cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-643349
title: Associations between social adjustment and academic achievement among Mexican American and Vietnamese American early adolescents

description: This study examined the relation between academic achievement and social adjustment in early adolescence. Participants were 730 Vietnamese American and Mexican American middle school students (mean age = 12.7 years). Students completed a peer nomination inventory assessing social acceptance, social rejection, reciprocated friendships, popularity, and unpopularity. Grade point averages (GPAs) were obtained from a review of school records. In addition, youth reported on their immigrant generation, their parents’ socioeconomic status (SES), family structure, and home language. Their ethnic identity and acculturation to U.S. and ethnic cultures were also assessed via self-report. Even when controlling for family variables, ethnic identity, and acculturation, the relation between GPA and social adjustment indices differed across groups. Across the five indices of social adjustment, the relation between academic and social functioning was stronger for girls and Vietnamese Americans, when compared to boys and Mexican American students. The findings point to peer group functioning as important variables in achievement differences between Mexican American and Vietnamese American students.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-653396
title: The dIsinterested self

description: Édouard Levé's greatest stunt was committing suicide two days after submitting his book Suicide to its publisher. This was an ending that became his beginning. I think Levé will be remembered not only for this important book (which contains over 100 pages about photography), and for his photographs and performances, but by his ultimate defining moment, his suicide. ❧ Even though I cannot read or speak in Levé's native tongue, French, in this paper, I am presenting my interpretation of Édouard Levé's novel Suicide for the first time in English. ❧ With each paragraph revealing a small section of the narrator’s dead friend’s life, Suicide, a work of fiction, is a portrait of a life seen through a collection of memories. Suicide is very much like sifting through a box of photographs. This format of fragmentation presented through the text, as a box of images, parallels my inability to understand the native language of Suicide in the fact that both the random order of a box of photographs, and my understanding of Levé’s words are taken out of their original context. The nonlinearity he employed, allowed me a point of uninhibited departure to dig through the “box” for Levé’s and my own interpretation of a defining moment.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-653670
title: Adapting to adaptive e-learning: Utilizing adaptive e-learning programs within educational institutions

description: Adaptive e-learning programs represent a potentially powerful technological tool that educators could be utilizing in efforts to provide personalized instruction to students. However, to date, only limited populations of students have been exposed to this technology, and most successful programs have targeted secondary and post-secondary math and science instruction. The present study aimed to look at the institutional implementation of the adaptive program Fast ForWord within a small southern California school district. Data collection included interview data on the beliefs and experiences of school district personnel familiar with the program; student performance data was also analyzed to assess Fast ForWord’s efficacy. Specifically, scores from the adaptive program were compared with scores in related content areas; further analyses were conducted to determine if certain students seemed to benefit more than others from participation with Fast ForWord. ❧ Findings suggested that school personnel generally believed Fast ForWord to be a useful remediation tool, but many challenges to successful implementation were also identified, such as limited finances, scheduling issues and lack of schoolwide support. Paired sample t-tests revealed positive associations between performance on Fast ForWord compared to performance on state standardized testing. However, results from stepwise regression modeling did not suggest that any one group of students benefited from using the program more than others.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-666955
title: Synaptic defects in spinal muscular atrophy

description: Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disease, is a leading genetic cause of infant mortality.  The major clinical symptoms are muscle weakness and paralysis.  Prevailing thinking is that muscle weakness is caused by muscle denervation subsequent to motoneuron degeneration.  However, the exact cellular events leading to the motor impairment are not fully understood.  In this study, we used a mouse model for SMA to examine the synaptic components in the central and peripheral nervous system that are important for motor functions.  We uncovered a selective vulnerability of neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) to denervation in SMA mice.  The selectiveness to denervation is not attributed to muscle fiber types, muscle locations or spinal segments in which motoneurons reside.  In addition to NMJ denervation, a significant loss of proprioceptive inputs on spinal motoneurons of SMA mice may contribute to muscle weakness in the hindlimb muscles that were denervated throughout the disease progression.  These studies suggested that synapse loss occur extensively in both the peripheral and central nervous system, which may contribute to the muscle weakness in SMA mouse model.  Besides defects in synapse connectivity, compromised synapse maturity was also revealed in this SMA mouse model.  Using isolated muscle culture, we identified a muscle-intrinsic defect that could contribute to synapse immaturity.  Our studies suggested that SMA is a disease involving synapses in central and peripheral nervous systems, both neuronal and non-neuronal targets.  Our studies provide insights on designing therapeutics on multiple targets in SMA.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-118941
title: Psychosocial Adjustment to Mastectomy
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-139763
title: Hot meals for the elderly: A program evaluation
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-143106
title: Community disaster role preparedness
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-323682
title: Fkh1/2: master regulators of genome architecture in DNA replication and mating-type switching in S. cerevisiae

description: The yeast Forkhead Box (Fox) proteins, Fkh1 and Fkh2, regulate diverse processes, including transcription of cell cycle regulated genes, donor preference in homologous recombination during mating-type switching, and replication origin clustering and initiation timing. Comparative analysis of Fkh1/2 with human Fox proteins suggests that Fkh1/2 might dimerize through domain-swapping as shown previously, and uniquely for the FoxP family. Fkh1 self-interacts in a pull-down assay, and domain-swap minus (dsm) mutations of Fkh1/2 predicted to eliminate dimerization show reduced Fkh1 self-interaction. Furthermore, Fkh1-dsm and Fkh2-dsm are defective in regulation of origin timing and donor preference while complementing pseudohyphal growth associated with transcriptional deregulation resulting from loss of FKH1 and FKH2 functions. Dimerization of Fkh1/2 may contribute to long-range interactions implicated in donor preference and origin timing. The FHA domain of Fkh1 was recently implicated in donor preference, and we now report that R80A mutation of Fkh1’s FHA domain deregulates origin timing, although the effects is not as great as the dsm or a null mutation. As a likely phosphor-serine/threonine binding domain, the Fkh1-FHA domain may contribute to long-range origin interactions, perhaps in concert with domain-swapping to bridge distal DNA loci. Alternatively the FHA may act to recruit a rate-limiting replication protein to origins, while domain-swapping acts to increase the local concentration of Fkh1 and the FHA. We will report on current attempts to identify functional targets of the FHA domain.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-361068
title: Capturing the moment with Millennials: a strategic guide to help Airbnb win over even more Millennial customers

description: While most people assume Airbnb as a leading company in the sharing economy has a lock on Millennial audiences, research indicates Millennials are not as loyal to the brand as one might think. This proposal focuses on how Airbnb can attain more market share among Millennial travelers.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-623048
title: Exposure to freeway air pollution and developmental delays

description: Background: Traffic related air pollution, using measurements of specific pollutants such as PAH or NO₂, highly associated with traffic exhaust, have been found to significantly decrease cognitive ability in children. However, freeway proximity models are a better proxy for a global measurement of ambient pollutants associated with freeway traffic. ❧ Objectives: Using distance to nearest freeway as a proxy, determine whether traffic related air pollution is associated with developmental delays, evaluated using cognitive and adaptive assessments. Further analyze the association between freeway air pollution and cognitive and adaptive ability among cases and controls. ❧ Methods: Data from the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) Study was utilized to obtain freeway distance and information on pertinent covariates. The Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS) were used to diagnose 132 children with a developmental delay and 259 children as typically developing controls. Birth certificate residence was geocoded using ArcGIS software to obtain distance measures, categorized four different ways according to previous research and distribution. Logistic regression was used to compare cases and controls for each method of categorization as well as continuously. Linear regression was used to analyze assessment scores among controls, and logistic regression was used to analyze assessment scores among cases, for each method of freeway distance categorization. ❧ Results: Close proximity to a freeway around time of birth, characterized as living within 300 m relative to greater than 1400 m, is significantly associated with developmental delays (Adjusted OR = 2.38, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = (1.12, 5.11), p = 0.024). Even among typically developing controls, freeway air pollution significantly decreases cognitive ability, with no significant effects on adaptive ability. ❧ Conclusions: Results suggest a significant effect of a wide range of air pollutants associated with freeway exhaust on a child’s neurodevelopment early in life.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-653211
title: Enduring value: framing the specter of queerness in the archives

description: This paper traces research conducted at, and collaborative projects initiated with, ONE National LGBT Archives over the course of two years while I was a graduate student at University of Southern California (USC).  Through a descriptive account of my cumulative findings I hope to provide an entry point for readers into the curatorial project and explorative art exhibition, My Taste in Men, which was held at The Gayle and Ed Roski Master of Fine Arts Gallery, Los Angeles, March 21-25, 2011. The project was shaped through the lens of taste, my position as a lesbian feminist and curatorial author, and the conditions of representation in the holdings of ONE Archives.  As such I propose that queerness is a shadow in the predominantly gay white male narrative of recorded LGBT histories.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-655323
title: Private modernities: the "I" in contemporary Indian documentary and visual culture

description: A significant new trend in contemporary Indian Documentary, since the mid-nineties has been the emergence of the first-person documentary by women and gay filmmakers and filmmakers from religious minority groups. Does a certain kind of documentary exist because certain kinds of subjects/ subjectivities exist? What features of Indian life – institutional, political, social and cultural – influenced the emergence of certain kinds of subjectivities and their self-representation in the documentary form? The dissertation attempts to answer these questions while delineating the material history of the conditions of its emergence and the new forms of political selfhood that the first-person documentary enables and represents. Tracing a genealogy of the first-person documentary, the first part of the dissertation focuses on the colonial home movie archive (1895-1947) positing it as a site of negotiations, meaning making and memory-work in the complex processes of decolonization of the imperial eye/I. The second part of the dissertation looks at the postcolonial archive and the self-representation by the postcolonial subject in the first-person documentary form. Signifying a shift from statist top-down models of the documentary tradition in India that sought to create disciplined subjects to serve the new nation’s modernist project, and distinctive from the political subjectivity invoked in civil society discourses of rights and justice in activist and advocacy media, I argue that the first-person documentary mobilizes a new citizen-spectator subject and a new form of documentary consciousness, an “embodied and ethical spectatorship” that is created at the interstices of the public and the private, critical and contemplative, moral and ethical.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-664082
title: High frequency chirp coded excitation ultrasound imaging system

description: An increase of imaging frequency enhances the performance in spatial resolution of an ultrasound scanner while sacrificing echo signal to noise ratio (eSNR) because of a rise in the amount of attenuation.   As solutions to raise the eSNR level while maintaining the enhanced spatial resolution, both fundamental and harmonic coded excitation imaging methods have been proposed.   For this purpose, ultrasound bio-microscopes (UBM) capable of chirp coded excitations were implemented on both a linear and a sector mechanical scanning system.  A custom-designed broadband (5 MHz – 140 MHz) linear power amplifier was designed as a part of a low noise arbitrary pulse generator to replace a commercial bench-top power amplifier in the linear UBM.  The modified imaging system exhibited a better eSNR of 7 dB than the system with a commercial power amplifier while maintaining the spatial resolution in a wire target measurement.   In-vivo imaging was carried on pig eye and zebrafish embryo using a 40 MHz and a 100 MHz single element transducer respectively. For high frame rate coded excitation imaging, a standalone frontend system for a sector UBM was implemented.  The custom-designed system consisting of a transmitter, a receiver, a motor controller and a motor position interpreter achieved an eSNR of 66 dB utilizing chirp coded excitation for wire target imaging.  Moreover, contrast to noise ratio (CNR) was improved from 2.92 to 3.18 with coded excitation. This modified scanner allowed contraction of cardiac chambers of both zebrafish and mouse hearts to be clearly visualized.  As an effort to enhance the spatial resolution, pulse inversion chirp coded tissue harmonic imaging (PI-CTHI) was programmed into the custom-designed frontend system.  In a wire target study using a 40 MHz single element transducer, lateral resolution was found to be 110 μm, which was narrower than fundamental imaging at153 μm.  CNR was found to improve by 34 % when chirp coded excitation was applied to harmonic imaging.  This imaging mode was shown to better delineate the clot formation in adult zebrafish heart imaging when the heart was amputated and allowed to regenerate.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-130339
title: Communications approach to marital counseling: The last ten years
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-140706
title: Information and referral services in Department of Public Social Services
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-147445
title: An explorative study of the religious beliefs of social workers and how they work with religious clients
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-617792
title: The inspiration towards which the work we see the evidence of: labor and the unknown in painting

description: This thesis attempts to explore the space of labor and the traces it leaves behind as the central site of ideology and ethics in painting. This theme is explored through the examination of two paintings: Ambrosius Bosschaert’s 1619 Bouquet on a Window Ledge and Barnett Newman’s 1950 The Voice. Though centuries apart, these two works both hinge on the artist’s physical involvement to generate and communicate their essential ideologies.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-638780
title: Promoting pro-environmental behavior among university dormitory residents

description: The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a competition-based intervention in promoting pro-environmental behavior (PEB) among university dormitory residents. The study used a prospective quasi-experimental intervention design with a control group. The intervention, which included appeals and a group-level incentive, was implemented using a building-versus-building competition framework. Additionally, a website was developed with access to different supplementary intervention content assigned by building residence. Participants completed baseline and follow-up self-report surveys regarding energy use behaviors and key constructs derived from the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Norm Activation Model. A total of 298 undergraduate students participated in the first survey, and 225 also took part in the follow-up survey. No significant effects of the intervention were found for self-reported PEB. Changes in electricity use between the baseline and competition phases ranged from a decrease of 7.1% to an increase of 3.1% among the seven intervention buildings. Mixed level models based on electricity data showed that when adjusting for temperature, intervention buildings used significantly more electricity during the intervention phase relative to the control phase during the project year (2009) and the preceding year (2008). A secondary objective of the project was to investigate mechanisms of change in PEB by examining relationships among TPB and NAM constructs and investigating which constructs explain change in PEB. To address this objective, structural equation modeling was applied to the self-report data from both surveys. Results provided preliminary evidence supporting the extension of the TPB to addressing change in PEB. Results also indicated that changes in intentions were most important for explaining changes in PEB. A final aim of this project was to evaluate the influences of impression management and item order effects on self-reported PEB. Higher impression management scores predicted higher PEB scores. Weak evidence of item order effects were also observed. These findings suggest that social desirability biases should be considered in designing surveys, conducting analyses, and interpreting study findings. Understanding how interventions work to change PEB and its determinants, and how to measure and examine these processes reliably, remain important avenues for future research.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-655760
title: Role of central adiposity and chronic stress as risks for exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory stressors

description: Chronic stress and central adiposity are independently associated with negative cardiovascular health outcomes.  Additionally, both characteristics are associated with exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, studies have not examined whether these two characteristics interact to produce a profile of elevated cardiovascular risk. Additionally, studies have also found no association or negative associations between cardiovascular reactivity, central adiposity, and chronic stress. Factors that potentially contribute to the ambiguity in the literature may include measurement of central adiposity and chronic stress, and exclusion criteria. 122 undergraduate college students engaged in a series of laboratory tasks designed to induce stress. Heart rate, blood pressure, and cardiac output were obtained during each minute of the experiment. Results indicated that individuals with concurrently high levels of chronic stress and central adiposity exhibited lower SBP reactivity to stress. The results may reflect blunting of physiological systems such as the HPA and SAM axis. Additionally, these findings may implicate low cardiovascular reactivity as an indicator of unresponsiveness of physiological systems, and thus, risk for negative outcomes.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-657163
title: The application of multimedia and theatrical elements to Franz Joseph Haydn's Die Schöpfung (The creation): examples for day five, scene one

description: This dissertation adds multimedia and theatrical elements to Haydn’s The  Creation, Day Five, Scene One. The music-derived additions include creative images, choreography, costumes and puppetry, lighting, and set design. It is argued that the addition of a more familiar production style to the rich choral-solo-orchestral score can bridge the gap between this repertoire’s traditional audiences and those more familiar/comfortable with Broadway musicals and modern theatrical elements, introduce and educate new audiences to this masterwork, and enhance and enrich the experience of The Creation for Haydn’s many devoted fans. This project provides information and materials necessary for a creative team wishing to mount such a production, which include the history of Haydn’s The Creation, ideas for creative imaging, choreography, costuming, masks, puppetry, lighting, set design, and a working example. By drawing upon visually enticing theatrical processes, as seen in The Lion King for example, this paper demonstrates how current trends in popular presentation can bring new audiences to the classical oratorio.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-663972
title: No words needed: the untitling of modern art

description: For one hundred years almost to the date, artists have titled their works “untitled.” This essay will look at where and why this practice emerged, what it means in terms of the aesthetics of visual art, and will attempt to characterize the status of the term in contemporary art. The essay will argue that the practice emerged as a form of resistance to the art market during periods of rising consumer demand for modern art. It will also locate the practice in a specific period in the history of aesthetics when artists equated truth and authenticity with silence, absence and negation. The essay will conclude with an analysis of the earliest preserved discussion of the term and its meaning that the author has been able to find. Through this, the author hopes to show that a simple and ubiquitous word, found on countless contemporary works of art, carries a very complex history, at times subversive, at times controversial.