bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Community college student retention : an examination of student pre-entry attributes, academic experiences, and social experiences and the relationship to first-year persistence
Authors:   , Adamson Cynthia
Published: April 2021

This study investigated the extent that the attributes of incoming students and their subsequent academic and social interactions at an institution are related to community college student retention. Student data from a cohort of first-time students (N = 1089) attending a community college in southwest Missouri was analyzed to examine variables related to fall-to-fall student retention. Predictors of first-year retention included receiving federal Pell grants, high school GPA, receiving a C or higher in college orientation, first semester college GPA, and receiving a C or higher in general psychology, general biology, and U.S. History. The findings highlight the importance of college readiness and value of federal financial aid programs for community college student persistence.
How teachers negotiated the meaning of Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS) through participation in a professional learning community
Authors:   , Barnett Ellen
Published: April 2021

NGSS provide a new vision for K-12 science education. Teachers need time and opportunities to collaborate with their peers in order to make changes to their views and practice. PLCs are a potential support structure for reform. However, there are few studies of mature, effective science teacher PLCs working without external support and few studies of teachers' efforts to negotiate the meaning of new standards and revise their curriculum. This instrumental case study framed by communities of practice investigated how secondary biology teachers within a mature, effective PLC negotiated the meaning of NGSS as they revised their curriculum. The study was guided by the following sub-research questions: 1) how do the Biology PLC's interactions with other communities influence how the biology teachers negotiate the meaning of NGSS as they revise their curriculum, 2) how do the biology teachers participate in their PLC as they negotiate the meaning of NGSS and revise their curriculum, and 3) how do the biology teachers describe their experience of negotiating the meaning of NGSS and revising their curriculum. The PLC was comprised of six secondary biology teachers at Cross View High, one of three high schools in the district. The state had not adopted NGSS at the time of the study, but the school district had. During the 2013-2014 school year, the following data sources were collected: 1) audio-recordings and observations of the PLC's weekly meetings, the PLC's pre-NGSS and revised curriculum, the PLC's professional email, one 90-minute focus group interview, and two 60-minute, semi-structured individual interviews with each teacher. Interpretative data analysis revealed the following themes: 1) the Biology PLC's historic participation with the World Studies and Language Arts PLC, and in particular their use of a revised World Studies Skills Rubric to assess students' science writing, influenced the biology teachers' prioritization of two science and engineering practices, 2) each biology teacher filled a unique, previously negotiated, clearly defined, and mutually agreed upon role within the PLC, 3) the teachers developed a road map -- a year-long plan of action that reified their meaning-making and became an enduring tool that guided their curriculum reform efforts, 4) the teachers revised each unit around a similar design structure, and 5) the teachers described their experience of negotiating the meaning of NGSS and revising their curriculum as stressful and exhausting, and marked by a central tension between content details and skills. They persevered because they valued the revisions they were making to their curriculum. This study provides implications for science teacher education, professional development, and future research.
Organizing alternatives : examining normative and alternative nonprofit organizing practices
Authors:   , Jensen Peter
Published: April 2021

Homelessness presents a massive organizational problem in the United States, with over 400,000 men, women, and children making use of shelter services each night. In this study, I take a comparative ethnographic approach to study how the use of the organizing Discourses of feminism, paternalism, neoliberalism, and anarchism result in more normative or alternative organizing practices. My project examines the organizing practices at two shelters for homeless women. One shelter is affiliated with an international religious nonprofit organization and self-identified anarchists run the other. Using the communicative constitution of organization (CCO) and institutional logics theories, I propose a theoretical framework for understanding how organizing Discourses are enacted or resisted at the organizational and individual level. My findings highlight how the institutional logics of responsibility, social welfare, and market manifest in different and sometimes paradoxical organizing practices based on the Discourse that is being translated. In this project, I highlight and critique how Discursive translations of institutional logics structure relations of power that impact agency at the individual and organizational level. My project has implications for understanding why the United States organizes around the social problem of homelessness the way it does, and explores alternatives to normative nonprofit organizing practices.
A circuit of haunting pictures : theorizing the space of readership in "Condition of England" literature and the periodical press, 1845-1889
Authors:   , Mattingly Miranda
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This dissertation provides new access to reading as a practice through the multi-modal obstacles and exchanges still embedded within the periodical press -- namely the physical movements, sensory interplay, concentration breaks, and perspective shifts required of readers engaged in a dialogic space -- and uses them to reconstruct Victorians' intertextual modes of reading. I trace how "Condition of England" authors and periodical stakeholders alike used shifts in print culture, from urban sketches to layered illustrations and "Our Illustrations" columns to performance-based pictorial displays, to expose how readers' seemingly private reading experience was deeply intertwined, if not dependent, on Victorian information culture and vice versa. I demonstrate that, by excavating publications' efforts to anticipate readers' movements within and across periodical content, scholars can begin to assess more concretely the way in which Victorian readership actively shaped the structure and design of information culture. I focus specifically on how such figures as Charlotte Bronte, Charles Kingsley, Blanchard Jerrold, Gustave Dore, George Sims, W.T. Stead, William Booth and Margaret Harkness purposefully layered, re-circulated and networked the texts and illustrations within and around their work in order to draw attention to information culture as a multi-dimensional space through which readers moved as well as impacted through their movement.
A twin study of the common heritable contributions to low-risk trauma, high-risk trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder
Authors:   , Scheiderer Emily
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The comorbidity of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and posttraumatic stress disorder is common and yet not well understood, particularly outside of treatment-seeking samples. It has been suggested that a shared genetic liability may account for some of the co-occurrence of these two disorders, yet no prior behavioral-genetic findings exist in the literature to directly support this suggestion. The present study aimed to fill this gap in the literature by utilizing data from the Childhood Trauma Study (CTS; Nelson et al., 2002; Nelson et al., 2006; Nelson, Lynskey, Heath, Madden, and Martin, 2010) to examine the common heritable contributions to low-risk trauma, high-risk trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder features in a general population twin sample. Structural equation modeling was employed to estimate the genetic and environmental influences on all four of these phenotypes, both individually and together, in a quadrivariate Cholesky decomposition model. Results provide preliminary behavioral-genetic support for the notion of the shared genetic liability across BPD and PTSD. Specifically, the estimated genetic correlation of the BPD features phenotype and PTSD phenotype was 0.57. Additional results from the characterization of trauma exposure in this sample as well as the univariate and quadrivariate twin models also largely supported hypotheses based on the extant BPD and PTSD literature.
An action research study of program implementation in a rural reservation school district
Authors:   , Stanoch Jason W.
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This participant action research study was conducted to understand the implementation of digitized curriculum within the Red Lake School District. The research was conducted to understand the implementation process through the collective social construct of the teachers and administrators that participated in the digitized curriculum initiative. The school district under study has been categorized as one of the lowest 5% in student achievement throughout the state of Minnesota. It further has a history in which an abundance of resources, including School Improvement Grant (SIG) monies, has been allocated towards many initiatives, including digitized curriculum, that have failed to provide a turnaround in student achievement. Within the study, the data shows how the digitized curriculum initiative is not an exception to that history, but rather provides an opportunity to improve practice. The participant action researcher (PAR), Jason W. Stanoch, partnered with an outside researcher, Dr. Ian Mette, to conduct interviews and focus groups in an initial assessment to post-assessment data collection design. From the data analysis, the following recommendations were made: 1) Leadership within the Red Lake School District must acknowledge that the digitized curriculum initiative has failed to be implemented on a systemic level. However, with that acknowledgment comes the responsibility to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment to determine the feasibility of continued implementation of digitized curriculum. 2) The data gleaned from the comprehensive needs assessment should be in the decision making process as to whether or not implementation will be continued. 3) Regardless of the outcome decided upon, a vision for moving into the future with or without technology must be created. The vision must be inclusive of all stakeholders, culturally relevant, and provide the ability for the Native American students within the school district to navigate both life on and off of the Red Lake Indian Reservation. 4) An official model for implementation must be chosen to provide structure and guidance for change. 5) The official model for implementation is to then be utilized to guide the creation of an articulated strategic action plan. This action plan must include documentation for reflective practice, goal/objective setting, tools for the planning of future steps based upon established goals/objectives, and a system of assessing efficacy in implementation.
Thermal effects of high energy and ultrafast lasers
Authors:   , Afrin Nazia
Published: April 2021

Heat transfer describes the exchange of thermal energy, between physical systems depending on the temperature and pressure, by dissipating heat. The fundamental modes of heat transfer are conduction or diffusion, convection and radiation. Heat and mass transfer are kinetic processes that may occur and be studied separately or jointly. Studying them apart is simpler, but both processes are modeled by similar mathematical equation in the case of diffusion and convection. There are complex problems where heat and mass transfer processes are combined with chemical reactions, as in combustion. The resulting behavior of heat transport in microscale will be very different from macroscale heat transfer based on the averages taken over hundreds of thousands of grains (in space) and collision (in time). From the microscopic point of view, the process of heat transport is governed by phonon-electron interaction in metallic films and by phonon scattering in dielectric films, insulators and semi-conductors. For extremely heated surfaces by high energy laser pulse, it is very difficult to measure temperature of flux at the heated surface because of the unendurable capacity of the conventional sensors. Laser is the tool of choice when drill holes ranging in diameter from several millimeters to less than one micro-meter. Instead of having advanced melting and resolidification modeling process recently, the inherent uncertainties of the input parameters can directly cause unstable characteristics of the output results which means the parametric uncertainties may influence the characteristics of the phase change processes (melting and resolidification) which will affect the predictions of interfacial properties i.e., temperature, velocity and mainly the location of solid-liquid interface. All of those processes can be considered under high energy laser interaction with materials.
Protein components of the microbial mercury methylation pathway
Authors:   , Smith Steven D.
Published: April 2021

Mercury (Hg) in the environment and the resulting methylmercury (CH3Hg+) produced by microorganisms has emerged as a global concern in the last 50 years after a series of high profile, large scale contamination events, increased burning of fossil fuels, and a more recent major escalation of widespread use of Hg in artisanal gold mining. The Hg cycle in the environment is complex and still not completely known. Among the many different forms of Hg present in the environment, Hg, mainly as Hg(II), has been known to be converted to the more toxic CH3Hg+ by microorganisms. CH3Hg+ accumulates in the aquatic food chain and humans are eventually exposed to the toxic CH3Hg+ through their diets. When exposed to elevated levels of CH3Hg+, symptoms include mainly neurological pathologies along with reduced kidney and liver function. However, until recently the mechanism of the conversion of Hg(II) to CH3Hg+ in microorganisms was not known. It has now been shown that a pair of genes, hgcA and hcgB, present in a variety of microorganisms, are necessary for bacterial Hg methylation to occur. The structure and functions of the proteins encoded by these genes are still being explored, and here new data are shown for residues in these proteins that suggest key structural elements necessary for the Hg methylation reaction. Also presented are data from other possible proteins in the carbon flow and cobalamin assembly pathways leading up to Hg methylation by HgcA and HgcB. The new work described here is significant in that it not only adds to the expanding base of knowledge of microbial Hg methylation with the identification of hgcA and hgcB, but also shows specific catalytic residues of HgcA and HgcB that can be further studied in organisms that methylate Hg. These data and the mutants designed to facilitate its acquisition can be used in future efforts to identify other members of the Hg methylation pathway. These data and constructs will also aid in future attempts to determine if the two genes evolved for the sole purpose of methylating Hg(II) or to support the life cycle of the organism harboring these genes in another, yet to be determined capacity.
Impact of desktop virtual reality on system usability : a case study of online consumer survey using a VR integrated decision support system
Authors:   , Yoon So-Yeon
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Previous research has established that virtual reality (VR) technology provides users a unique user-system interaction. However, little research has been conducted to understand how VR technology contributes to system usability within specific contexts. The current research investigates how users perceive desktop VR differently from conventional 2D graphics and how system usability is affected by the user-system interaction process within a VR system. The impact of desktop VR on system usability was empirically examined from an integrated view of technology acceptance in information systems and human-computer interaction. This research tested a model of the user-system interaction process (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and presence) and outcomes measured by system usability dimensions (satisfaction and decision confidence) for a VR system. Data were collected to compare the process and outcomes of using a VR system and a conventional 2D system to engage in a consumer survey. In addition, how user characteristics affect user-system interaction while using a VR system was examined. The results largely support the proposition that VR technology provides system usability with significantly higher perceived usefulness and presence than do the conventional 2D formats. The current work provides new knowledge about usability, sense of presence and technology acceptance in desktop VR and provides insights for future research with and predicted applications of desktop VR.
The experience of men who were managing symptoms of COPD
Authors:   , Jantarakupt Peeranuch
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the experience of middle-aged men who were managing symptoms of COPD. A longitudinal design with non-probability sampling was used. Participants were recruited through local health-care agencies. Data were obtained through three in-depth interviews with each of 8 men, aged 45 to 65 years, who lived with one or more family members and had been diagnosed with moderate (Stage II) COPD for at least one year. Interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. Data pertaining to the participants' perceptions, actions, and intentions were analyzed using Porter's descriptive phenomenological method. Three-level taxonomies were created to describe the personal-social context of the experience (element, descriptor, and feature) and the experience (intention, component phenomenon, and phenomenon). The three contextual features were: (a) living with my physical limitations, (b) having a hard time breathing, and (d) living with a slow progressive disease. The three phenomena were: (a) adjusting to my limits in life, (b) dealing with my breathing problems, and (c) keeping my life stable with COPD. Findings led to new insights about how middle-aged men experience symptoms of COPD and develop skills to manage symptoms. Findings suggested new self-management interventions for pulmonary rehabilitation and for nursing.
Micro-imaging characterization of mouse models of metastasis
Authors:   , Winkelmann Christopher Todd
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Non-invasive imaging techniques have been recently developed to characterize animal models of disease. The overarching hypothesis of this work explores the use of three micro-imaging modalities, including Micro-CT, PET and SPECT, to characterize tumor anatomical progression, metabolism, bone lesion remodeling, and/or gastrin releasing peptide receptor expression in mouse models of metastatic melanoma and prostate and breast cancer bone metastasis. Micro-CT was shown to provide excellent anatomical information about tumor progression in several different tissues including lung, bone, and subcutaneous tissues. Micro-PET imaging demonstrated increased tumor metabolism in melanoma tumors, but was not able to discern bone remodeling in breast cancer bone lesions. Micro-SPECT imaging demonstrated gastrin-releasing peptide receptor expression in a prostate cancer bone metastasis model. The results from this work demonstrate the ability of micro-imaging technologies to non-invasively probe mouse models of disease to obtain information in vivo that is not possible with ex vivo experimental techniques.
Crystal structure of the kelch domain of human keap1
Authors:   , Li Xuchu
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Nrf2-Keap1 signal transduction pathway senses oxidative stress and protects eukaryotic cells against oxidative damage and cancer. The transcription factor Nrf2 induces Phase II stress response genes, which enable cells to neutralize reactive molecules and restore cellular redox homeostasis. Keap1 is a BTBKelch protein that regulates both the subcellular localization and steady state levels of Nrf2. Recently our lab has identified Keap1 as a redox-regulated substrate adaptor protein for a Cullin3-dependent E3 ubiquitin ligase complex, which targets Nrf2 for degradation in a controlled manner. The research project presented in this dissertation is to study the interaction between Nrf2 and Keap1 starting from a structural biology approach. The N-terminal Neh2 domain of Nrf2 mediates binding of Nrf2 to the Kelch domain of Keap1. We solved the crystal structure of the Kelch domain of human Keap1 and carried out detailed analysis of the structural/solvent features in this domain. This domain structure, which was the first high-resolution structure of a mammalian Kelch domain, demonstrated that the Kelch domain of Keap1 is a six-bladed ?-propeller that uses a C-terminal mode of closure. The structure revealed how conserved amino acids and water molecules contribute to both inter- and intra-blade stability and provided insight into how disease-causing mutations perturb the structural integrity of the Kelch domain. We found that the bottom loops of the Kelch domain are critical for its sufficient association with the Neh2 domain. Based on mutagenesis data, we mapped out a Neh2-Kelch interface on the bottom side of the Kelch domain. We further crystallized a putative Kelch-Neh2 complex that diffracts to 4[angstrom]. We are now in the process of obtaining high quality crystals of the Neh2-Kelch complex for structure determination purpose.--From public.pdf
Three essays on the dynamic ownership and governance of U.S. farmer cooperatives
Authors:   , Grashuis Jasper
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In order to better understand the long-term behavior of farmer-owned economic organizations, the cooperative life cycle model is advanced and improved via the application of economic theory to each of its five phases. Specifically, transaction cost theory, property rights theory, and agency theory help explain the birth-to-death trajectory of farmer cooperatives, which tinker and reinvent to remain optimal in the competitive market. Tinkering is the adaptation of constitutional rights, policies, and procedures to adjust member objectives, and reinventing is defined as the adaptation of organizational scope or purpose to adjust cooperative actions. As such, tinkering and reinventing are two processes to maintain the long-term cooperative equilibrium. Another aspect of importance to the economic viability of farmer cooperatives is governance, which involves all the mechanisms to manage the separation of control and ownership. Cooperative governance is often assumed to be identical to corporate governance, yet differences in structures and objectives suggest otherwise. Secondary data analysis is conducted to descriptively inform the difference in governance and performance for two samples of agri-food firms and cooperatives. Demographically, all financial characteristics as well as most board and management characteristics are observed to be significantly different for the two samples. According to the main result of the empirical analysis, the causal impact of board size, female directorship, director independence, and director equity ownership on financial performance is also significantly different, which implies cooperative governance is not identical to corporate governance. As compared to the firm, the overall structure of farmer cooperatives is often analyzed in isolation. There exist typologies of the ownership structure, the governance structure, as well as the capital structure. However, the interrelationship is underexplored. To address the gap in the literature, a three-dimensional framework is informed by agency theory, finance theory, and cooperative theory. The three dimensions are member ownership diversity, member control delegation, and financial flexibility, for which a positive linear relationship is hypothesized. Primary survey data is collected for the full population of U.S. farmer cooperative to test hypotheses of the framework. Based on 371 survey responses, a relatively wide tunnel of cooperative life is observed in which low ownership diversity and low member control delegation do not correspond to high financial flexibility. Further, empirical data analysis indicates the relationship of ownership and capital is independent, while the relationship of ownership and governance is bi-directional.
The attainment of social capital with adoelcsent girls living at the intersection of race and poverty in a community-based pedagogical space known as Auntie's Place
Authors:   , Clifton Adrian
Published: April 2021

This study examines how Black adolescent girls living at the intersection of race and poverty access social capital through involvement in a community-based pedagogical space known as "Auntie's Place." Employing a theoretical framework that fuses African American female literacies, social capital theory and spirituality, the researcher reviews existing scholarship and primary documents to present an historical examination of how peoples of African descent have created means of education in venues outside of school. These findings inform the educator, community leader and parent who are stakeholders in the lives of Black girls. Based on the historical and empirical research findings, the author argues that educational actors including teachers, administrators, policy makers, and researchers will recognize the impact spirituality and community learning spaces may have on Black girls' self-worth and scholastic success.
Exponential sums, character sums, sieve methods and distribution of prime numbers
Authors:   , Guo Victor Zhenyu
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This thesis is focus on the methods of exponential sums and sieve methods applying to distribution of primes numbers in several forms, such as Piatetski-Shapiro primes, Beatty sequences, almost primes and primes in arithmetic progression. In the end, we also think about the classical problem in Burgess bound. We begin by explaining the importance of the methods of exponential sums. Together with sieve methods, we investigate the Piatetski-Shapiro primes from almost primes and the intersection between Piatetski-Shapiro primes and Betty sequences. Above all, we study primes in several forms from a "thin" integer set. We also study the distribution of consecutive prime numbers from two Beatty sequences by an assumption of a well-known conjecture. Finally, we turn to the methods of character sums and the problem of the least quadratic nonresidue. We improve the best known bound by changing the arbitrary small constant into a reciprocal of an infinite function. Possible future work is also discussed in the thesis.
Meeting the educational needs of farm women : a case study of Annies Project
Authors:   , Devlin Karisha
Published: April 2021

Women farm operators continue to be underserved by traditional models of agricultural education and training. In addition, limited research exists on the specific content and format of educational programs that addresses the needs and roles of farm women. In order to effectively address the needs of farm women, it is necessary to evaluate and study existing agricultural educational programs for women. This qualitative intrinsic case study evaluated the effectiveness of Annie's Project in meeting the educational needs of farm women. Interviews were conducted with 18 past Annie's Project participants in Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois to study the influence of Annie's Project on their lives. Audiovisual materials and documents were also used in the data analysis. The findings of this case study show that Annie's Project helped participants find their voice and agency on the farm, as well as strengthen farm relationships. This led participants to feel empowered to become better business partners and owners, seek additional education, increase their satisfaction with their farm role and/or lifestyle, and contribute to their rural communities. This study supports the current research that women respond to women only programs, a network of other women is important, and education empowers women. Additionally, this study substantiates the need for assisting women in all stages of their farming identities so they can be an equitable partner or the farmer in their farming operation. As we move forward, the need for educational programs for farm women will continue to be in high demand. Annie's Project, coupled with the implications from this study, can serve as a guide for development of future programming for farm women.
Minorities in higher education : their status and disparities in student and faculty representation
Authors:   , Luster Shatomi N.
Published: April 2021

This manuscript is a qualitative design, which studied diversity disparity in high education that relates to faculty and the student body. The setting dwells within the University of Missouri system, more specifically, this study concentrates on two campuses; the University of Missouri-Columbia and University of Missouri-Kansas City. The research identified the attributes of an effective change agent leader, policy and the impact it has on culture and organizational settings, and understandings of the importance of organizational value in relation to diversity and gender identification. The conceptual frameworks that guided this study were cultural competency, critical race theory, and transformational leadership (Cross, 1989; Gooden and Norman-Major; Northouse, 2013). The reoccurring research themes were: policy, leadership, and core organizational values. The conclusions suggested from this inquiry are transformational leaders should embrace and encourage differences and show empathy. Furthermore, a leader includes attributes of an actionable change agent. The data also supported the notion of inclusive policy and trust within the higher education system that creates organizational value.
Perinormality in Polynomial and Module-Finite Ring Extensions
Authors:   , McCrady Andrew
Published: April 2021

In this dissertation we investigate some open questions posed by Epstein and Shapiro in [9] regarding perinormal domains. More specifically, we focus on the ascent/descent property of perinormality between "canonical" integral domain extensions, in particular, R [superscript] R[X] and R [suberscript] Rb. We give special conditions under which perinormality ascends from R to the polynomial ring R[X] in the case that R is a universally catenary domain. Whereas we have a characterizing result for when perinormality descends from R[X] to R, the sufficient condition for the descent is cumbersome to check. For this reason, we turn to special cases for which perinormality descends from R[X] to R. In the case of an analytically irreducible local domain (R, m) and its m-adic completion (R, b mRb), we refer to a technique for generating examples in which perinormality fails to ascend. When Rb is perinormal, we explore hypotheses under which R must be normal, perinormal, or weakly normal.
Information and communication technology use, social support, and life satisfaction among Korean immigrant elders
Authors:   , Jun Jung Sim
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This cross-sectional study aimed to explore 1) ICT use (email, smart phone, internet, and social networking sites), 2) differences in ICT use between younger (age 60-70) and older (71+) groups, 3) relationship between ICT use and social support, and 4) relationship between ICT use and life satisfaction among KIEs. By utilizing face-to-face interview and purposive sampling methods, 150 community dwelling KIEs in California, Missouri, and Kansas were surveyed. Descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses (t-test and correlation matrix), and hierarchical multiple regression were employed to address four research questions and test three hypotheses. The findings indicated that KIEs with higher education and higher income utilized ICT more than their counterparts. Younger KIEs utilized ICT significantly more than older KIEs. Smart phone and social networking site (SNS) use were significantly associated to social support and SNS use was a significant indicator to life satisfaction among KIEs. The findings provide important insights for social work practitioners, researchers, or health care providers to educate or support KIEs for improving social support system and psychological health/well-being by developing technology supported psychosocial interventions.
The spaces in between at Orbit High : an analysis of teenage behavior during breaks at school
Authors:   , Altenburger Elke
Published: April 2021

Most public schools in the United States were designed and built in the second half of the last century. Their buildings typically consist of classrooms and narrow, locker-lined hallways. The former clearly belong to the teachers and best support lecturestyle instruction. The latter are the locations for social interaction between students during their breaks. Many educators, administrators, and researchers worry about teenage behavior in high schools. Student peer culture is commonly understood as problematic. In response, break times typically are minimized, supervision routines are designed to be seamless, and educational policies regulate disciplinary institutional responses to acts of violence between students. This research study investigates teenagers' break behavior in a contemporary school building that is unlike the institutional school buildings most current educators are used to and experience as "normal". The ethnographic case examines the relationships between high school student break behavior, local disciplinary practices, and a school building designed to blur the boundaries between lounge-like social spaces and informal educational spaces. Over the course of six months, the researcher spent 42 school days with Orbit High's teenagers in the spaces in between. Primary sources of data were field notes, log entries, behavioral maps, and open-ended interviews with 24 purposefully chosen participants.
Resdiue-residue contact driven protein structure prediction using optimization and machine learning
Authors:   , Adhikari Badri
Published: April 2021

Significant improvements in the prediction of protein residue-residue contacts are observed in the recent years. These contacts, predicted using a variety of coevolution-based and machine learning methods, are the key contributors to the recent progress in ab initio protein structure prediction, as demonstrated in the recent CASP experiments. Continuing the development of new methods to reliably predict contact maps, tools to assess the utility of predicted contacts, and methods to construct protein tertiary structures from predicted contacts, are essential to further improve ab initio structure prediction. In this dissertation, three contributions are described -- (a) DNCON2, a two-level convolutional neural network-based method for protein contact prediction, (b) ConEVA, a toolkit for contact assessment and evaluation, and (c) CONFOLD, a method of building protein 3D structures from predicted contacts and secondary structures. Additional related contributions on protein contact prediction and structure reconstruction are also described. DNCON2 and CONFOLD demonstrate state-of-the-art performance on contact prediction and structure reconstruction from scratch. All three protein structure methods are available as software or web server which are freely available to the scientific community.
Stability of risk attitude across choice contexts and frames
Authors:   , Brown Nicholas Robert
Published: April 2021

We report the results of the large-scale study of risk attitude demonstrating substantial heterogeneity both between and within decision makers across three risky choice contexts: financial, mortality and climate change. We use a p-additive model of risk to classify decision makers according to their risk attitude in each context and frame (i.e., gains or losses). Our results indicate that while some decision makers exhibit stable risk preferences across contexts and decision frames, many others have risk preferences which vary depending on the choice environment. We find almost no evidence of the reflection effect for individual DMs or in choice data aggregated across DMs. We discuss the implications for economic and psychological research and modeling of risk attitudes, emphasizing that any one-size-fits-all approach to risk attitude such as assuming risk neutrality or risk aversion is unlikely to accurately describe the choice behavior of decision makers.
Communicated perspective-taking intervention : a social pathway to stress management
Authors:   , Maliski Ryan Miller
Published: April 2021

Stress is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but left unaddressed can become a health risk. There is an opportunity for interpersonal communication researchers to develop interventions to help individuals manage stress and thus improve their health. The present dissertation tests the effects of a communicated perspective-taking (CPT) intervention on relational, mental, and physical health. CPT is the process of verbally and nonverbally expressing that one is "walking in another person's shoes." The experimental design employed in the current study randomly assigned participants to either tell or listen to a story about a difficult experience. The listener was randomly presented with instructions to display either a high or a low level of CPT. Results of the study provided support for the effectiveness of the intervention to change the presence of CPT in the interaction. Additional support was demonstrated for the relationship between CPT and psychological and social health. Finally, the present study provides initial evidence for a positive relationship between CPT and physical health, as measured by heart rate and heart rate variability. Specifically, listeners in the high-CPT condition had a significant sympathetic response at the start of the interaction and a significant parasympathetic response during the recovery period, compared to the low-CPT condition. First, engaging in an initial interaction with a person sharing a recent stressful event is stressful for a listener. Second, a listener who enacts a high level of CPT will have a significant stress recovery from the interaction, compared to listeners who enact a low level of CPT. This study advances CPT theorizing by being the first known study to identify a link with physical health. Furthermore, the evidence presents a CPT intervention design that can cause significant improvements in a person's relational, mental, and physical health. In short, a listener who expresses messages that indicate to a recipient that his/her perspective is actively being attended to and confirmed will experience positive health outcomes. Theoretical implications for these findings lie in their potential to advance communicated sensemaking theorizing into physical health outcomes. Practical implications exist in the potential for creating and implementing CPT interventions designed to improve individuals' and couples' relational, mental, and physical health.
An approach to clustering biological phenotypes
Authors:   , Vatsa Avimanyou Kumar
Published: April 2021

Recently emerging approaches to high-throughput phenotyping have become important tools in unraveling the biological basis of agronomically and medically important phenotypes. These experiments produce very large sets of either low or high-dimensional data. Finding clusters in the entire space of high-dimensional data (HDD) is a challenging task, because the relative distances between any two objects converge to zero with increasing dimensionality. Additionally, real data may not be mathematically well behaved. Finally, many clusters are expected on biological grounds to be "natural" -- that is, to have irregular, overlapping boundaries in different subsets of the dimensions. More precisely, the natural clusters of the data could differ in shape, size, density, and dimensionality; and they might not be disjoint. In principle, clustering such data could be done by dimension reduction methods. However, these methods convert many dimensions to a smaller set of dimensions that make the clustering results difficult to interpret and may also lead to a significant loss of information. Another possible approach is to find subspaces (subsets of dimensions) in the entire data space of the HDD. However, the existing subspace methods don't discover natural clusters. Therefore, in this dissertation I propose a novel data preprocessing method, demonstrating that a group of phenotypes are interdependent, and propose a novel density-based subspace clustering algorithm for high-dimensional data, called Dynamic Locally Density Adaptive Scalable Subspace Clustering (DynaDASC). This algorithm is relatively locally density adaptive, scalable, dynamic, and nonmetric in nature, and discovers natural clusters.
"Longing in vain to climb into the ducal bed": gossip and rumor in Orderic Vitalis' Ecclesiastical History
Authors:   , Sheffield Katherine E.
Published: April 2021

For twelfth century Christians talk was an important tool and potential snare. The monastic chronicler Orderic Vitalis viewed talk as a potentially powerful tool and the EH reflected his belief that a sensible person, particularly a person whose duties required the maintenance of a good reputation, learned to effectively manage the information available. Chapter 1 surveyed important work in the talk studies field that analyzes gossip and rumor, Chapter 2 discussed Orderic Vitalis' background, the historical approach of his sources and his own historical approach, Chapter 3 applied theoretical work on talk to the EH, Chapter 4 analyzed the performance of information management, and Chapter 5 addressed possible gender issues.
Academic achievement and persistence in online self-paced courses
Authors:   , Nagel Terrie
Published: April 2021

This study focused on building achievement and persistence models of students enrolled in online self-paced courses using 11,829 AY 2014-15 records from the University of Missouri. Course satisfaction, delivery mode, and student characteristics were used to create the models. Model building and trimming using hierarchical linear modeling occurred in which level-2 units were online self-paced courses and level-1 units were students. In terms of persistence, the log-odds of persistence were related to course satisfaction holding constant other predictors. Gender, academic level, enrollment time, and active completion time had significant effects on persistence and achievement. Persistence and prior self-paced experience also had significant effects on achievement, with prior self-paced course experience having a negative effect. Enrollment time had negative effects on persistence and achievement. Females and upper-division students generally received higher scores than males and lower-division students. The effect of persistence on achievement was largest by far, as one might logically predict.
Theoretical and computational modeling of the dynamics of multicellular and lipid membrane systems
Authors:   , McCune Matthew
Published: April 2021

This dissertation presents two research projects that apply theoretical and computational modeling to (1) describe and predict the formation and shape evolution of three-dimensional (3D) bioprinted tissue constructs, and (2) investigate the effect of a silica substrate on the structural and dynamic properties of a single fully hydrated lipid bilayer. (1) Bioprinting, a novel tissue engineering technique, has the ultimate goal of using 3D printers with bioink made from a personâ€™s own cells to create tissues in the laboratory for transplantation or drug testing. The outcome of the post-bioprinting process, where the bioink particles fuse to form the desired 3D tissue construct, is difficult to predict and experimental techniques have generally been optimized through trial and error. To address this shortcoming, by employing theoretical modeling and computer simulations, we have developed and implemented an effective procedure that is capable of describing and predicting the shape dynamics during post-printing structure formation in 3D bioprinting. In particular, we have explained and demonstrated that the post-printing fusion process is considerably faster when using cylindrical instead of spheroidal bioink particles, a result that has considerable practical implication for extrusion bioprinting. (2) The study of lipid bilayers using neutron scattering experiments requires samples that contain a large stack of membranes. The analysis and computer simulation of such systems is challenging mainly due to the unknown amount of water separating the membranes. To overcome this difficulty, more recent experiments place single lipid membranes onto a support and stack about a hundred of them together. In this project we use molecular dynamics simulations of both free-standing and hydrated single-supported lipid bilayers to investigate the effect of the silica substrate on the structural and dynamical properties of the lipids and hydration waters. Our results may provide useful information in interpreting some recent neutron scattering experiments.
How do Asian adult second language writers engage in English writing?
Authors:   , Lee Jinju
Published: April 2021

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Second language writers often learn to write in English in the context of test-oriented instruction and lack experience with writing that focuses on the expression of their thoughts. This limited writing experience forms a concept of writing in English as a product, which lowers second language writers' motivation to engage in English writing and inhibits their growth as competent writers. This qualitative case study provides insights into how Asian adult second language writers engage in informal writing as part of a writing workshop. Participants of this study include 13 adult second language writers coming from Korea, China, and Thailand. The participants wrote for a set amount of time, twice a week during a seven-week writing workshop. As a part of the case study approach, the qualitative data included interviews, surveys, observational notes, and participants' informal writing samples. The results indicated three findings: second language writers discovered benefits of informal writing; their writing developed without direct grammar instruction; and they improved their attitude and confidence toward writing in English. Participants showed their range of language use, their sense of audience, fluency, and self-monitoring when they engaged in informal writing. This study suggests several implications for teachers of writing, including the importance of utilizing informal writing as an instructional strategy; establishing writing routines for informal writing; and recognizing writers' range of thinking and language use in second language writing.