cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-653149
title: Examining Chosonjok identity and women’s agency in transnational migration

description: In this thesis, I try to explore the push and pull factors that contribute to the cross-border migration of the Korean Chinese throughout history. The relative isolation of the Korean Chinese community in China allowed its preservation of traditional Confucian thoughts and the Korean customs, while the political and economic marginalization of the minority group triggered the upward mobile Korean Chinese members to go across borders for opportunities in South Korea. ❧ The glamorous city life and the booming economy of South Korea first attracted the Korean Chinese, however, the disappointing living experience and discriminatory working conditions in their natal land greatly propelled the Korean Chinese to rethink their belongingness and thus, as some scholars argued, they chose their political identity as Chinese over their Korean ethnic roots. ❧ As the Korean Chinese immigration becomes highly gendered, due to the preference of importation of women in service sectors and in marriage market, the Korean Chinese women begin to draw harsh criticism from both societies. My research, however, tries to raise public awareness of the plights the Korean Chinese women have to go through in South Korea. ❧ It is predicted that the Korean community in China was on the verge of dissolution. Nonetheless, based on the examination of recent immigration trends and the changing perception of South Korea among the young generation, therefore, I conclude that new Korean Chinese communities are forming in big South Korean and Chinese cities, and the young Korean Chinese are balancing between the dual identities and capitalizing on their connections to both societies.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-654259
title: Sites of ethanol action in P2X4 receptors

description: P2X receptors (P2XRs) are a distinct family of ligand-gated ion channels that are widely found throughout the peripheral and central nervous systems. They are fast acting, cation-permeable ligand gated ion channels that are gated by synaptically released extracellular ATP. P2X4Rs are the most abundant P2XR subtype expressed in the CNS and the most ethanol sensitive P2X subtype identified to date. Recent findings suggested that P2X4Rs may play a role in alcohol intake and preference in rats. Although, a growing body of evidence suggests a role for P2XRs in ethanol modulation, the sites responsible for the action of ethanol in these receptors are just beginning to be studied and remain unresolved. The present dissertation addresses this issue by using electrophysiology, molecular biology and molecular modeling strategies to identify ethanol sensitive molecular sites in these receptors. This dissertation sets three interrelated hypothesis build on each other: 1) Chapter 2 tests the hypothesis that the ectodomain-TM interface contains residues that are important for the action of ethanol in P2X4Rs; 2) Chapter 3 tests the hypothesis that Trp46 plays a role in ethanol and/or IVM modulation and 3) Chapter 4 tests the hypothesis that residues within the TM1 domain (residues 29 to 49) are important for the action of ethanol in P2X4Rs. The findings identified several ethanol sensitive amino acid residues and support the notion that there are multiple sites for ethanol action in P2X4Rs. In addition these studies increased our understanding of the sites and mechanisms of agonist transduction in P2X4Rs. Overall, the findings significantly add to our knowledge regarding the molecular sites for ethanol action in P2X4Rs and suggest possible targets for drug development to prevent or treat ethanol abuse and dependence.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-655594
title: A perfect pick

description: Americans are eating more avocados than ever before. Although the demand is high for avocados and California is the largest grower in the U.S., farmers in the state are finding it difficult to make a profit. This story profiles two avocado ranches and explores the struggles they face with foreign competition, high water prices and unpredictable weather. ❧ In Simi Valley, CA Marc Bruce and his wife Linda are relatively new to avocado farming and after 10 years they are still struggling to make a profit. In Ventura County Richard Pidduck has been farming for nearly 30 years on his ranch in Santa Paula, CA and has become an expert in growing avocados. ❧ California is the largest domestic supplier of avocados in the United States, producing 53 million pounds of fruit in 2010. That large supply still isn’t enough to feed the growing demand for avocados in the market, leaving many wholesale distributors looking for cheaper alternatives across the border. As a result of more imports California avocado growers have been struggling the last 20 years as they have seen prices fall and foreign insects ravage their crops.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-656866
title: Directive and non-directive therapist styles: brief intervention for subsyndromal depression for Asian and European Americans

description: Subsyndromal depression (SSD) is a highly prevalent and disabling mood disorder. Research indicates no differences between SSD and major depressive disorder with regard to impairment and strain. This study evaluated the efficacy of a directive and non-directive intervention for SSD compared to a placebo control group using an Asian American and European American sample. Studies with Asians and Asian Americans suggest that using a directive approach to therapy promotes positive therapeutic process, which may lead to improved treatment outcomes. Participants in the directive and nondirective condition met with a therapist for a twenty minute session that focused on addressing symptoms of depression, providing psychoeducation, and offering feedback on coping strategies. Analyses indicate that the directive approach was generally more effective at improving depressive symptoms and coping strategies and strengthening working alliance compared to non-directive and placebo interventions. Additionally, significant treatment outcome and ethnicity moderation effects were found for the placebo control condition. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-102984
title: A study of medical services available to rape victims in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-359024
title: From Uga Booga to Hollywood hula: a deep dive into America’s fascination with Tiki bars, tropical drinks and the South Pacific

description: This thesis takes the form of a podcast series that explores contemporary issues of race, culture and diversity through the evolution of the Tiki bar, a pop culture phenomenon with roots in post-World War II imaginations and Los Angeles history, exotified and popularized by Hollywood movies. The goal of this thesis is to use the Tiki bar as a case study on the effects of film and media representation on societal norms, cultural stereotypes and race relations. ❧ This project started when I came across photographs of Filipino immigrants in the 1930s at casting calls for movie extras and behind Tiki bars. These men, known as members of the manong (“uncle”) generation, immigrated to America in search of opportunity only to be met with racism and prejudice. I learned many of them provided the invisible labor force for Tiki bars, alongside other people of color, perhaps as stand-ins for brown Pacific Islanders. As a Filipino American born in Los Angeles, I was drawn to their stories and wanted to learn how they became involved in this line of work and what produced the Tiki bar industry. ❧ Over the course of my reporting, this podcast became a journey of discovery, where I learned about various communities and subcultures of Los Angeles including Pacific Islanders, Tiki bar fans and Hollywood’s inextricable relationship to Tiki bar culture. I studied films set in the Pacific to gain an understanding of their effects on popular culture. I included my findings through narration in order to provide an honest, authentic voice in this story. Each podcast episode weaves interviews and clips into sound-rich audio documentaries that explore various issues related to the Tiki bar: racism, cultural appropriation, cultural appreciation and history. The series aims to sonically transport the listener to different time periods and communities using a diverse set of voices and sounds to illuminate varying ideas and perspectives.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-624345
title: Jean Genet's "Un chant d'amour": concrete poetry of nostaliga and pleasure

description: “Un chant d’Amour” or “A Song of Love” is Jean Genet’s only cinematic work, both written and directed by him in 1950. This twenty five minute long silent film, as the only exhibited work by Genet in the realm of the visual, provides us with a key into reading his literary works. However, besides a book by Jane Giles on Genet’s cinema i.e. “Un Chant d’Amour”, there are no more than a few pages in numerous books, sentences, paragraphs, allusions and quick references in essays most of which referencing some of the film’s iconic scenes as a “visual counterpart” to what is being described in words. ❧ This paper is intended to give an analytical yet subjective reading of the spatial and temporal experience of the film through its erotics. With regards to the title of the film, “A Song of Love” or “A Love Song”, the essay also attempts to locate this underground film from the 1950’s in relationship to our contemporary notions of a “love song” to somehow historicize this reading.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-639208
title: Large system analysis of multi-cell MIMO downlink: fairness scheduling and inter-cell cooperation

description: For the evolution of multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) technologies in the multi-cell environment, a lot of studies are considering the inter-cell cooperation schemes, which provide benefits of inter-cell interference mitigation and/or higher antenna array gain from a number of cooperating transmit antennas. In order to appreciate the full potentials of such schemes for the MU-MIMO system, the following aspects need to be considered: a multi-cell coverage with spatial user distribution and realistic pathloss model; multiuser scheduling, taking into account fairness issues; the type of downlink precoding and employed signal processing; the availability of channel state information at the transmitter; the type of inter-cell cooperation and corresponding system overhead. However, taking into account all these aspects in a single framework is very complicated and its analytical characterization is generally difficult. So far, the system performance has been evaluated through computationally very intensive Monte Carlo simulation. ❧ In this dissertation, an analytic tool is developed, based on the large random matrix theory. In the large system limit where both the number of antennas per base station (BS) and the number of users per cell grow to infinity with a constant ratio, the randomness in channels from BSs to users disappears and the MU-MIMO system becomes a deterministic network, which allows analytic and computationally efficient performance evaluation and optimization. Using this large system analysis, some relevant issues in the design of the MU-MIMO system in the multi-cell downlink are considered: 1) ergodic capacity of the MU-MIMO system with inter-cell cooperation subject to general fairness criteria; 2) the trade-off between the benefit of inter-cell cooperation and the cost of estimating cooperating cells' channels; and 3) the efficient performance achievement of the so-called ""massive MIMO"" system by the user location-based scheduling and transmission strategy.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-128270
title: Faculty and student perceptions of changing social work education and social work practice
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-324830
title: The treatable masses? experiments, American public opinion, and war

description: This dissertation uses experimental methods to explore how the public evaluates and responds to foreign policy. The introduction begins with a brief overview of the literature on public opinion, introduces the studies, and discusses Mechanical Turk (MTurk) as a tool for conducting survey and survey-experimental research. Chapter 2 explores the role of incidental (dis)trust in biasing foreign policy preferences—specifically, the decision to go to war. While research on public opinion finds that the use of cognitive shortcuts allows the public to reach reasonable foreign policy decisions, there is little research on when these shortcuts can lead the public astray. Chapter 3 builds on recent research on audience costs. While many institutional factors and audience characteristics have been shown to affect audience costs, less attention has been paid to the characteristics of the leader. I examine how the President's gender and foreign policy experience affect belligerence costs, inconsistency costs, and audience costs. Chapter 4 examines how the public evaluates and responds to foreign policy failures. Specifically, how does the public integrate information about national image and effort to produce judgments? The dissertation concludes with a review of the findings and suggestions for future research.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-338873
title: The effect of globalization and multinational corporations on development of 21st-century skills and education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in secondary schools in Ireland

description: Ireland has a rich history filled with events that have led to both political uprisings and turmoil as well as times of growth and prosperity. In more recent years, globalization has had a substantial impact on Ireland and has created a need for a knowledge-based economy comprised of a highly skilled and educated workforce. This period of growth drove this study to better understand the effect that globalization and multinational corporations (MNCs) have had on the development of 21st-century skills and education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in schools in Ireland. In addition to the impact that globalization has had on educational policy, this research also examined the influence that science and technology fairs such as SciFest have had on the development of 21st-century skills and STEM education and whether participation in these events have had any influence on students’ pursuit STEM-related courses or careers. ❧ Results indicate that globalization and MNCs have had some influence on educational policy, yet there is a need for more focus on STEM and 21st-century skills. However, this change is perceived as slow going by the business world, with too much focus on examinations. Currently, there is a high degree of concentration on the Senior Leaving Certificate, or final exam, which leaves little time to engage in project-based learning.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-619591
title: Truncated Navier-Stokes equations with the automatic filtering criterion

description: A Large Eddy Simulation (LES) methodology based on previously developed Truncated Navier Stokes (TNS) approach is proposed. In TNS, the Navier Stokes equations are solved through a sequence of direct numerical simulation runs and a periodical processing of small scales to provide the necessary dissipation. In the simplest case, the processing is accomplished by filtering the turbulent fields with a properly chosen filter. In the previous approach, the period for processing was selected in advance for each case using heuristic arguments validated by trial and error. In this proposed model, the filtering criterion is developed to automate the selection of time instant in simulations when the processing is needed. The criterion is based on the relationship between the energy of the flow field and the energy of the same field filtered with the chosen filter. Numerical experiments were conducted to validate this model by comparing the computed low order statistics in fully developed channel flows at low to moderate friction Reynolds numbers with the benchmark data. An analysis of the preliminary results showed that in wall resolved LES the results are independent of the value of the filtering criterion as long as it falls into the derived guideline range. To achieve an improvement of the model's predictability, Reynolds stress and energy budgets in the simulations performed with this model were analyzed. They led to better understanding of filtering effects on the energy transport and suggested how the filtering can be modified to manipulate the energy content in specific areas of the flow. Such selective filtering procedures improve results in marginally resolved LES and can be applied to transitional flows.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-634638
title: Motivational factors as they relate to college readiness

description: Addressing inconsistencies in student achievement between students of different racial backgrounds has been acknowledged and explored for over fifty years. Policies and programs have been developed and funded to decrease the discrepancies between groups with limited evidence of success. This study will explore the presence of achievement discrepancies between different racial groups and the predictive capacity of motivation on student achievement towards college readiness. Quantitative analysis was employed to connect the students scores on a motivational tool with college readiness based on California’s statewide mandated courses and grades for entry into four-year colleges. Implications for further research including tool modification and development, as well as collaboration between researchers and education will be discussed.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-653027
title: The crossover: an exploration of the success and influence of African-American music in the face of systematic discrimination

description: The success of African-American music has consistently been predicated on America’s racial climate.  African-American musicians and performers have struggled to gain acceptance into America’s mainstream culture.  Four United States historical periods, from slavery to the 1960s, were discussed.  Each period was chosen because of its significance in America’s racial and social history.  Within this historical context, a discussion of success by African-American performers, musicians, and entrepreneurs was analyzed.  The success of each performer, musician, and entrepreneur in the respective periods, subsequently set a foundation for the success of future African-American performers.  Eventually, African-American music gains full acceptance into America’s mainstream but only after the cultural climate shifts to acknowledge African-Americans as equal to Whites in a social context.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-653519
title: PUCK: Place-based, Ubiquitous, Connected and Kinetic experiences for interactive architecture

description: This project investigates changing spatial character and the resulting experience of place in the context of Interactive Architecture. As buildings become dynamic generators of data and information, they have the opportunity to use their embedded technological systems to play a more collaborative role in an inhabitants’ experience of space and place. This presents a unique opportunity to conceptualize and design near future situations and ambient interfaces for interacting with the built environment. These new spaces of possibility are imaginable by connecting people to now-common ubiquitous computing technologies such as sensors, building management systems, and mobile devices, and to the networks that make up a rapidly emerging connected world. ❧ What emerges from this complex interconnection of people, technologies and networks is a design challenge for both interaction designers and architects to create meaningful and evocative experiences within hybrid physical/digital spaces of Interactive Architecture.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-657870
title: Different geographical representations of middle America

description: The 2008 presidential election and Sarah Palin's use of the term “real” America sparked a national debate about whether this concept further divided the nation into two distant parts, Red America and Blue America. For many the term Red America is meant to speak to “average” Americans who live in “average” places and earn “average” incomes. This is a major issue because the idea that “real” American places are a common occurrence is incorrect. Using an extensive literature review and advanced GIS techniques this study uses general social data to isolate actual geographic areas based on normative archetypes from political discourse, areas referred to as “real” and “fake” America. The study also challenged the notion of “real” America by finding the most “average” American places, the areas that best reflect the nation as a whole, and produced an “average” American landscape. The final part of the study compared these outputs and deciphered whether an area's 'realness or averageness' has a connection to recent political voting trends. To be clear the point of the study is not to find a place to label the ‘real America’, the point is to use the search itself as a means to demonstrate a problem. The question is not does the “real” America exist, there will be places that closely resemble the concept, the question is whether or not the “real” America speaks to a sizable percentage of the US population, and whether or not it describes the living conditions of the 'average American'.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-664575
title: Negotiating injustice: Public memory and nationhood(s)

description: As globalization proceeds, varying forms of cooperation are crucial to the interaction of cultures across multiple boundaries. This study examines the communicative politics of Canada’s reconciliation efforts with Indigenous peoples. It explores the capacities of rhetorical practice to motivate productive exchange between groups in contexts animated by cultural pluralism and historical injustice. I critique distinct sites of cultural memory construction and contestation (re-imagined multinationality, interest convergence, and cultural advocacy). Varied memories of the past are alive in the present. Assuming that memory is always defined by gaps, the work examines the relevant memory practices in each case, and assesses how such gaps are contained, produced, or mediated.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-119079
title: An examination of the experiences of single adoptive parents
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-140043
title: Clients' perceptions of social services in a family service agency