cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-670800
title: Exploring motivational factors of students with LD in SOLL courses

description: Through the lens of Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) of motivation the behaviors displayed by students with learning disabilities (LD) and  students without LD were analyzed to try to understand how and why motivational factors influenced achievement-related behaviors. Specifically the study sought to understand how and why the motivational factors expectations for success, ability beliefs and perceived task-values influenced the choices, persistence and effort displayed by students with LD. Another purpose in conducting this study was to help the field of Special Education better prepare when incorporating technological innovations into the curricular programs offered to students with LD. The rise in available online learning courses has created unprecedented opportunities for students, including students with LD. A concern in the field of education is the lack of knowledge regarding how students with LD that partake in online learning courses are faring. ❧ Historically, students with LD have not fared well in academic settings and often lack motivation, due to repeated school failure. The study employed a qualitative methodology to understand the correlations that exists between the motivational factors and the behaviors displayed by students with LD through a descriptive analysis that compares students with and without LD. The study explored the experiences of students with and without LD participating in synchronous online learning (SOLL) courses by investigating how and why motivational factors influence the choices, persistence and effort displayed. The findings indicated that students with LD may be highly self-determined, but nonetheless continue to struggle in academic settings, regardless of motivational factors present.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-124812
title: The unwed pregnant adolescent: Implications for preventive services
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-135828
title: Clinical diagnoses and sexual stereotyping: An exploratory study
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-344291
title: Outperforming schools closing the achievement gap: a case study of one urban school

description: Historically research findings have identified the negative impact the academic achievement gap has had on minority students. This qualitative case study examined one outperforming urban school narrowing the achievement gap on their campus. The study examined what programs existed on the campus to support students, how resources were allocated to support learning at the school, and how the campus built internal capacity to become an outperforming high school. The findings from this case study identified four key essential elements that contributed to the success of the campus which are, intentionality, supportive networks, continuous improvement and culminating with accountability from all individuals on site.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-375083
title: Virtual reality and the previsualization of experiential entertainment venues

description: Virtual Reality and the Previsualization of Experiential Entertainment Venues aims to declare and defend three specific findings: ❧ Firstly, that virtual reality and experiential entertainment venues like theme parks are converging in a way that is a natural progression based on their shared roots, but will also always be at odds with each other in the most basic, fundamental, and irreversible ways. ❧ Secondly, that the concept of “Immersia,” when presented as a hybrid approach to media that co-exists and co-integrates both the location based destination and its digital simulacra into one shared experience, is the future of all entertainment—or perhaps more aptly, a final, post-medium form of entertainment.❧ And lastly, that the rising ubiquity of game engines (and their increasing ease of use) will revolutionize the industry of experience in a way not seen since Disneyland opened its doors to the public on July 17, 1955.
DOI: 10.25549/fickett-c25-227
title: Technical drawing, tract 17263, 1951

description: Technical drawing of the plot plan for Tract 17263 designed by Los Angeles based architect, Edward Fickett, located near Overland Avenue, Coventry Place, and Dunleer Place. This plot plan is drawn on a  1 inch to 30 feet scale. Sheet 1 of 28, Los Angeles, California, 1951 July 17 and later revised 1951 October 13.
DOI: 10.25549/fickett-c25-228
title: Technical drawing, house elevations E1 and E2, 1951

description: Technical drawing of house elevations E1 and E2 for houses built in Tract 17263, located near Overland Avenue, Coventry Place, and Dunleer Place, designed by Los Angeles based architect, Edward Fickett. The roof plans for E1 and E2 are both drawn on a 1 inch to 20 feet scale. Sheet 21 of 32, Los Angeles, California, 1951 July 17.
DOI: 10.25549/fickett-c25-229
title: Technical drawing, house floor and foundation plan, 1951

description: Technical drawing of floor and foundation plans for houses built in Tract 17263, located near Overland Avenue, Coventry Place, and Dunleer Place, designed by Los Angeles based architect, Edward Fickett. The foor plan is drawn on a 1/4 inch to 1 foot scale. Sheet 9 of 28, Los Angeles, California, 1951 July 17.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-624318
title: Year two study of a community, school, and university partnership for urban school transformation in providing access to education for all learners

description: “We are the nation that has always understood that our future is inextricably linked to the education of our children—all of them. We are the country that has always believed in Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that ‘. . . talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth or birth.’ That’s who we are” (Obama, 2008). ❧ Since the configuration of formal education in America, and particularly after the cold war, there has been a perceived need for educational reform. According to Dewey, the value of education has increased with the growth of democracy in our modern world (Dewey, 1925). In an effort to sustain a democracy, there has been a growing need for equity in education to combat classism and social stratification in America (Mason, Orkwis, & Scott, 2005). Much research reflects on the importance for all students to receive a high quality equitable education (Ansell, Reckhow, & Kelly, 2009). Building partnerships that strive for authentic engagement between schools and communities, including lower SES communities, can be one way of supporting student achievement and improving education in schools in urban communities (Shutz, 2006). ❧ The study will examine whether a co-constructed partnership among a community, school, and university collaboration model is producing a model of schooling in which urban youth developed social and cognitive competence for high academic achievement. This study follows an earlier study of a community-school-university partnership to examine the processes and attributes by which the ❧ partnership has been able to sustain itself and promote academic achievement among struggling student groups who historically persist in low academic achievement.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-649262
title: Virtual body, real embodiment: engaging the motor imagery system during video game play

description: As video games increase their prevalence in experimenters’ toolboxes, it becomes increasingly important to be able to gauge when, whether, and to what extent participants are treating virtual experiences like the real ones they are designed to simulate.  With this study, I set out to develop and validate a real
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-659851
title: Perceptions of academic success: how varied meanings are constructed in an ethnically diverse high school

description: The documentation and explanation of achievement gaps between ethnic and racial minority students and their white counterparts have received a great deal of attention in education research literature. Despite this, little progress has been made in providing equitable educational experiences and outcomes for students of color. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of why race continues to be a significant independent indicator of achievement in a diverse school setting. This study examines how the school culture and structure contribute to students’ perceptions of the meaning of academic success for themselves and their peers. The focus for this study is better understanding of how race is involved in students’ understanding of what academic success means, as a precursor to better understanding why different ethnic groups of students in diverse school environments consistently achieve at different levels. ❧ A critical interpretive lens, grounded in critical race theory, was used to analyze and apply existing knowledge about achievement gaps into the design of a study of a racially and economically mixed high school. The mixed-model approach employed for the collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data provided rich details about the complex ecology of this diverse school environment. Findings show the influence of race as an important independent factor affecting academic achievement, along with confirming many existing theories explaining why this is true. This study goes a step beyond, however, in providing additional understanding of how race is involved through three themes: social segregation influences academic segregation, school experiences influence the development of what it means to be academically successful differently for different ethnic groups of students, and different average levels of academic efficacy relate to academic achievement differently for different groups of students. The findings present important implications for education research and school policy.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-668855
title: The science and art of silhouettes: what squiggly lines teach us about face recognition, fine art, and astronomy

description: Silhouettes have mesmerized people for centuries, appearing in 18th-century art as well as contemporary advertisements for mp3 players and basketball shoes.  Silhouettes have also become a cultural force, appearing on Disneyland's Main Street and the fine art created by Kara Walker.  But until recently, no one has figured out how the brain can identify a human face in a bare line.  Recent studies at Stanford University, the University of California Los Angeles, and Vanderbilt University, however, have begun to unlock the mystery of silhouettes and face recognition.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-119998
title: Child care licensing as viewed by mothers using day care centers
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-123714
title: Group therapy in homes for the aged as a community mental health center outreach program
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-129384
title: Paternal deprivation in latency age boys: An exploratory study
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-137593
title: Orthodox Jews and Jewish federation-council agencies: Interactions and attitudes
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-147323
title: Interdisciplinary training in community mental health: A survey of attitudes and practices the graduate programs of psychiatric nursing, psychiatry, psychology and social work
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-358887
title: Referential play in ""serious"" music: allusions to the past in several of Milton Babbitt's works from the late 1980s

description: This dissertation reconsiders the aesthetics and reception of Milton Babbitt by analyzing three compositions from the late 1980s that challenge the tenets of formal absolutism. Glosses, The Virginal Book, and Whirled Series each alludes to some cultural artifact beyond its formal structure: Judaic tradition, Renaissance music, and baseball, respectively. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective that embraces literary theory, philosophy, cultural history, and biography, I analyze referential play in Babbitt’s music and discourse in order to illuminate both the polysemic power of Babbitt’s compositional language and the political and cultural colorings that Babbitt’s associations imply. I argue that because these words insinuate cultural phenomena beyond their formal structures, they upend prevailing adjudications of Babbitt’s music as well as offer new points of entry for understanding meaning in serial music.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-362909
title: Development of novel alkyne-containing inhibitors of protein kinases

description: This dissertation mainly explored two aspects, the development of alkyne-containing inhibitors to overcome drug resistance of Bcr-Abl kinase as well as the chemical and biochemical study of GSK3 kinases. ❧ Chapter 1 is a brief review of the use of the alkyne group in protein kinase inhibitors. The applications of alkyne are categorized according to its functions in the design of the inhibitors. Several related case studies have also been discussed. ❧ The first part of Chapter 2 describes the development of alkyne-containing inhibitors to overcome drug resistance of Bcr-Abl kinase. Inspired by the successful development of ponatinib to curb drug resistance, we hypothesize that the incorporation of an alkyne linker in other heterocyclic scaffolds can also improve the potency of Bcr-Ablᵀ³¹⁵¹ inhibitors by simultaneous occupancy of both the active site and the allosteric pocket in the Abl kinase domain. This section describes the design, synthesis, and characterization of a series of alkyne-containing pyrazolopyrimidines as Bcr-Abl inhibitors. Our results show that some alkyne-containing pyrazolopyrimidines potently inhibit not only Ablᵀ³¹⁵¹ in vitro, but also Bcr-Ablᵀ³¹⁵¹ in cells. These pyrazolopyrimidines can serve as lead compounds for future development of novel targeted therapy to overcome drug resistance of CML. The second part of Chapter 2 discusses the possibility of improving inhibitor activity against Bcr-Abl kinase by installing alkyne linker in additional scaffolds. ❧ Chapter 3 deals with the investigation of GSK3 kinases, which is a collaborative project with Ying Lab (HSC, Los Angeles, CA). The first section of Chapter 3 involves a) applying the chemical genetics approach to dissect the roles of GSK3α and GSK3β in embryonic stem cells b) exploring the inhibition mechanism of GSK3 by Tideglusib, and c) identifying whether SMN is a substrate of GSK3 kinase. Our results indicate that a bumped inhibitor can efficiently inhibit either forms of genetically engineered GSK3 kinases. The second and third parts in this chapter provide possible explanations for the inconsistency of our data with our initial hypothesis that Tideglusib inhibited GSK3 through interacting with one cysteine and SMN was a possible substrate of GSK3 kinase. Based on the current results, possible revision of the experiments is proposed.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-370811
title: A gestural approach to the phonological representation of English diphthongs

description: This dissertation investigates the phonological representation of English diphthongs, including offgliding diphthongs [aj], [aw], and ongliding diphthongs [ju], [wV] in terms of their gestural organization. While diphthongs are typically viewed as formant movement from one vowel target to another, their compositionality often incurs controversies as they exhibit both properties of a single unit and a sequence. These properties lead to the analyses of diphthongs as branching nuclei in a segmental approach (e.g. Selkirk 1982, Davis and Hammond 1995). However, such an approach does not account for the acoustic properties of offgliding diphthongs, neither the various consonantal properties observed in offglides. For ongliding diphthongs, treating diphthong [ju] as a branching nucleus but not [wV], while capturing certain asymmetrical properties between them, poses a stipulation for the grammar as [ju] would be the only branching nucleus that is not prosodically heavy. A gestural approach is taken to resolve these controversies in that it allows for testing hypotheses about qualitative, phonological structure using continuous and articulatory data. For offgliding diphthongs, I test the hypotheses that they are composed of gestures independently available in the English inventory, and that glides are best represented as syllable coda. For ongliding diphthongs, the hypothesis that [ju] and [wV] exhibit asymmetrical temporal organization patterns is tested. ❧ Articulatory data were therefore collected with the rtMRI technique. Results of comparing the articulatory correlates of offgliding diphthongs with their corresponding monophthongs in two clock-slowing contexts suggest that these diphthongs may be analyzed as composed of a pharyngeal constriction gesture that also produces the low vowel monophthong and a coda consonant gesture that is a post-vocalic variant of onglide. And the surface variation in articulation and acoustics results from the contexts they are embedded in. On the other hand, examining the temporal organization of glides on the basis of Coupled Oscillator Model of Syllable structure showed that post-vocalic GC clusters exhibited timing patterns distinctive from CC; but pre-vocalic CG, including Cj, exhibited timing patterns similar to other onset clusters CC. For post-vocalic GC clusters, a unique structure is accordingly proposed in which offglide coordinates with the vowel like a coda consonant, but its spatio-temporal overlap with the vowel increases under the increase in coda complexity, thus yielding the “complex nucleus” effects. This proposal is further supported by results from a simulation experiment. Results regarding the ongliding diphthongs suggest that prevocalic cluster Cj are structurally similar to Cw and other onset CC clusters in terms of temporal coordination. But as the asymmetries between Cj and Cw were left unaccounted for with the gestural approach, other mechanisms are required.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-624771
title: Optimizing the persuasiveness of dietary messages: the roles of framing, tailoring, and self-conscious emotion

description: Poor dietary decisions are major risk factors for chronic illness and mortality. Although behavioral interventions designed to prevent these negative health outcomes have successfully improved dietary behavior, there is still room for improvement.  The current research sought to inform the design of future dietary interventions by generating knowledge regarding (1) the strategic framing of message content, (2) the tailoring of messages to recipients, and (3) the links between emotion and persuasion.  Five studies were conducted using experimental designs.  Study One demonstrated that dietary attitudes were more favorable following exposure to a prescriptive message (i.e., what one should do) compared to a proscriptive message (i.e., what one shouldn’t do).  Additionally, this study provided evidence that shame-proneness was negatively related to message attitudes although guilt-proneness was positively related.  Study Two replicated the effect observed in the first study while demonstrating that message involvement mediated the process.  This study also revealed that state shame and guilt elicited by the messages predicted attitudes (as well as message credibility) in a manner consistent with that observed in the prior experiment.  Study Three extended the prior investigations by showing that proscriptive/prescriptive message framing interacted with dietary restraint to predict healthy food purchases made within a virtual grocery store.  Study Four then revealed that seven-day vegetable consumption rates were higher following exposure to prescriptive messages that emphasized potential negative outcomes (e.g., loss-framed) compared prescriptive messages that emphasized potential positive outcomes (e.g., gain-framed), controlling for implicit negative and positive affect.  Finally, Study Five demonstrated that tailoring loss/gain-framed messages to individual differences in future time perspective favorably influenced intentions to engage in healthy dietary behaviors.  Taken together, the results of these experiments provide insight regarding how to best optimize the effectiveness of persuasive health communications.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-630777
title: The study of the Aspergillus nidulans metabolome in the post-genomic era

description: Filamentous fungi have long been recognized to be a rich source of bioactive secondary metabolites.  The genomic sequencing of several species of Aspergillus, however, has revealed that the number of secondary metabolite genes indicated in the genome far exceeds the number of products that have already been obtained in the laboratory, suggesting that many more metabolites await discovery.  The challenge is to develop methods to uncover these hidden natural products.  The work herein describes the discovery of several metabolites not previously observed from Aspergillus nidulans and the study of their biosynthesis in a post-genomic context.  First, a group of polyketide-nonribosomal peptides known as the emericellamides were identified by using state-of-the-art detection techniques.  Through efficient gene deletion analysis, a biosynthesis was proposed.  Next, the same gene deletion technology was used to delete a gene involved in modulating chromatin architecture, with the idea that previously inaccessible sections of the genome would be available to the transcriptional machinery.  Indeed, two groups of related compounds, monodictyphenone/emodins and F9775 A/B, were revealed.  The polyketides F9775 A and B were also generated when the culture conditions were altered, indicating that the problem of unlocking a secondary metabolite can have multiple solutions.  Gene deletions showed that a cluster of three genes were responsible for the formation of F9775 A/B, implying that other genes for these complex molecules exist elsewhere in the genome.  Finally, the two major prenylated xanthones of A. nidulans, shamixanthone and emericellin, were previously identified, but two more were discovered, and genome-based deletion analysis uncovered much information about the four compounds’ biosynthesis.  Unprecedented, the genes for these metabolites were proven to be located in at least three distinct loci in the genome.  Moreover, the two responsible prenyltransferase genes belong to a family known as fungal indole prenyltransferases, when the data here suggests that these enzymes in general may also catalyze the prenylation of polyketides.  Overall, the results suggest that, contrary to the current paradigm, fungal secondary metabolite genes may not be wholly clustered in some instances, accenting the utility of genomics combined with rapid, powerful methods of targeting these dispersed genes.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-632837
title: Newsdoc: a model for online video storytelling

description: This paper introduces the ideas for a tool for online storytelling. The purpose of the concept of newsdoc is to make compelling web video stories. The newsdoc model helps to plan the story structure and the use of characters and facts in the story. It helps to decide how to shoot effectively a web video story. A documentary style newsdoc is published in daily episodes on a news site.