Masters Theses
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10161/2493
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Browsing Masters Theses by Type "Dissertation"
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Item Open Access Cultural Values, Coping Strategies, and HIV Risk Behaviors in African-American and Hispanic Adolescents(2015) Sanchez, Amy KUtilizing data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the current study examined the relationship between cultural values, coping behavior, and HIV risk behaviors among African-American/Black and Hispanic/Latino adolescents (N = 437). The goal of this research was to provide the first step towards testing the construct validity of a theoretical model in which values and cultural context contribute to coping behaviors and coping, in turn, mediates the association between values and HIV risk profile. African-American participants endorsed higher levels of Africentric and religious values than did Hispanic participants and endorsed higher utilization of religious coping. Cultural values including familismo and religiosity were associated with more adaptive coping behavior and lower sexual and substance use risk behaviors across racial/ethnic groups. Results for other cultural values were inconsistent. Coping behavior predicted substance use risk behaviors but was not associated with sexual risk behaviors. Mediation was not supported except in the case of religious coping and religiosity. Implications for HIV prevention and directions for future research are discussed.
Item Open Access Democracy and Labor Market Outsiders: The Political Consequences of Economic Informality(2015) Altamirano Hernandez, MelinaThis dissertation addresses the effect of informality on three key dimensions: social policy
preferences, partisan attachments, and citizen-politician linkages. Many Latin American
labor markets have large informal sectors where workers are not covered by formal labor
arrangements and earn meager wages, as well as truncated social security systems that
target benefits to the well-off at the expense of the poor.
I first analyze how economic informality conditions voters preferences regarding the redistributive role of the state (Chapter 3). I examine the effect of labor informality on individual preferences over contribution-based programs (such as social security and public health insurance) and means-tested programs (such as CCTs). The analysis of micro-level data for both Latin America and Mexico suggests that, counterintuitively, voters in the informal sector are no more likely to support increased spending in social security and welfare institutions. On the contrary, labor market outsiders tend to favor only social programs with no eligibility requirements.
In the second part of the project, I study patterns of party identication among citizens
in the informal sector (Chapter 4). I argue that the low utility derived from social policies
and the obstacles to class identity formation contribute to depress partisan attachments.
The findings indicate that economic informality weakens ideological attachments between
voters and political parties. Results also show that outsiders trust less in political parties.
Finally, I analyze how economic informality conditions linkages between citizens and
politicians (Chapter 5). I theorize that given the characteristics of the members in the
informal sector, political parties will have incentives to approach them using
clientelistic offers and vote-buying strategies. I find that voters in the informal sector are particularly sensitive to some types of clientelistic offers. Furthermore, labor market outsiders seem to be more likely to switch their vote toward candidates offering private benefits.
Item Open Access Expanding Mental Health Services Delivery for Depression in the Community from Burma in North Carolina: A Paraprofessional Training Program(2015) Buck, Pamela JThe scope of my dissertation project was to investigate the training of community leaders, including religious leaders, in the delivery of individual cognitive-behavioral support for depression in the community from Burma in NC. My research aims were to train community leaders a) to recognize the signs and symptoms of depression and associated problems, including intergenerational conflict, substance abuse, domestic violence and suicide; b) to use reflective listening and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) skills, and c) to increase awareness of stigma toward treatment-seeking for depression and its related problems. Positive training outcomes were found for knowledge of depression and CBT strategies, and for attitudes toward treatment-seeking for depression; suggesting community leaders could be a valuable resource for expanding evidence-based mental health services delivery within the community from Burma and potentially within Burma as well, where there is a scarcity of mental health professionals. This study extends existing research on training paraprofessionals and religious leaders in the use of CBT. In particular, it adds to the knowledge base on providing mental health services within the community from Burma, which may extend to other refugee and immigrant communities in the U.S.
Item Open Access Molecular Regulators of Stem Cell Fate and Tumor Development in the Cerebellum(2014) Brun, Sonja NicoleMedulloblastoma (MB) is a highly malignant brain tumor that occurs primarily in children. Although surgery, radiation and high-dose chemotherapy have led to increased survival, many MB patients still die from their disease, and patients who survive suffer severe long-term side effects as a consequence of treatment. Thus, more effective and less toxic therapies for MB are critically important. Identifying new treatments will require an understanding of early stages of tumor development - the cell types from which the tumors arise and the signals that regulate their growth - as well as identification of pathways that are critical for the growth and maintenance of established tumors.
In these studies, we first explore the role of WNT signaling in cerebellar progenitors and their potential to serve as cells of origin for WNT-driven tumors. The WNT pathway plays multiple roles in neural development, is crucial for establishment of the embryonic cerebellum, and is highly expressed in a subset of MBs. However, the cell types within the cerebellum that are responsive to WNT signaling remain unknown. We show that expression of activated β-catenin promotes proliferation of cerebellar neural stem cells (NSCs) but not granule neuron precursors (GNPs). Although β-catenin expressing NSCs proliferate in vivo they do not undergo prolonged expansion or neoplastic growth; rather, WNT signaling markedly interferes with their capacity for self-renewal and differentiation. At a molecular level, mutant NSCs exhibit increased expression of c-Myc, which might account for their transient proliferation, but also express high levels of bone morphogenetic proteins and the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21, which might contribute to their altered self-renewal and differentiation. These studies suggest that the WNT pathway is a potent regulator of cerebellar stem cell growth and differentiation and that cooperating "second hits" may be required for neoplastic transformation.
In addition to understanding early stages of transformation, identifying vulnerabilities of established tumors will be critical for development of targeted therapies. Our studies in Chapter 3 are focused on the role of Survivin in SHH-driven MB and utility of survivin inhibition as a therapeutic approach for MB. Survivin is an inhibitor of apoptosis protein (IAP) that regulates cell cycle progression and resistance to apoptosis, is frequently expressed in human MB, and when expressed at high levels predicts poor clinical outcome. Here we show that Survivin is overexpressed in tumors from patched (Ptch) mutant mice, a model of Sonic hedgehog (SHH)-driven MB. Using genetic and pharmacological approaches, we demonstrate that inhibition of Survivin impairs proliferation and survival of both murine and human MB cells. Although Survivin antagonists do not cross the blood-brain barrier, they are capable of impeding growth of MB cells in flank allografts. These studies highlight the importance of Survivin in SHH-driven MB, and suggest that it may represent a novel therapeutic target in patients with this disease.
Item Open Access Protected Areas’ Deforestation Spillovers and Two Critical Underlying Mechanisms: An Empirical Exploration for the Brazilian Amazon(2015) Herrera Garcia, Luis DiegoTo date, the creation of protected areas (PAs) has been the dominant policy in the efforts to protect forests. Yet there is still somewhat limited rigorous evidence about the impacts of PAs on rates of deforestation. Further, most of the existing evidence concerns the impacts of protection within the boundaries of PAs. Much of that existing evidence does not use the characteristics of the protected lands when generating the baselines to which outcomes on protected lands are compared in order to infer the PAs' impacts. Yet even when impact within a PA has been estimated as rigorously as possible, since the total impact of protection involves impact not only inside the PA but also outside the PA even the best possible estimates of impacts within PAs could mis-state total PA impacts. Overstatements occur if there is "leakage" from PAs, i.e., spillovers of activities to forests outside PAs, so deforestation outside is higher than it would have been without the PAs.
My dissertation starts with a reduced form examination of net local spillovers. We follow this with an evaluation of two mechanisms through which PAs could affect forest nearby. In particular we explore two novel angles by considering both migration choices and road building decisions. PA creation could affect the development equilibrium by shifting private and public expectations to lower migration and road building where the PA is established, beyond the PA's boundaries. My dissertation explores implications of such thinking and provides novel empirical evidence for the Brazilian Legal Amazon.
Chapter 1 estimates deforestation spillovers around Brazilian Amazon PAs. Given PA location bias towards regions with low deforestation pressure, we use matching methods to control for observable land characteristics that may confound PAs' impacts. Specifically, we compare 2000-2004 and 2004-2008 deforestation on the land nearby to PAs with clearing of untreated forests similar in key deforestation determinants. We find that some PAs reduce deforestation rates nearby and, consistent with deforestation impacts inside PAs, those local spillovers vary across the landscape. Reductions are significant near roads and cities − not expected if the result is due to insufficient empirical controls but unsurprising if real impacts are arising due to PAs − and around an understandable subset of PAs. This result contrast sharply with most existing analyses of PAs' spillovers where, if anything, 'leakage' (higher nearby clearing) is discussed and observed. Yet we affirm a more general point that local spillovers depend on local development dynamics.
Chapter 2 examines one mechanism for the prior result that PAs lowered rates of deforestation nearby. Given migration's importance throughout the history of this forest frontier, we ask whether dissuading migration could be a mechanism for protection's local conservation spillovers. Examining individual migration decisions among the Amazon municipalities, we find that Federal PAs − previously seen to reduce rates of deforestation near PAs − seem to encourage outmigration from and discourage migration to PA areas.
Chapter 3 examines another mechanism for the result in my Chapter 1. We consider a recent expansion of the unofficial roads networks in the Brazilian Amazon to provide initial evidence concerning whether PAs may affect such investments in development. Specifically, controlling for prior roads − both official and unofficial − we test whether the growth in unofficial roads between 2008 and 2010 is reduced by establishments of PAs. Thus, we examine road growth as another potential mechanism for forest spillovers from PAs. Controlling for relevant observable factors, and using both matching and OLS, we find that having a large fraction of municipal area in PAs − in particular Federal PAs − reduces the growth of unofficial roads. Such impacts can significantly influence regional development patterns.
Item Open Access Revolutionizing Modernities: Visualizing Utopia in 1960s Havana, Cuba(2015) Rivera, AlfredoIn 1967 a massive graphic print based on Cuban photographer Alberto Korda’s world famous image of Che Guevara was draped over the five-story Ministry of Interior Building in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución. The print became the iconic image of the Cuban Revolution, reaching beyond its architectural surface into an international market of consumer-based goods. My dissertation is concerned with the ways in which Cuba’s architectural past was put to very different use by the Cuban Revolution, and how Cuban modernity was re-imagined in new architectural projects, in the governmentally supported visual arts, and in curatorial work which brought the fine and popular arts into Cuba’s new and re-inhabited spaces. Drawing from critical theory, formal analysis, and methodologies of art and architectural history along with visual studies, I explicate the ways in which art, design and architecture play a significant role in mediating a revolutionary mythology. I argue that national identity, or cubanidad, becomes reliant on such a mythology of revolution, defined by a Third World solidarity and Cuba’s position within a broader socialist world as much as it is by local elements.
My dissertation explores the history of the Cuban Revolution’s visual culture in six thematic chapters, looking at themes such as modernities, revolution, appropriation, utopia, propaganda, and postmodernity. Each chapter explores developments in the relationship between art and architecture, and situates 1960s Havana within Cuba’s broader history as a republic and a colony. Concerned with the role the visual and spatial played within a socialist setting, Cuba became a productive platform to engage in international debates regarding modernity at the height of the Cold War era. My dissertation examines how Cuba deliberately projected its modernity to the world via architecture and the arts, and how these visual and spatial manifestations speak to the utopic character of modernity within Latin America and the Caribbean.
Item Open Access Some correlates of the Jungian typology: personal style variables(1966) Bieler, Steven HowardC. G. Jung’s Typology (21) is a richly described and, to the writer, intuitively reasonable method of categorizing individuals. One of its type-pairs, extraversion-introversion, has become a controversial, but apparently lasting, concept in the psychological literature. (The words H extraversion 11 and "introversion" have also been taken into popular culture, to denote sociophilia and sociophobia, a meaning more circumscribed than that originally intended by Jung.) The other type-pairs, thinking-feeling and sensation-intuition, have received minimal research attention despite offering, in the writer’s view, as much potential for research as extraversion-introversion. Sufficient research (some of which is reported briefly at the end of this chapter) exists to provide evidence of the potential utility of extraversion-introversion as descriptive categories. A -small body of research by Myers (26) and by MacKinnon (In Myers, 26) suggests that this potential utility extends to the Typology as a whole. It was felt that the potential utility of the Typology has become actual to the extent that a variety of personality characteristics can be shown to be both theoretically and empirically related to it. The aim of this research was to seek further relations of this sort.Item Open Access Statistical Methods of Disease-Gene Mapping in Trio-based Next Generation Sequencing(2015) Jiang, YuDisease-gene mapping plays an important role in improving the development of medical science. As with the development of Next Generation Sequencing technologies, mapping disease genes through rare genetic variants become economic and reliable. De novo mutations as the most extreme form of rare variants played an important role in the occurrence of complex diseases. To detect de novo mutations, case-parent trios are used to perform the sequencing studies. This case-parent design provides the chance to detect disease-causal genes from both de novo mutations and inherited mutations. We proposed three novel methods to map disease genes according to de novo mutation load (fitDNM), allele transmission rate (rvTDT) and compound heterozygous and recessive genes (coreTDT) separately to maximize the statistical power of analysis in case-parent trios. These three methods are then applied to analyze neurodevelopmental/neuropsychiatric disorders. The analysis with fitDNM provides strong statistical evidence supporting two potentially causal genes: SUV420H1 in autism spectral disorder and TRIO in a combined analysis of the four neurodevelopmental/neuropsychiatric disorders investigated. The application of rvTDT on epileptic encephalopathy (EE) trios find that dominant (or additive) inherited rare variants are unlikely to play a substantial role within EE genes previously identified through de novo mutation studies.
Item Open Access The Anti-Iconicity of Blackness: A Theological Reading of the Modern Racial Optic(2015) Wong, Jessica WaiFongRecent focus on the police treatment of dark bodies has brought the visual perception of race to the forefront of national discourse. It has raised the question of why certain people are seen as a greater social threat than others. The current project engages this issue, offering a Christian theological reading of the problem of modern visuality in relation to race and gender as well as a constructive way forward.
Using Byzantine iconophile theology, namely, the concepts of iconic and anti-iconic, as the governing framework, this dissertation teases out the theologically charged nature of visuality deployed by the modern, western racial optic. Beginning with an exploration of the modern optic in the United States (chapter 1), this project applies the analytical framework of Byzantine iconophile visual theology (chapter 2) to the racial optic as it emerges in a modern form during the Colonial Period (chapter 3) and develops during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (chapter 4).
Through this theological study of the deployment of the racial optic upon bodies, it becomes clear that there are structural and procedural similarities that exist between the bodily evaluation, categorization, and conversion that take place within the liturgical practices surrounding the Christian icon of Jesus Christ and those belonging to the cultural liturgy of the racial optic, build around western modernity’s holy icon – the white male. In both cases, people are transformed by the practice of veneration. In both cases, the external body functions as an indication of internal character, revealing one’s state of fitness for inclusion within civilized society. Understanding the visual practice of the modern racial optic through Byzantine iconophile theology’s iconic and anti-iconic sheds light upon why the presence of those considered dark, deformed, and abnormal has been and continues to be treated as a threat to the order and wellbeing of the modern, western social body.
Item Open Access When Working Memory and Attention Compete: Characterizing the Dynamic Interdependence between our Mental Workspace and External Environment(2015) Kiyonaga, AnastasiaAll of us are taxed with juggling our inner mental lives with immediate external task demands. For many years, the temporary maintenance of internal information was considered to be handled by a dedicated working memory (WM) system. It has recently become increasingly clear, however, that such short-term internal activation interacts with attention focused on external stimuli. It is unclear, however, exactly why these two interact, at what level of processing, and to what degree. Because our internal maintenance and external attention processes co-occur with one another, the manner of their interaction has vast implications for functioning in daily life. The work described here has employed original experimental paradigms combining WM and attention task elements, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to illuminate the associated neural processes, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to clarify the causal substrates of attentional brain function. These studies have examined a mechanism that might explain why (and when) the content of WM can involuntarily capture visual attention. They have, furthermore, tested whether fundamental attentional selection processes operate within WM, and whether they are reciprocal with attention. Finally, they have illuminated the neural consequences of competing attentional demands. The findings indicate that WM shares representations, operating principles, and cognitive resources with externally-oriented attention.