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open access

Key Factors Influencing Retention Rates among Historically Underrepresented Student Groups in STEM Fields

Description: The aim of the study was to identify the factors that have an influence on the completion rates of undergraduate students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Using Tinto's retention rate theory as the theoretical foundation, data were collected from freshman who were enrolled in the years 2005 to 2008. Results showed gender and first-generation status were significant predictors of STEM completion and time taken to complete the degree. Institutional bias pl… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Premraj, Divya
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Law Enforcement Training and Perceptions of Mental Illness

Description: This thesis analyzes the training and perceptions on mental health of a particular population. Through the use of previous research and literature, a survey was generated and distributed to the population. The findings were used to generate policy implications for the specific population that was analyzed.
Date: December 2018
Creator: Brabham, Sofia C
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

La ley de memoria histórica en el cine y la novela españoles

Description: This thesis investigates the Spanish identity crisis through structural, political and representational intersectionality by means of the Law of Historic Memory, also known as LEY 52/2007 del 26 de diciembre. This work, written in Spanish, explores relational aspects of various contemporary themes within four post-Franco novels and four Spanish films: Réquiem por un campesino español by Ramón J. Sender and its corresponding film directed by Francesc Betriu; Soldados de Salamina by Javier Cerca… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Kennedy, Tara L
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Lipogenic Proteins in Plants: Functional Homologues and Applications

Description: Although cytoplasmic lipid droplets (LDs) are the major reserves for energy-dense neutral lipids in plants, the cellular mechanisms for packaging neutral lipids into LDs remain poorly understood. To gain insights into the cellular processes of neutral lipid accumulation and compartmentalization, a necessary step forward would be to characterize functional roles of lipogenic proteins that participate in the compartmentalization of neutral lipids in plant cells. In this study, the lipogenic prote… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Cai, Yingqi
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Local and Systemic Metabolic Responses during Light-Induced Rapid Systemic Signaling

Description: This article reports that local application of light stress to one rosette leaf of bolting Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants resulted in a metabolic response that encompassed local, systemic and transport tissues, demonstrating a high degree of physical and metabolic continuity between different tissues throughout the plant.
Date: December 2018
Creator: Choudhury, Feroza K.; Devireddy, Amith R.; Azad, Rajeev K.; Shulaev, Vladimir & Mittler, Ron
Partner: UNT College of Science
open access

Lollardy and Eschatology: English Literature c. 1380-1430

Description: In this dissertation, I examine the various ways in which medieval authors used the term "lollard" to mean something other than "Wycliffite." In the case of William Langland's Piers Plowman, I trace the usage of the lollard-trope through the C-text and link it to Langland's dependence on the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Regarding Chaucer's Parson's Tale, I establish the orthodoxy of the tale's speaker by comparing his tale to contemporaneous texts of varying orthodoxy, and I link the Par… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Regetz, Timothy
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Long-Term Citizen Science Water Monitoring Data: An Exploration of Accuracy over Space and Time

Description: The Texas Stream Team (TST) is one of an increasing number of citizen science water monitoring programs throughout the US which have been continuously collecting surface water quality data under quality assurance protocols for decades. Volunteer monitoring efforts have generated monitoring datasets that are long-term, continuous, and cover a large geographic area - characteristics shown to be valuable for scientists and professional agencies. However, citizen science data has been of limited u… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Albus, Kelly
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Mass Spectrometry-Based Identification of Ceramic-Bound Archaeological Protein Residues: Method Validation, Residue Taphonomy, and Prospects

Description: Despite the variety of successful reports of the preservation, recovery, and identification of archaeological proteins in general, there are few positive reports regarding mass spectrometry-based identification of ceramic-bound proteins. In large part, this shortage is due to the lack of consideration for the unique taphonomic histories of such residues and, in general, methods development. Further, because negative results are rarely published, there is no baseline to which results can be comp… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Barker, Andrew Lewis
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Mechanisms of Formation and Effects of Transition Metal Oxides in Silicon Nitride on Steel Dry Sliding Contacts

Description: Silicon nitride on steel sliding contacts may provide advantageous tribological properties over traditional self-mated pairs, however the friction and wear behavior at high sliding speeds (>1 m/s) is not well understood. Previous studies at low sliding speeds (< 1 m/s) have found that the wear mechanisms change as a function of the operating parameters, e.g. atmosphere, sliding speed, load, and temperature, due to the formation of transition metal oxides such as Fe2O3 and Fe3O4. This study dete… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Harris, Michael D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Membrane-Based Energy Recovery Ventilator Coupled with Thermal Energy Storage Using Phase Change Material for Efficient Building Energy Savings

Description: This research work is focused on a conceptual combination of membrane-based energy recovery ventilator (ERV) and phase change material (PCM) to provide energy savings in building heating, ventilation & air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. An ERV can recover thermal energy and moisture between the outside fresh air (OFA) entering into the building and the exhaust air (EA) leaving from the building thus reducing the energy consumption of the HVAC system for cooling and heating the spaces inside the b… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Mohiuddin, Mohammed Salman
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Turkey's Technology Integration Initiative on Teachers' Attitudes

Description: The purpose of this study was to determine the overall effectiveness of Turkey's technology integration initiative on teachers' attitudes and examine the moderating effects of related study characteristics. The 22 studies in this meta-analysis, carried out between the years 2010 and 2017, investigated the effects of Turkey's technology integration initiative on teachers' attitudes and met the inclusion criteria. This study followed a traditional meta-analysis research approach utilizing Hedge's… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Gorunmek, Fatih
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Model of Treatment Compliance Behavior of Patients with Chronic Disease in the Age of Predictive Medicine: The Role of Normative Beliefs

Description: The purposes of this study are: a) to understand the treatments compliance behavior of the patient with chronic disease at the behavioral level, particularly, the relationship between treatments compliance behavior and normative beliefs; b) develop a behavioral model of patient's treatments compliance behavior that could be used for predicting, combating, treating, tracking and controlling the treatments compliance behavior of the patients with chronic disease. Seventy-two patients from senior … more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Imhonde, Benjamin A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Modeling Information Seeking Under Perceived Risk

Description: Information seeking and information avoidance are the mechanisms humans natural used for coping with uncertainties and adapting to environmental stressors. Uncertainties are rooted in knowledge gaps. In social sciences, the relationship between knowledge gaps and perceived risk have received little attention. A review of the information science literature suggests that few studies have been devoted to the investigation of the role of this relationship in motivating information-seeking behavior.… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Shakeri, Shadi
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the Structures and Properties of Aluminosilicate and Borosilicate Glasses

Description: Silicate glasses are the most common glass types and have impact on almost every aspect in our lives: from window, containers, to glass fibers for telecommunications. Unlike their crystalline counterparts, glass materials lack long-range order in their atomic arrangement but their structures do possess short and medium range characteristics that play critical roles in their physical and chemical properties. Despite active development of characterization techniques that have contributed to the u… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Ren, Mengguo
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Multi-Function and Flexible Microwave Devices

Description: In this dissertation, some multi-function and flexible RF/microwave devices have been studied to solve the issues in the modern microwave system designs. First, a power divider with two functions is proposed. The first function is a zero-phase delay power divider using zero-phase impedance transformer. The second function is a power divider with impedance transforming property. To achieve the first function, the two arms are treated as zero-phase impedance transformers. When the phase requireme… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Zhou, Mi
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Multi-Methodology Study of the Historic Impact of Soft Systems Methodology and Its Associated Data Visualization Approach in the Context of Operations and Business Strategy

Description: The purpose of this three-essay dissertation was to expand knowledge and theory regarding soft systems methodologies (SSMs) and data visualization approaches in business, engineering, and other social sciences. The first essay depicts a bibliometric analysis study of the historic impacts of SSM from 1980-2018 on business, engineering, and other social sciences fields. This study found 285 articles that described or employed SSM for research and included outcomes such as top SSM authors, author … more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Warren, Scott Joseph
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Musicals and the Margins: African-Americans, Women, and Queerness in the 21st Century American Musical

Description: This thesis provides an overview of the various ways in which select marginalized identities are represented within the twenty-first century American musical film. The first intention of this thesis is to identify, define, and organize the different subgenres that appear within the twenty-first century iterations of the musical film. The second, and principal, intention of this thesis is to explore contemporary representations of African-Americans, women, and queerness throughout the defined su… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Wellborn, Brecken
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

On-Loom Fabric Defect Inspection Using Contact Image Sensors and Activation Layer Embedded Convolutional Neural Network

Description: Malfunctions on loom machines are the main causes of faulty fabric production. An on-loom fabric inspection system is a real-time monitoring device that enables immediate defect detection for human intervention. This dissertation presented a solution for the on-loom fabric defect inspection, including the new hardware design—the configurable contact image sensor (CIS) module—for on-loom fabric scanning and the defect detection algorithms. The main contributions of this work include (1) creating… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Ouyang, Wenbin
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Ontology Based Security Threat Assessment and Mitigation for Cloud Systems

Description: A malicious actor often relies on security vulnerabilities of IT systems to launch a cyber attack. Most cloud services are supported by an orchestration of large and complex systems which are prone to vulnerabilities, making threat assessment very challenging. In this research, I developed formal and practical ontology-based techniques that enable automated evaluation of a cloud system's security threats. I use an architecture for threat assessment of cloud systems that leverages a dynamically … more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Kamongi, Patrick
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Paralegal Students' and Paralegal Instructors' Perceptions of Synchronous and Asynchronous Online Paralegal Course Effectiveness: A Comparative Study

Description: To improve online learning pedagogy within the field of paralegal education, this study investigated how paralegal students and paralegal instructors perceived the effectiveness of synchronous and asynchronous online paralegal courses. Survey results were analyzed using independent samples t-test and correlational analysis, and indicated that overall, paralegal students and paralegal instructors positively perceived synchronous and asynchronous online paralegal courses. Paralegal instructors … more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Farmer, Shelley Kristine
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Peeling Back the Layers of Ambidexterity in Multi-Business Firms

Description: There is a dual accountability accepted by top executives of large multi-business firms (MBFs) to both consistently deliver performance in the short term and cultivate scalable opportunities for future growth, which requires that they be able to implement both evolutionary and revolutionary change. Researchers have defined this capability as organizational ambidexterity (OA) and deemed it a crucial requirement for every organization. Literature in the field of organizational ambidexterity (OA) … more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Struckell, Beth Maney
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Physical Boundary as a Source of Anomalies in Transport Processes in Acoustics and Electrodynamics

Description: Various anomalous effects that emerge when the interfaces between media are involved in sound-matter or light-matter interactions are studied. The three specific systems examined are a fluid channel between elastic metal plates, a linear chain of metallic perforated cylindrical shells in air, and a metal-dielectric slab with the interfaces treated as finite regions of smoothly changing material properties. The scattering of acoustic signals on the first two is predicted to be accompanied by the… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Bozhko, Andrii
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Process Improvement of Surface Preparation of Structuraly Bonded Helicopter Detail Parts

Description: The objective of this study was to increase the bond strength at the surface interface of a thin stainless-steel panel for structural bonding on a helicopter. To achieve this objective, six activation methods for applying the coating to the panel in the surface preparation process are presented and explored. Adhesion and roughness tests were conducted to determine which method consistently initiates the etch and improves the bond at the surface. Based on the test results, three methods proved t… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Tafoya, Keirsten Breann
Partner: UNT Libraries
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