0071N_14146
Format: Thesis

Title: The Mindfulness Meditation Training for Sport and Injury Rehabilitation with High School Athletes: A Pilot Study.
Creator: Cooper, Brandon T., Chow, Graig Michael, Tenenbaum, Gershon, Canto, Angela I., Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning...
Show moreCooper, Brandon T., Chow, Graig Michael, Tenenbaum, Gershon, Canto, Angela I., Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
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Abstract/Description: Injury in sport is a frequent occurrence that often causes athletes to experience stress, frustration, anger, depression, and pain. Mindfulness practice has shown to be efficacious in reducing stress and pain, while improving well-being. Despite this, there is limited research investigating the effects of mindfulness-based interventions with injured athletes. In the current study, the Mindfulness Meditation Training for Sport 2.0 (MMTS 2.0; Baltzell, Caraballo, Chipman, & Hayden, 2014) was...
Show moreInjury in sport is a frequent occurrence that often causes athletes to experience stress, frustration, anger, depression, and pain. Mindfulness practice has shown to be efficacious in reducing stress and pain, while improving well-being. Despite this, there is limited research investigating the effects of mindfulness-based interventions with injured athletes. In the current study, the Mindfulness Meditation Training for Sport 2.0 (MMTS 2.0; Baltzell, Caraballo, Chipman, & Hayden, 2014) was implemented and evaluated with three high school female athletes. Utilizing a nonconcurrent multiple baseline among subjects design, participants completed measures of pain, stress, well-being, self-compassion, and mindfulness throughout the intervention. Two participants improved in mindfulness and self-compassion relative to baseline levels. The same two participants also reported reductions in pain and stress, and improvements in psychological well-being subscales autonomy and self-acceptance. Improvements in mindfulness and self-compassion corresponded with adherence to between-session meditation exercises. The participant with the lowest adherence reported reductions in mindfulness, self-compassion, and well-being, and did not complete post-intervention follow-up assessment. Overall, results were mixed and should be interpreted with caution. Future research should continue to evaluate the impact of mindfulness and self-compassion interventions like the MMTS 2.0 with injured athletes to determine its utility.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Cooper_fsu_0071N_14268
Format: Thesis

Title: Making Material Simulation Faster: Coarse Graining, Bridging and Bootstrapping.
Creator: Crysup, Benjamin Rosser, Shanbhag, Sachin, Rikvold, Per Arne, Huang, Chen, Mendoza-Cortes, Jose L., Slice, Dennis E., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreCrysup, Benjamin Rosser, Shanbhag, Sachin, Rikvold, Per Arne, Huang, Chen, Mendoza-Cortes, Jose L., Slice, Dennis E., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Scientific Computing
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Abstract/Description: Nanoparticles with a solid, inorganic core surrounded by long chain organic ligands have many useful properties and applications. A feature of these materials is that their properties can be tuned to an application: this makes preliminary simulations appealing (to cut down on the possibility space before going into the lab). However, from a simulation perspective, nanoparticles are big and expensive to simulate at the atomic level. There exist a collection of methods to take gross structural...
Show moreNanoparticles with a solid, inorganic core surrounded by long chain organic ligands have many useful properties and applications. A feature of these materials is that their properties can be tuned to an application: this makes preliminary simulations appealing (to cut down on the possibility space before going into the lab). However, from a simulation perspective, nanoparticles are big and expensive to simulate at the atomic level. There exist a collection of methods to take gross structural information and produce a potential fit for simulations at the molecular level. In this work, five such methods (and a few alterations to those methods) were performed on a series of increasingly large molecules to see how they perform at the most aggressive level of coarse graining. The methods were compared based on how well they reproduced structural information about the molecules, and on how much they sped up the dynamics of those systems. In order to make meaningful comparisons between these results, the uncertainty in the results needs to be known. Since large simulations are involved, running multiple simulations is expensive. However, Shanbhag (Shanbhag, 2013) recently proposed a method to obtain the uncertainty in diffusion coefficients obtained from a molecular dynamics simulation (via bootstrapping the atomic trajectories to generate estimates). This method was originally tested only on a simple system, so its validity on more complicated systems needed to be verified. This work tested the validity of this method by running two hundred Lennard-Jones simulations, performing bootstrapping on each, and finding the percentage of bootstrap results that failed to capture the overall mean. This was repeated under different conditions and potentials to determine exactly when and how poorly this method fails. After running the bootstrapping comparisons, it was found that simulations start out with a certain level of underestimation: the exact amount depends on how strongly the particles are interacting. If using unweighted least squares regression on the mean squared displacement, the amount of underestimation approaches a minimum once the simulation has run long enough for the particles to traverse the simulation box. Other methods that put emphasis on short time data do not recover gracefully from the initial effects of correlation. Armed with the ability to get a measure of the uncertainty, the effects of coarse graining were studied. It was found that Inverse Boltzmann best reproduced structural information, at the cost of added computation. Of the computationally cheap methods, Hypernetted chain tended to perform the best for reproducing structural information, while the potential of mean force and force averaging were typically among the worst. When it comes to transferability, for the pure methods force averaging was fairly transferable, Hypernetted chain less so, with Inverse Boltzmann suffering from overfitting (though this problem is improved by calculating a bridge function). While it was expected that coarse graining would speed up dynamics, it was hoped the speedup would be consistent: it was not.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Crysup_fsu_0071E_14203
Format: Thesis

Title: Spatial Optimal Disturbances in Turbulent Boundary Layers.
Creator: Davis, Timothy B. (Timothy Brian), Alvi, Farrukh S., Sussman, Mark, Kumar, Rajan, Taira, Kunihiko, Oates, William, Uzun, Ali, Florida State University, FAMU-FSU College of...
Show moreDavis, Timothy B. (Timothy Brian), Alvi, Farrukh S., Sussman, Mark, Kumar, Rajan, Taira, Kunihiko, Oates, William, Uzun, Ali, Florida State University, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Abstract/Description: In this dissertation, disturbances leading to optimal energy growth in a spatially developing, zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer are examined. The slow development of the turbulent mean flow in the streamwise direction is modeled through a parabolized formulation to enable a spatial marching procedure. In the present framework, the linearized equations subject to a turbulent forcing are solved at particular wavenumber combinations. Conventional spatial optimal disturbance then...
Show moreIn this dissertation, disturbances leading to optimal energy growth in a spatially developing, zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer are examined. The slow development of the turbulent mean flow in the streamwise direction is modeled through a parabolized formulation to enable a spatial marching procedure. In the present framework, the linearized equations subject to a turbulent forcing are solved at particular wavenumber combinations. Conventional spatial optimal disturbance then arise naturally as the homogeneous solution whereas the particular solution captures the response to distributed forcing. A wave-like decomposition for the disturbance is considered to incorporate both conventional stationary modes as well as propagating modes formed by nonzero frequency/streamwise wavenumber and representative of convective structures naturally observed in wall turbulence. The optimal streamwise wavenumber, which varies with the spatial development of the turbulent mean flow, is computed locally via an auxiliary optimization constraint. The present approach can then be considered, in part, as an extension of the resolvent-based analyses for slowly developing flows. Optimization results reveal highly amplified disturbances for both stationary and propagating modes. In all cases, propagating modes surpass their stationary counterpart in both energy amplification and relative contribution to total fluctuation energy. We identify three classes of energetic modes associated with the inner, logarithmic and wake layers of the turbulent mean flow. The inner scaled modes are associated with the ubiquitous near wall streaks residing in the buffer layer. The outer scaled wake modes agree well with the large-scale motions that populate the wake layer. For high Reynolds numbers, however, the log modes increasingly dominate the energy spectra with the predicted streamwise and wall-normal scales in agreement with superstructures observed in turbulent boundary layers. Preliminary experimental measurements are performed to relate the energetic spanwise modes to the reported optimal disturbances.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Davis_fsu_0071E_14249
Format: Thesis

Title: Improving Undergraduates' Problem-Solving Skills through Video Gameplay.
Creator: Emihovich, Benjamin W., Shute, Valerie J. (Valerie Jean), Boot, Walter Richard, Dennen, Vanessa P., Ke, Fengfeng, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of...
Show moreEmihovich, Benjamin W., Shute, Valerie J. (Valerie Jean), Boot, Walter Richard, Dennen, Vanessa P., Ke, Fengfeng, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
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Abstract/Description: Education researchers are exploring how well-designed video games can be used to improve knowledge, skills, and abilities known as game-based learning (GBL). Current American students are not receiving adequate exposure to authentic ill-structured problem-solving scenarios in their classrooms, and schools need to address the acquisition of problem-solving skills for students in the 21st century (Shute & Wang, 2016). The present study investigated the impact of two distinct types of video...
Show moreEducation researchers are exploring how well-designed video games can be used to improve knowledge, skills, and abilities known as game-based learning (GBL). Current American students are not receiving adequate exposure to authentic ill-structured problem-solving scenarios in their classrooms, and schools need to address the acquisition of problem-solving skills for students in the 21st century (Shute & Wang, 2016). The present study investigated the impact of two distinct types of video gameplay, one roleplaying (Warcraft) and one brain training game (CogniFit) on students’ problem-solving skills over the course of two semesters. Students playing Warcraft significantly improved the rule application component of problem-solving skill on the posttest compared to students playing CogniFit. Implications for future studies on GBL are discussed.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Emihovich_fsu_0071E_14151
Format: Thesis

Title: The Effects of Music Tempo on Physical and Psychological Aspects of Isometric Strength Exercise.
Creator: Feiss, Robyn Sienna, Tenenbaum, Gershon, Chow, Graig Michael, Zhang, Qian, Florida State University, College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
Abstract/Description: This study examined the effects of different tempo music selections on effort-related thoughts, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), affect, heart rate, and performance of isometric strength exercises. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions: silent control, fast tempo music first followed by slow tempo music, and slow tempo music first followed by fast tempo music. Participants performed a baseline test of two different isometric strength exercises and then completed the...
Show moreThis study examined the effects of different tempo music selections on effort-related thoughts, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), affect, heart rate, and performance of isometric strength exercises. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions: silent control, fast tempo music first followed by slow tempo music, and slow tempo music first followed by fast tempo music. Participants performed a baseline test of two different isometric strength exercises and then completed the exercises two additional times under the assigned condition. Measures of HR, RPE, and effort-related thoughts (i.e., attention) were taken throughout each exercise and participants reported their levels of arousal and pleasantness at the end of the three trials. Three-way mixed RM ANOVAs were performed for HR, RPE, and attention to determine differences among the three conditions for 30 and 60 seconds and 30, 60, and 90 seconds of each exercise. A RM ANOVA was performed to test for differences in time until volitional exhaustion among conditions and a one-way ANOVA was performed on each measure of affect. No significant differences were found between conditions during any of the trials for any repeated measures; indicating both the presence of music and music tempo failed to influence HR, RPE, and attention. No differences between conditions in time to exhaustion emerged, indicating that contrary to hypotheses neither the addition of music nor the tempo of music effected time until volitional exhaustion. Lastly, no differences between either music condition and the silent control condition was observed, indicating music was unable to influence emotion affect during exercise. Conclusion: The presence of music nor the tempo of music was able to influence physical or psychological aspects of isometric strength exercise as it has been shown to do in aerobic and other strength-type exercises.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Feiss_fsu_0071N_14261
Format: Thesis

Title: Geography, Economic Institutions, Political Institutions, and Economic Performance.
Creator: Ferraro, Amanda Catherine, Gwartney, James D., Norrbin, Stefan C., Beaumont, Paul M., Sherron, Katie A., Kitchens, Carl T., Florida State University, College of Social Sciences...
Show moreFerraro, Amanda Catherine, Gwartney, James D., Norrbin, Stefan C., Beaumont, Paul M., Sherron, Katie A., Kitchens, Carl T., Florida State University, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, Department of Economics
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Abstract/Description: Does geography impact economic growth directly even after considering economic and political institutions? This paper explores which countries are the most geographically disadvantaged and if these disadvantages play a role in their economic growth and per capita income levels. A group of the 30 most geographically disadvantaged countries is determined by summing multiple geography variables to understand the overall disadvantages these countries face. The difference between per capita income...
Show moreDoes geography impact economic growth directly even after considering economic and political institutions? This paper explores which countries are the most geographically disadvantaged and if these disadvantages play a role in their economic growth and per capita income levels. A group of the 30 most geographically disadvantaged countries is determined by summing multiple geography variables to understand the overall disadvantages these countries face. The difference between per capita income levels and growth rates of these countries compared to other developing countries is analyzed to discover the disadvantage these geographic characteristics have. This analysis will explore how important geography is to growth relative to economic and political institutions, and whether the effects of geography change over time.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Ferraro_fsu_0071N_14141
Format: Thesis

Title: Biomechanics of Older Drivers in Vehicular Crashes.
Creator: Fung, Kakit, Jung, Sungmoon, Zeng, Changchun (Chad), Sobanjo, John Olusegun, Tawfiq, Kamal Sulaiman, Florida State University, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Department of...
Show moreFung, Kakit, Jung, Sungmoon, Zeng, Changchun (Chad), Sobanjo, John Olusegun, Tawfiq, Kamal Sulaiman, Florida State University, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Abstract/Description: The aging population is expected to increase substantially in the future. The fatal crash rates (per mile traveled) involving older drivers (65+) are considerably higher than those of younger drivers. This research involved conducting computational experiments involving dummy models to investigate the biomechanics of older drivers in vehicular crashes. Before conducting these experiments, the concepts of biological changes in older populations needed to be addressed. This allowed us to first...
Show moreThe aging population is expected to increase substantially in the future. The fatal crash rates (per mile traveled) involving older drivers (65+) are considerably higher than those of younger drivers. This research involved conducting computational experiments involving dummy models to investigate the biomechanics of older drivers in vehicular crashes. Before conducting these experiments, the concepts of biological changes in older populations needed to be addressed. This allowed us to first find out what makes the older drivers different from younger drivers. It was found that driving posture is one of the two key differences between the two age groups. The Hybrid III computational dummy model was used to investigate the effect of driving posture. The other key finding shows that older drivers are affected by aging factors such as material properties decrease and thickness decrease of bones. The Total Human Model for Safety (THUMS) was used because it can be modified to represent an aged driver to be used in the crash simulations. For the posture investigation, the idea is that driving posture for older drivers tend to be closer to the steering wheel whereas younger drivers are more laid back was incorporated. All computational work was completed in LS-DYNA; a finite element code used for non-linear impact analysis. The Finite Element (FE) simulation was validated by comparing the FE results with physical crash test results. These results were found in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and Regulations (FMVSS) Report 208 for Frontal Crash Test. For subsequent simulations, posture changes based on the idea of aging according to literature review were implemented. For the Head Injury Criteria, the extended shoulders of an older driver yielded percent differences as high as 16%. The arms acted like braces to restrain the torso while the head continued forward. The extended knees also yielded a 16% increase in head injury. As for the chest acceleration, the extended hip and torso joints showed increased values. It was concluded that sitting closer was beneficial for the Head Injury Criteria but the opposite was true for the chest acceleration. The posture changes did not affect the pelvis acceleration. This investigation gave us a better understanding of what occurs in automobile accidents specific to older occupants. This knowledge can be useful in designing engineering approaches to mitigate injuries. Using the aged model, the material properties decrease yielded the highest chest deflection of 13.3%. For the bone thickness decrease, the chest acceleration showed the highest increase of 12.5%. The head acceleration and chest deflection showed noticeable increases. Overall with all three aging factors in place, the head and chest accelerations yielded high increases. Whereas for the deflection, it remains the same. The thoracic rotation increased the head resultant acceleration. The rotation decreased the deflection of the thorax because the ribs were more in line with the force imposed by the crash. It can withstand more force when the ribs are more parallel with the force. As for the chest acceleration, no significant change was present. It can be concluded that the older drivers in rear impacts experienced higher (Neck Injury Criterion) NICmax than younger drivers as much as 6.9% percent for the material property decrease and bone thickness decrease. The thorax rotation yielded a 4.7% decrease in NICmax. It is possible that this aging factor caused the thorax to conform more into the seatback thus reducing the injury. The bone thickness decreased affected the NICmax greatly whereas the material property decreased did show signs of minimal positive influence. The material property decreased yielded 0.8% increase while the thickness decreased yielded a 3.0% increase.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Fung_fsu_0071E_14227
Format: Thesis

Title: The Effects of Military Service Experience on Psychiatric Symptoms among U.S. Firefighters.
Creator: Gai, Anna R., Joiner, Thomas, Ganley, Colleen M., Franklin, Joseph, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology
Abstract/Description: Individuals employed in first responder professions are at risk for the development of psychiatric symptoms. Two of these professions, firefighting and military service, demonstrate a strong overlap of employees. Prior research has demonstrated increased prevalence rates of psychiatric symptoms, including suicide-related behaviors among firefighters. Subpopulations within this occupation provide an opportunity to inform tailored prevention and intervention tactics. One such subpopulation are...
Show moreIndividuals employed in first responder professions are at risk for the development of psychiatric symptoms. Two of these professions, firefighting and military service, demonstrate a strong overlap of employees. Prior research has demonstrated increased prevalence rates of psychiatric symptoms, including suicide-related behaviors among firefighters. Subpopulations within this occupation provide an opportunity to inform tailored prevention and intervention tactics. One such subpopulation are firefighters with military service history (concurrent and prior). The current study looks to investigate psychiatric symptom differences between firefighters with and without military service history. We hypothesized an additive effect of military service, such that firefighters with a history of military service will be at increased risk for various psychiatric symptoms compared to their civilian-only counterparts. In addition, potential theoretically-based explanatory constructs will be used to investigate mechanisms of significant relationships between military service and psychiatric outcomes. Results did not support an additive effect of military service history within the firefighting profession, as firefighters with military service history were not more likely to endorse various psychiatric symptoms. Military service history was found to be significantly related to career NSSI, such that firefighters with a history of military service were 2.52 times more likely to report a career history of NSSI. Emotion dysregulation did not explain this relationship. Further investigation into the type of military service history suggests firefighters who are also reservists in the armed forces are at particular risk for suicide-related behaviors. Compared to civilian-only firefighters, firefighters with a history of active duty service and national guard service also demonstrated increased risk for suicide-related behaviors. The present study’s results indicate the type of military service, rather than military service in general, is particularly relevant for suicide-related behaviors within a firefighter population. Future directions for further investigation into this unique population are discussed.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Gai_fsu_0071N_14210
Format: Thesis

Title: Non-Aqueous Transuranic Coordination Complexes.
Creator: Galley, Shane S., Dobrosavljević, Vladimir, Hanson, Kenneth G., Shatruk, Mykhailo, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Abstract/Description: As of 2014, there is an expected 69,000 metric tons of nuclear waste sitting in storage in the U.S. Little efforts have been made to deal with the radiotoxicity of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF). The problem arises from the complex mixture of the SNF and highly radioactive actinides. Due to the high radioactivity of the minor actinides (Pu-Cm), there is a lack of understanding the fundamental chemistry of the actinides. The focus of this work is to prepare coordination complexes that can be...
Show moreAs of 2014, there is an expected 69,000 metric tons of nuclear waste sitting in storage in the U.S. Little efforts have been made to deal with the radiotoxicity of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF). The problem arises from the complex mixture of the SNF and highly radioactive actinides. Due to the high radioactivity of the minor actinides (Pu-Cm), there is a lack of understanding the fundamental chemistry of the actinides. The focus of this work is to prepare coordination complexes that can be used as probes for elucidating changes in the structure and bonding across the actinides series Most coordination chemistry that has been studied with the actinide series has only utilized ligands stable to oxygen and moisture due to the difficulties of handling the transuranium actinides. The chemistry of non-aqueous ranium has made great progress, while, the non-aqueous chemistry of the transuranic elements is relatively unexplored and offers a wider platform for exploring methods of deducing electronic structure and information about the actinide-ligand bond. Such information can be very useful for discovering trends in the whole series. The beginning chapters focus on simple coordination compounds using soft N and S donor ligands for complexing Am-Cf. Since very little structure data is known for these elements and softer donor ligands have shown to have a preference over trivalent actinides than lanthanides, we focus on these systems to understand the trends in bonding across the 5f series. Chapter 4 focus on a series (U-Cf) of complexes using the redox active ligand 2,4,6,8-tetrakis(tert-butyl)-9-hydroxyphenoxanone (HDOPO) were synthesized in non-aqueous conditions under an inert atmosphere and have been fully characterized by X-ray, optical, magnetic, and computational techniques. Spectroscopic data reveals the An(DOPO)3 complexes of the earlier actinides being the tetravalent state, in contrast to the later actinides, they are in the trivalent state. Furthermore, the Cf(III) complex disrupts the tris-chelate trend due to radiolysis. It is also shown that the ligand undergoes redox transitions to stabilize the higher oxidation states of the earlier actinides. The results will help contribute toward gaining foundational knowledge of structure and bonding in non-aqueous transuranic chemistry as well as give insight into the participation of f-orbitals in bonding. The ending chapters are out of the scope of non-aqueous chemistry but projects that pertain to the nature of the actinide series. As the first focuses on the effects of radiolysis. As we go to the heavier actinides, radiolysis affects the crystallization of our targeted products. In this case, an aged thorium source produces peroxide over time changing the result of the product. Lastly, is an example of driven degeneracy covalency in an americium chromate system. It was thought the later actinides tend to be more ionic, however we are finding small amount of covalent character partakes in the bonding. Collectively, this body of work primary focus is elucidating the structure and bonding of the f-elements through coordination complexes utilizing various techniques.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Galley_fsu_0071E_14279
Format: Thesis

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