2923 research outputs found
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Late Caddo Bottle 080A
No full textLate Caddo Bottle from the T. Harper Willis collection.https://digitalcommons.latech.edu/harper-willis-pottery-collection/1159/thumbnail.jp
Caddo Effigy Bowl 081A
No full textCaddo Effigy Bowl from the T. Harper Willis collection.https://digitalcommons.latech.edu/harper-willis-pottery-collection/1161/thumbnail.jp
Late Caddo Bottle 110A
No full textLate Caddo Bottle from the T. Harper Willis collection.https://digitalcommons.latech.edu/harper-willis-pottery-collection/1210/thumbnail.jp
Late Caddo Bottle 107B
No full textLate Caddo Bottle from the T. Harper Willis collection.https://digitalcommons.latech.edu/harper-willis-pottery-collection/1205/thumbnail.jp
Privacy Relinquishing and Safeguarding: When are Consumers Willing to Disclose or Protect Their Information?
Get PDFThis dissertation explores consumer privacy, an issue that has received substantial attention recently. The first aim of this dissertation is to redefine consumer privacy. Research in marketing has focused primarily on consumer privacy concern but has not explicitly defined consumer privacy itself. Further, research on consumer privacy has resulted in fragmented definitions, which are siloed across disciplines, organizations, ethical and legal realms. This fragmented approach to consumer privacy research has left more gaps than the answers it seeks to provide. A more fitting definition of privacy, conceptualized along a continuum of total exposure to total anonymity, is offered. Actual privacy is defined as an individual’s state or condition concerning the degree to which information about a person is not known by others and ranges on a continuum from total exposure (low privacy) to total anonymity (high privacy).” Further, a differentiation between actual privacy (i.e., an individual’s state of privacy) versus perceived privacy (i.e., an individual’s belief of their privacy state) is also presented. Perceived privacy is defined as the degree to which an individual believes that information about themselves is not known by others and ranges on a continuum from total exposure (low privacy) to total anonymity (high privacy).
Also, a framework of consumer’s information privacy levels, consisting of seven levels, is presented. Knowledge of the different levels of consumers’ information privacy provides marketers with a definite approach on how to handle consumers’ information, and what level of privacy is most concerning for consumers.
Finally, this dissertation reports the results of an experimental study (n = 631), conducted through Qualtrics. The study contained two parts. Part 1 was a 2 (relationship quality) x 2 (perceived convenience) between subjects design. Part 2 manipulated privacy violation. Data were analyzed using SEM. Results of part 1 show that relationship quality positively influences privacy relinquishing intentions and negatively influences privacy safeguarding intentions. Similarly, perceived convenience has a positive effect on relinquishing and a negative effect on safeguarding. In addition, disposition to value privacy has a moderating effect on the relationship between relationship quality and safeguarding intentions, where respondents in the high disposition to value privacy were less willing to relinquish information. Interestingly, respondents in the high disposition to value privacy reported lower intention to safeguard their privacy. This finding is consistent with the privacy paradox phenomena, which suggests that while consumers may express their concern for privacy, their behaviors are contradicting and do not employ any protective privacy measures. Results of part 2 show that privacy violation caused a positive effect on betrayal, and betrayal led to less privacy relinquishing intentions and high safeguarding intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are also included
Application of Lignin (Modified/Unmodified ) to Cement and Observing Effects
Get PDFBiomass of various types have been known to be important sources of energy or raw material for products in industries for centuries. Biomass have been proven to be cost effective as sources of suitable chemicals that can enhance many industrial processes. Lignin is one of many very valuable components extractable from biomass. Using lignin, modified or unmodified, can improve the sustainability of manufacturing processes. In this work, lignin was extracted from two different biomass, i.e. coffee chaff and sugarcane bagasse. Coffee chaff is the dried skins of coffee beans, the waste product from the roasting process. Sugarcane bagasse is the fibrous material remaining once the juice is extracted from the sugarcane. It can be dried and combusted as a solid biofuel. A deep eutectic solvent (DES) was used to extract lignin from these two biomass. DESs are hydrogen-bonded solvents that can extract lignin from biomass. They are safe, simple, cost effective and recyclable. In this study, the DES used was a two to one molar ratio of formic acid with choline chloride (FA:CC). The lignin extracted from the two biomass was added to cement to discover how they impacted the plasticity, porosity and compression strength of cement cylinders. In addition, commercially purchased sugarcane bagasse lignin was carboxymethylated and added to cement to investigate its effect on these properties
Stochastic Decision Modeling to Improve Breast Cancer Preventive Care
Get PDFBreast cancer is a leading cause of premature mortality among women in the United States. Breast cancer screening tests can help with detecting breast cancer in early stages and thereby reducing the breast cancer mortality risk. However, due to the imperfect nature of screening tests, there is always some associated overdiagnosis, false positives, and false negatives risks. Therefore, to improve breast cancer preventive care, we defined the focus of this dissertation on modeling breast cancer screening decisions.Breast cancer overdiagnosis is the first issue that is addressed in this dissertation. Although overdiagnosis is known to be the major risk inherent in mammography screening; currently there is no way to distinguish between overdiagnosed cancers and the ones that would cause problems over a patient’s lifetime. Overdiagnosis risk significantly depends on a patient’s compliance with screening recommendations. In Chapter 2, we use a stochastic framework to perform a harm-benefit analysis to compare the overdiagnosis risk with the benefits that breast cancer screening provides. In addition, we estimate the lifetime mortality risk of breast cancer while considering the overdiagnosis risk and the uncertainty in a patient’s adherence behavior. Our results show that, although overdiagnosis rate is relatively high in breast cancer screening, the benefits of breast cancer mammography screening outweigh the overdiagnosis risk.The second issue that is addressed in this dissertation is false negative results caused by density of breast tissue. Breast density is known to increase breast cancer risk and decrease mammography screening sensitivity. Breast density notification laws, require physicians to inform women with high breast density of these potential risks. The laws usually require healthcare providers to notify patients of the possibility of using more sensitive supplemental screening tests (e.g., ultrasound). Since the enactment of the laws, there have been controversial debates over i) their implementations due to the potential radiologists bias in breast density classification of mammogram images and ii) the necessity of supplemental screenings for all patients with high breast density. Breast density is a dynamic risk factor. Therefore, in the third chapter, we apply a hidden Markov model (HMM) on a sparse unbalanced longitudinal data to quantify the yearly progression of breast density based on Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADs) classifications.In Chapter 4, we use the results from previous chapter to investigate the effectiveness of supplemental screening and the impact of radiologists’ bias on patients’ outcomes under the breast density notification law. We consider the conditional probability of eventually detecting breast cancer in early states given that the patient develops breast cancer in her lifetime and the expected number of supplemental tests as patient’s outcome. Our results indicate that referring patients to a supplemental test solely based on their breast density may not necessarily improve their health outcomes and other risk factors need to be considered when making such referrals. Additionally, average-skilled radiologists’ performances are shown to be comparable with the performance of a perfect radiologist
Thomas Standifer Home-(Long Range View)
No full textBlack and white photograph of Ruston, Louisiana, ca. 1900.https://digitalcommons.latech.edu/ruston-photograph-collection/1044/thumbnail.jp
Chautauqua Hotel
No full textBlack and white photograph of Ruston, Louisiana, ca. 1900.https://digitalcommons.latech.edu/ruston-photograph-collection/1063/thumbnail.jp
The Effect of Time-Restricted Feeding on Body Weight, Energy, Mood, Sleep, and Hunger Levels of Adults on Social Media
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of time-restricted eighthour feeding on body weight, self-reported energy, mood, and hunger scores, and selfreported sleep patterns of adult men and women on social media. Generally healthy adults ages 18 to 65 were invited on social media to participate in a five-week study which involved a one week of following their normal dietary patterns succeeded by four weeks of practicing time-restricted feeding of eight hours per day, also known as 16 hours of fasting. Daily surveys were created in Survey Monkey and distributed through the messaging platform, Remind, that gathered data concerning self-reported energy, mood, and hunger scores, sleep patterns, and times participants began and ended fasting for the previous day. Initial, midpoint, and final body weights were also self-reported and sent to the researcher.
One hundred twenty-nine subjects participated in the study but only 86 met the requirements of submitting all three body weights and completing a minimum of five out of seven surveys each week. The majority of participants were female (81.39%), ages 18- 25 (36.05%), and worked in the health science/health care field (23.26%). There was a significant decrease in body weight and BMI from baseline to midpoint (2.03±5.11; .318±.742) and from baseline to final (3.49±7.08; .567±.742). Mood scores also decreased significantly, showing an increase in irritability/agitation throughout the study (.876±1.34). Hours of sleep increased significantly from baseline to after two weeks of intermittent fasting (.0781 ± .342) but not from baseline to after four weeks of intermittent fasting. There were no significant changes in self-reported hunger or energy scores.
This study found supportive evidence that following time-restricted feeding in the short term may be effective for weight loss. Mood, specifically irritability and agitation, may also be negatively affected by time-restricted feeding. People may experience increased sleep duration but more research is needed to make conclusions at this time, particularly examining its effect long term