cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-635847
title: Biodegradation of elastin-like polypeptide nanoparticles

description: Biodegradation has been one of the most important determinants used to ascertain the efficacy of the polymers that are frequently used in drug delivery. The study design of this project focused on a series of the protein polymers derived from the human tropoelastin protein to examine the specific mechanisms of biodegradation. Elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) are non-immunogenic and biocompatible polymers composed of pentapeptide repeats of Val-Pro-Gly-Xaa-Gly where Xaa can be any amino acid. They undergo inverse phase transition during which they remain in solution below the transition temperature (Tt) but collapse and clump together to form aggregates when heated above their Tt. In this study, ELP mono and di-blocks were treated with proteases like elastase and collagenase below and above their Tt in order to learn if their property of transitioning provided them with a protective advantage over the action of these enzymes. Elastase was significantly able to digest all the ELPs at both the temperatures but collagenase degraded them to a much lesser extent with the exception of V96, which showed a clear difference in sensitivity to the enzymes at below and above its Tt. Also carried out was a study to comprehend the cellular uptake and biodegradation of ELPs in mouse hepatocytes over different time intervals which showed that ELPs are significantly taken up into these cells and internalized and biologically degraded with increase in incubation time. These studies will be of value in understanding the specificity and mechanism of action of different proteases on ELPs.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-636188
title: The temporal and tissue specific requirement of Msx genes in murine skull vault osteogenesis

description: The homeobox genes Msx1 and Msx2 are set of transcription factors known to have both widespread and overlapping expression patterns throughout the developing murine embryo. Conventional inactivation of either or both of these genes has been associated with a variety of congenital abnormalities including defects in calvarial osteogenesis, palate formation, cardiac development, and embryonic lethality. Here we utilize conditional and temporal gene inactivation to investigate the role of these genes in the development of the murine skull vault. ❧ Temporal inactivation of Msx2 revealed a window of requirement for cranial osteogenesis. Concerted loss of both Msx1 and Msx2 showed an unexpected ability of neural crest derived tissues to contribute to the formation of ectopic bone. Along with this we demonstrated a more extended requirement for the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, Twist1, which when mutated causes multiple cranial malformations including craniosynostosis. Although conditional inactivation of Msx1 and Msx2 in neural crest or mesoderm derived tissue did manifest deficient frontal and parietal bone development respectively, only mesodermal inactivation resulted in premature coronal suture fusion. However, conditional targeting of Msx1 and Msx2 using either neural crest or mesoderm driven cre recombinase illustrated phenotypes in adjacent calvarial tissues. Consistent with the view that Msx1 and Msx2 are required for specific tissue-tissue interactions in vertebrate development, here I show that these genes act upstream of BMP4 in cranial mesoderm to initiate and maintain osteogenesis in both the parietal and posterior frontal bone regions. Together my data suggest (1) that Msx1, Msx2, and Twist1 have a crucial window of requirement in the formation of the murine skull vault, (2) that mesoderm derived Msx1 and Msx2 function upstream of the morphogen BMP4 to influence posterior frontal bone osteogenesis, (3) that mesoderm derived Msx1 and Msx2 establish and maintain non-osteogenic coronal suture mesenchyme.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-673807
title: The effect of socialization on doctoral student persistence in engineering:  a structural equation model

description: A structural equation model technique was used to examine the socialization and the mediating effects of satisfaction on doctoral student persistence in engineering at a large private, 4-year research university. The four areas of socialization studied are experience in the doctoral program; experience with advising and mentoring; understanding the requirements of the doctoral program; and internalizing the outcomes of doctoral education.  Two-hundred and three doctoral students in engineering responded to a modified version of the Carnegie Foundation Survey of Doctoral Students (Fall2003). The results from this analysis indicate that higher levels of positive experiences in the doctoral program had a direct positive effect on persistence.  Satisfaction had a significant effect as a mediator between advising and mentoring experience and persistence.  In addition, significant departmental differences were found on advising and mentoring experiences and internalizing program outcomes.  Contrary to the extant literature, largely based on small sample case studies, there were no gender differences on any of the measured constructs. A structural model indicating the relationship between persistence, satisfaction, and socialization was presented.  Conclusions and recommendations for future research are discussed.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-619381
title: Popularity in the peer group and exposure to community violence during adolescence

description: This paper describes a short-term longitudinal study of the relation between popularity in the peer group and community violence exposure among 335 adolescents (mean age of 14.67 years at Time 1) attending a semi-urban Los Angeles area high school.  We used a multi-informant approach to assess popularity, community violence exposure, social preference, aggression, and academic performance.  Data were collected annually for two consecutive school years.  Popularity predicted concurrent levels of community violence exposure during both years of the study, and analyses indicated that these concurrent relations were partially mediated by aggressive behavior and diminished academic performance.  We did not find support for gender as a moderator of the link between popularity and community violence exposure.  Longitudinal analyses showed that community violence exposure and popularity were highly stable from one year to the next.  Consequently, we did not find support for our hypothesis that popularity would predict increases in community violence exposure over time.  Similarly, we did not find support for an alternative hypothesis that community violence exposure might predict increases in popularity.  The implications of these findings are discussed.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-622101
title: Cultural proficiency in educational settings as the standard of student connection in a global world

description: Our high school students are worthy of a global education embedded with a commitment to bringing them learning experiences, which readily provide opportunities for building their own human capital potential through cultural proficiency.  These students will need to cross cultural boundaries as they attempt to interface in a globalized world.  They will need academic skills, as well as a high level of cultural proficiency to define their role as employees and students in a globalized world.  A qualitative study was conducted to determine if high school students and their teachers identify cultural proficiency as a necessary component of skills needed to find success in the twenty-first century.  It examined the evidence as to the existence of specific measures, policies, and practices within a high school and its district in order to determine if this was a priority in educating students within this segment of skill formation.  So while identifying the value that students and their educators place on these critical competencies and the level of measurement currently in place, this study intends to serve as a guide for future organizational and programming structure development for schools nationwide as they work toward providing students the opportunities they need to be ready to transition into a progressive global society.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-638512
title: RSVP'ing to the revolution: social media in the Egyptian revolution

description: The 2011 Egyptian Revolution captured the world’s attention, not just because of its political and social significance, but also because of the unprecedented use of social media tools by the organizers of the protests. In particular, the role of Twitter and Facebook, two American-created social networking tools, in a revolution halfway around the world seemed to fascinate the media. A full-fledged debate about whether their role in the Egyptian Revolution was that of a star-player or a nonessential second-stringer broke out in the blogosphere. What was largely missing from this debate, however, was a thorough examination of how and why these tools where used in Egypt, and what this may tell us about the way social media is changing the relationship between the government and the people on a global scale.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-639688
title: A time to die: aging and the narrative imperative

description: “A Time to Die: Aging and the Narrative Imperative” explores how we, as conscious beings, operate our essential and deep drive toward narrative and narrativity—what the project refers to as the narrative imperative—to conceptualize our subjective experience of time as we age.  Foremost, this project considers how our impulse toward a varied narrative recourse, a desire for a range of texts and textual forms expressed through numerous medias (novels, poetry, photography, and the cinema), helps us to register ‘being’ as a distended and abstract temporal phenomenon.  Consequently, this project stakes a claim in the narrative imperative as our best and most fallible means through which we attempt to negotiate, understand, and defer the finality of ‘end time’ and our predetermined mortal limit: death. ❧ Secondly, the project deals with how narratives (that which inscribe time) and images (that which resist narrative) affect very different modes of knowledge and experience in the world.  To look at the temporal dimensions of narratives and images separately and then together as they meet en force in the cinema draws our attention to the dispersed character of aging identity. ❧ The through-line of the project is the active pursuit of the narrative imperative as it is and has been employed in a diversity of texts and textual forms across centuries, from the Age of Enlightenment and then forward as it expands into post-industrial time.  As the narrative imperative meets with new medias and modes of representation, the project reflects upon both the limits and possibilities of cognition and reason in a visual age.  At large, this work challenges conscripted ways of seeing the breadth of a life (the activity of a ‘life in review’) as any neat or uniform arc, a story that is reducible to a predictable beginning, middle, and end.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-644785
title: Bilbao's use of art and culture as a remedy for deindustrialization: the implications of redevelopments homogenous use public art

description: The rise of information technologies, deindustrialization and economic decline were significant contributors to the financial collapse of Bilbao’s shipyards and mining operations, which in turn forced the city to undertake a redevelopment plan.  This plan would transform the deindustrialized wasteland into a cultural destination for the “global tourist” via recognizable public art, making the city an economic success through the utilization of art as a commercial commodity. Public art within the redevelopment plan of Bilbao, Spain became part of the visual branding elements used as a marketing tool to attract cultural tourism.  Based on the region’s historic background, the artwork selected for this site should better reflect the cultural heritage and historic nature of the area in which it is located.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-649800
title: Community college finance: a cost analysis of community college expenditures related to maintenance and operations

description: The purpose of this study was to develop a costing model for maintenance and operations expenditures among 16 single-campus California community college districts and assess the impact of a variety of variables including size of student enrollment, physical plant age, acreage, gross square footage, and general obligation facility bonds on district maintenance and operations expenditures. Through a quantitative analysis of maintenance and operations expenditures, the data provided in this study were used to develop a model and benchmark which allows community college administrators to consider the maintenance and operations expenditures at their respective institutions in a clear and consistent manner, and compare their costs to other similar districts. ❧ District expenditure data as well as facilities data for the fiscal years 2006-07, 2007-08, and 2008-09 were collected. District expenditure data were collected from the California Community College Chancellor Office’s Fiscal Data Abstract for the study years, while facility data were collected from the Foundation for California Community Colleges with express written consent from each sample district. ❧ Results of the study indicated that enrollment size matters most in maintenance and operations expenditures, much more so than the effect of campus acreage and mean building age. The sample’s average cost of maintenance and operations per FTES was calculated to be $426.22/FTES. There is a strong relationship between campus gross square footage and maintenance and operations expenditures. The cost of maintenance and operations per GSF for the sample was calculated at $9.90. The sample districts committed an average of 7.6% of general fund expenditures to maintenance and operations. Finally, general obligation bond funding had a minimal effect on the level of maintenance and operations expenditures in this specific sample.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-655579
title: This is my country: the use of blackness in discourses of racial nativism towards latino immigrants

description: This is My Country: The Use of Blackness in Discourses of Racial Nativism Towards Latino Immigrants interrogates the use of blackness in anti-immigrant discourses in Los Angeles, California.   Through content analysis of various media (including newspapers, television news, radio shows, blogs, and more) this dissertation examines three different Los Angeles Black public figures to illustrate how blackness is used within arguments about how Latino immigration allegedly negatively impacts Blacks. In these arguments I trace how particular emotions are attached to different claims about immigration which consequently create an increased gap between the emotional response (towards immigration) and the reality behind the arguments made about the impact of immigration (on Blacks and America). The goal of the project is to illustrate how blackness and emotion work together to widen the gap between fiction and reality regarding the impact of Latino immigration. In this dissertation I argue that the political move– in which blackness is/becomes an important component in anti-Latino discourses and agendas— is 1) on the one hand an extension of a white hegemonic order in which racialized others are argued to be the cause of social problems while 2) at the same time a new creative turn in whiteness where blackness becomes an important visible instrument in promoting racial nativism.  In addition, I argue that emotion plays a central role in promoting racialized nativism.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-m1239
title: Student authoring in the American grain
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-626991
title: Enabling pulsed power technologies for the generation of intense, nanosecond electric fields

description: This dissertation focuses on the design and implementation of pulsed power systems with an emphasis on systems that generate high peak powers on nanosecond and subnanosecond timescales.  These systems are an enabling technology for many areas of scientific research focused on the effects of intense, nanosecond pulsed electric fields or pulsed discharges on physical processes.  Researchers at USC use these systems in a variety of diverse application areas, including research into ignition and combustion using nanosecond discharges, research into the effects of pulsed electric fields on biological systems, and research into the efficacy of cold plasma discharges for disinfection.  Each of these applications has its own set of pulsed power parameters, and in most cases these parameters necessitate that the systems be custom developed. ❧ The bulk of what follows will address the design methodologies, materials, and implementation techniques required for systems capable of generating high current (20 – 500 Amperes), high voltage (1 kV – 100 kV), nanosecond pulses.  These principles culminate in the presentation of a new, compact, solid state architecture, which has been implemented into a system called the Rapid Pulser.  This architecture uses diode opening switches at the output to switch inductively stored energy into a resistive load.  To switch properly, these diodes must be pumped in the forward and reverse directions by a current, and this new architecture introduces a pumping circuit that significantly improves pulse shape as well as reduces amplitude jitter, time jitter, complexity, cost, and size.  At 1.6 kg, this is the lightest pulsed power system developed at USC’s Pulsed Power Lab, which is significant because minimizing size and weight is necessary for applications focused on the ignition and combustion of fuels. ❧ A summary of research focused on magnetic and dielectric materials for nonlinear energy compression will also be presented.  Nonlinearities inherent to ferro- and ferromagnetic materials and well as ferroelectric materials can be used for a number of energy compression techniques, including magnetic pulse compression, electromagnetic shockwave generation, and soliton formation.  Research into a number of different materials has resulted in the development of ferrite based electromagnetic shocklines that can reduces rise times of tens of nanoseconds down to hundreds of picoseconds. These shocklines, as well as dispersive, nonlinear lines designed for soliton formation, will be discussed in detail.  A significant outcome of this work has been the development of a shockline designed to integrate with the Rapid Pulser to produce high voltage subnanosecond rise times, which are useful for a number of research areas.  The line, which is less than 30 cm long, can be placed inside the pulse generator’s enclosure resulting in a contained system capable of outputting high voltage, subnanosecond rise times into 50 Ω loads.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-631260
title: Healing waves

description: Ocean therapy is an emergent type of alternative treatment that uses surfing and other ocean related activities such as kayaking to treat various types of physical and mental injuries. Various groups have used surfing to assist in addiction recovery, as well as the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and even to assist the physical and psychological recovery from amputations. ❧ This documentary focuses on the Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation and Ampsurf, two California-based organizations that promote and implement ocean therapy programs. Ampsurf is geared primarily towards amputees and veterans, while the Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation works towards the rehabilitation of the active-duty Marines of the Wounded Warrior Battalion in Camp Pendleton, California. ❧ The purpose of this story is to showcase ocean therapy, as well as portray the medical reasons behind why such therapy is effective. To achieve this, experts ranging from psychologists to medical doctors who work with the affected populations are portrayed. Also, this documentary tells the stories of those people who have turned to ocean therapy to help them with their personal challenges, and illuminates the effects that this has had on their lives.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-653849
title: Conducting a needs assessment in parents of typical adolescents, ages 11 - 13 years old

description: Parents of typical adolescents often find themselves feeling unprepared to face the challenges of child rearing. Though parent education programs are readily available for parents of young children, parents of adolescents, ages 11-13, have difficulty finding relevant, age-appropriate curriculum. The literature indicates that parent education programs are providing valuable information and, indeed, are effectively meeting their own intended goals but there is no indication that the parents’ needs themselves are being met ( Dembo et al, 1985). ❧ The purpose of this study is to determine precisely what parents of typical adolescents need most in a parent education program; to examine if parenting needs differ based on demographic backgrounds, and to determine if the goals of existing programs are, in fact, aligned with the parents’ articulated needs. Using a qualitative approach, the respondents were made up of an ethnically and demographically diverse group of 25 parents whose 11 to 13-year-old children attended school within the Los Angeles Unified School District. Significant findings indicated that, although existing parent education programs do meet their intended goals, and even address some parents’ identified needs, parents still have specific concerns about academic achievement, teaching values, and parent-child communication. This study also identified that differences in ethnic, social, and economic background should be taken into consideration when addressing parent needs. The implications of the findings are that input from parents is crucial to bridging the gap between program content and identified parent needs.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-659270
title: The new age of advocacy: generating millennial engagement and activism for the fight against lung cancer in the social media era

description: The advent of the digital era has led to rise of the power and influence of the Millennial Generation. As early adopters of the social media technology, non-profit disease advocacy organizations are in a unique position to take advantage of these channels of communication. The following is a comprehensive analysis of social media in the lung cancer advocacy movement, with special regard for the Millennial Generation’s role as future policy leaders and activists. It includes extensive survey research in addition to three expert interviews, and concludes with a list of recommendations that can be used by public relations and communication professionals specializing in digital media, social networking and non-profit advocacy relations.