AUETD (Auburn University)
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Differences in Drinking Motives Among Social and Binge Drinkers in Relation to Maturing Out: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Pilot Study
No full textAlcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is associated with numerous interpersonal, mental, and health related consequences that can ultimately result in mortality. Past research suggests drinking motives, particularly drinking to cope, can act as maintenance factors for harmful alcohol consumption. The current study aims to examine drinking motives in real time using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in a sample of both social and binge drinkers (SD and BD) who vary in stages of adulthood to better understand how specific drinking motives impact hazardous alcohol use patterns across a 30-day period. We hypothesized that higher endorsement of coping motives would emerge among BD and be positively associated with AUDIT scores within the entire sample, BD, and SD. We also hypothesized that enhancement motives among BD would be associated with the highest level of alcohol consumption. Contrary to our hypotheses, enhancement motives were positively associated with AUDIT total scores among the entire sample and alcohol consumption among the entire sample and SD. Among BD, drinking out of boredom, out of habit, and to relax as part of our exploratory motives were associated with AUDIT total scores. Within SD, drinking to relax and out of boredom were positively associated with alcohol consumption while drinking out of habit was negatively associated with alcohol consumption. Overall, the current study uses nuanced EMA methodology to further demonstrate that drinking motives are an important variable in relation to risky drinking patterns and should continue to be studied in alcohol use pathology across research and clinical settings
Investigating consumers’ perceptions of recycled jeans through a stimulus-organism-response approach
No full textThis study investigated consumer purchase intentions toward jeans made from recycled post-consumer textile waste (PCTW), examining key psychological factors such as perceived trust in third-party certification labels (TPCL), perceived risks (functional, social, and psychological), and perceived consumer effectiveness. Grounded in Mehrabian and Russell's (1974) Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, the research analyzed how perceived trust in TPCL influences consumer perceptions, specifically perceived risk and perceived consumer effectiveness, which influence purchase intentions. The primary objective was to investigate how perceived risks and perceived consumer effectiveness interrelate with perceived trust in TPCL to influence purchase intention toward recycled PCTW jeans. Data were collected through an online survey with 231 participants, utilizing representative sampling. The results revealed that trust in TPCL positively influenced purchase intentions by reducing functional risks and enhancing perceived consumer effectiveness, while psycho-social risk has a weaker mediating effect. Additionally, the study identified key consumer concerns, including cost, negative perceptions of recycled products, and general disinterest, which significantly influenced purchase intentions. These findings provide insights into the psychological drivers of sustainable fashion consumption and offer practical implications for marketers seeking to promote recycled products such as jeans. By highlighting the pivotal role of perceived trust in certification labels as a psychological catalyst that not only shapes consumer attitudes but also subtly drives sustainable purchase intentions, offering nuanced insights with broad implications for both theory and practice in green fashion marketing
The Gender Leadership Gap in the U.S. Meetings and Events Industry: An Exploratory Sequential Mixed Methods Approach
No full textThe U.S. meetings and events industry is heavily female-dominated, yet continues to be led by men. Despite accounting for approximately 80% of the workforce, just 20% of executive positions are held by women. While this imbalance is stark, limited academic research has explored the barriers and facilitators shaping women’s career development in this dynamic field. This dissertation addresses this gap through an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, in which the most commonly encountered and most influential barriers and facilitators to women’s career development in the U.S. meetings and events industry were explored. Guided by the Social Role Theory, this study first conducted semi-structured interviews with female executives in the field to uncover qualitative themes. Thematic analysis revealed several barriers, such as work-life conflict, a lack of industry-wide standardization, and numerous barriers rooted in gendered expectations. Facilitators included mentorship, self-initiated industry engagement, and empathetic leadership. These findings informed the development of a quantitative survey distributed to women working in the industry, which assessed both the frequency and influence of these factors on career development.
Quantitative findings revealed that the most frequently occurring barriers, along with the most damaging barriers, were generally rooted in gendered expectations. Among the most frequently occurring were being held to a higher standard than male colleagues and women feeling as though they must work harder than male colleagues, while the most damaging barriers included women being taken less seriously than their male counterparts and work being undervalued. Conversely, the most commonly occurring facilitators included financial literacy and having a skillset that is transferable to a management position, while the most beneficial included resilience, confidence, and authenticity. This study offers practical recommendations for organizations, such as inclusive leadership training, bias-reduction workshops, and mentorship pipelines tailored to the industry’s unique demands.
By combining in-depth qualitative insights with broader quantitative validation, this dissertation contributes to the limited but growing body of knowledge on the gender leadership gap in the U.S. meetings and events industry. The findings offer actionable strategies for industry leaders and educators aiming to support and retain women as they advance into leadership roles
Patterns of thermoregulatory mass evacuation in honey bees
Get PDFHoney bees are master thermoregulators, capable of maintaining nest homeostasis across fluctuating ambient temperatures. When workers must cool their nest, they use multiple thermoregulatory behaviors (e.g., fanning, collecting water), but bearding, where hundreds to thousands of workers evacuate their nest and form a bivouac outside, is relatively unexplored. Here, we (1) describe natural bearding patterns, (2) experimentally manipulate colonies to determine what impacts beard size and timing, and (3) explore how workers dissipate back into their nest. We show that bearding occurs daily in hot weather, but the largest beards consistently happen in the evening/night, between 1800 and 2400. Beards are located around the nest entrance, but workers bias their position towards the shaded-side of the nest box. As colony size increases, beard size and duration also increase, but the proportion of the colony bearding does not increase with colony size. Colonies with and without brood still cast beards; brood presence/absence did not impact beard size or duration. After noticing that beards tend to dissipate at sunrise, we experimentally showed that beards induced in the afternoon dissipate within 1-2 hrs, whereas beards induced in the evening remain overnight (10+ hrs). Bearding overnight, however, does carry risks for developing brood inside, as nest temperatures dropped below the optimal range, until the beard dissipated at sunrise. What cues workers use to depart the beard remain unknown, but experimentally illuminating colonies at night did not induce beards to dissipate. Our results suggest that bearding is an individual decision, not one that is coordinated across the colony. Still, these individual actions result in a dramatic collective response that colonies employ to reduce the temperature of their nest. Here, we show how and when colonies use bearding, despite its risks
Examining Personal and Farm Debt in Chapter 12 Bankruptcy Filings
No full textChapter 12 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Code is designed to allow farmers to reorganize and restructure their debt in order to continue operating as the debts are repaid to the creditors (Dixon et al., 2002). This is a unique chapter in the United States Bankruptcy Code due to the debt requirement of at least 50 percent of the total debt stemming from the farming operation. This means there is potential for a significant amount of non-farm debt as part of the bankruptcy filing, essentially allowing for the simultaneous filing of a consumer and farm bankruptcy case. This research investigates how the composition of farm and personal debt varies across chapter 12 filings. It is focused on the initial bankruptcy filings with the courts, capturing a filer’s perception of their debt composition at the time when they seek assistance from the court. Using data from PACER and the Federal Judicial Center Integrated Data Base (IDB), t-tests were conducted to determine if specific debt compositions resulted in statically significant differences between the means of real property as a percent of total assets, the amount of real property, and total liabilities. Farm bankruptcy is also acknowledged as an indicator of financial stress within the agricultural industry (D’Antoni et al., 2009). Due to this, this research also examines how farm income and loan delinquency rates for personal and farm debt relate to the number of farm bankruptcy filings. Findings include a positive relationship with net farm income, delinquent loans secured by farmland, delinquent agricultural production loans, and delinquent credit card loans, indicating these broader financial measures are related to bankruptcy filings in the United States
Design and Analysis of a Dual Antenna Vector Tracking Software Defined Receiver for Robust Navigation and Mitigation of Spoofing Threats
Get PDFGlobal navigation satellite systems (GNSS) remain the best way to maintain a global position, velocity, and timing (PVT) solution for autonomous systems.
However, GNSS is susceptible to interference and degradation.
One of the most nefarious forms of interference is spoofing attacks, in which a bad actor broadcasts a false GNSS signal to deceive a GNSS user into trusting false navigation states.
This can be a simple rebroadcast of revived signals, or it can be a complicated directed attack against a single target.
Although the received signal parameters appear legitimate, the angle of arrival of the incoming signals can identify whether the signal is authentic or spoofed.
Typically a planar antenna array can identify the angle of arrival of a signal in three dimensional space to determine if it is authentic or not.
A linear array can look for phase consistencies to classify spoofing signals but cannot determine a full look direction vector.
This work introduces a dual antenna vector tracking receiver, which is a software defined radio that is deeply coupled with a small antenna array, and uses navigation state feedback to synthesize larger antenna arrays to achieve results of a larger planar array with a fraction of the hardware requirements.
The synthetic array uses estimates of receiver and emitter motion to get correlations at future points in time at set separations so that the correlators are phase consistent with an instantaneous capture of a larger array.
The correlation observations are used to determine angle of arrival and classify spoofing signals.
Additionally, the classification algorithm is adapted such that it functions with no initial knowledge of the receiver PVT, so that it will work if it comes online in a spoofing environment.
The Dual Antenna Vector Tracking receiver (DAVT) is tested for its direction finding capabilities using commercial simulations and live sky tests, and compared against the performance of a small planar array.
It was found that the DAVT was able to accurately provide angles of arrival when the receiver was moving at speeds greater than 5 m/s and had a C/N0 greater than 30 dB-Hz.
Additionally, it was found that the DAVT could perform at levels near that of a four element planar array on live sky tests and critically provided similar test statistics that would be used in the spoofing signal classification scheme.
The spoofing classification scheme was tested using a commercial simulation tool to create a spoofing scenario with multiple cooperative emitters.
The DAVT was able to correctly identify the spoofing signals and the authentic signals using Angle of Arrival (AOA) with the only initial knowledge being the ephemerides.
After the classification, a mitigation scheme was introduced and tested on simulated data that exploits the deterministic nature of spoofing signals.
A digital beamformer is used to isolate spoofing signals who are actively interfering with authentic signals.
The signal parameters of the spoofing signal are estimated and successive interference cancellation is used to subtract the estimated signal from the data stream.
The spoofing free data streams are able to use the spatial degrees of freedom to instead amplify the authentic signal.
This mitigation algorithm showed that beam forming improved positioning performance in cases where the spoofing signals had up to a 20 dB power advantage over the authentic signals
Hydrogel Products from Food Waste
No full textDietary fiber provides organisms with key nutrients and allows for transport of small molecules and metabolic products. As an inspiration to design materials, dietary fiber is biocompatible, sustainable, and positively influences microbial communities. In this work, biopolymers are extracted from fibrous food waste to mimic the functionality of dietary fiber and are used to fabricate bioinspired composite materials. Specifically, biopolymers, such as cellulose and pectin, will be used to develop tunable hydrogels that promote microbe interactions, support therapeutic transport of probiotics, adsorption of uremic toxins, and an enhanced environment for plant growth. This research will provide a fundamental understanding of the effects of biopolymer-based materials derived from fibrous food waste on microbial communities. The extraction of biopolymers from mixed food waste will create a sustainable platform and is a novel approach to generating commercially available materials. Currently, cellulose microgel beads that are fabricated using the dropping technique suffer from irregularity and mechanical variability, which limit their translation to biomedical applications. To counteract this variability, the coagulation behavior of cellulose/salt solutions is investigated in the fabrication of microgel beads via the dropping technique. Additionally, by utilizing these feedstocks to produce drug delivery vessels in the form of microgels, this research provides new fundamental understanding of the interactions between food products like cellulose and small molecule toxins. Finally, hydrogel seed coatings derived from the peel of an orange and inoculated with microbial communities will provide new understanding of biofertilization and microbial delivery to enhance the growth of plants via a sustainable platform
Harmony in Horticulture: Rethinking State Preemption on Pesticide Regulation
No full textThis three-paper dissertation investigates the adoption of state pesticide preemption policies in all 50 U.S. states from 1989 to 2016. Utilizing internal determinants, external factors (policy diffusion), and conventional policy preemption literature, the study quantitatively explores the factors influencing policy adoption. The overarching research question addresses what factors make states more inclined to adopt policies preempting local governments. Additionally, the dissertation aims to determine which of the three models (internal determinants, external factors, or conventional policy preemption) best explains the variation in state pesticide preemption policy adoption across the United States. The literature review examines existing empirical evidence on policy adoption, policy diffusion, and state preemption across states. Subsequently, the dissertation presents various analytic approaches to test specific hypotheses derived from internal determinants and diffusion models of policy adoption and preemption literature. The study utilizes Competing Risk Analysis (a model of Survival Analysis) to investigate the research questions, considering the characteristics of the variables involved. This internal determinant chapter examines internal factors like the political party concerning the governor and legislature, industry influence, and institutional variables to understand why some states adopt pesticide preemption policies. It finds that while a governor's party affiliation has limited impact, party control of legislatures, unified government, industry influence, and legislative professionalism are stronger drivers of policy adoption. The external determinant/ regional diffusion paper highlights that, in addition to neighboring states, economic competition plays a significant role in policy diffusion. The study suggests that states often seek guidance from others that have similar economic characteristics or are geographically close, such as sharing a border, when making policy decisions. The preemption paper enhances the preemption literature by examining the factors influencing state-level decision-making in pesticide regulation. It highlights how demographics, partisanship, and institutional frameworks shape local governance and emphasizes American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) influence on state policy and its impact on local authority
Three Essays on Development Microeconomics
Get PDFIn the first chapter, I investigate the impact of faster Internet access on research production in African universities, resulting from the staggered rollout of submarine cables to 12 coastal African countries in the late 2000s. When a university gains access to the fast Internet, the number of publications produced by the researchers affiliated with that university increases by about 65 percent. Web access to existing research and improved communication between researchers appear to be the mechanisms for increased production. In the second chapter, we estimate the local economic effects of U.S. commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) using a differences-in-differences strategy. Our control group consists of locations where plant construction was planned but ultimately canceled. We find that NPP construction significantly increases local employment and wages, with effects concentrated in the construction and public utilities sectors. However, these gains dissipate once construction concludes, and the plant becomes operational, as operational employment requirements are minimal. We find no significant spillover effects on neighboring towns, and commercial operations do not meaningfully impact broader labor market outcomes. In the third chapter, we examine the relationship between SSDI applications and the spread of automation technologies. Using confidential data on SSDI applications at the commuting zone level, we estimate the effect of automation exposure on application rates across age and gender groups from 2005 to 2019. Our findings suggest that SSDI application rates for the 18–64 age group decline with greater automation exposure. This effect is more pronounced in the 35–54 and 55–64 age groups
A Preliminary Study on Enzyme Adhesion/Encapsulation within Janus Liposomes
No full textThis thesis describes a research effort of encapsulating water-soluble enzymes within Janus liposomes, with aims to enhance the latter’s motion ability as micromotors. Janus particles have been of interest to the development of new drug delivery systems due to their ability to have one side of the particle be decorated with a micromotor and therefore increasing the efficiency of its movement. While many inorganic/polymer Janus particles display limited biocompatibility, their lipid-based counterparts, i.e., Janus liposome, bypass this issue thanks to naturally occurring composition. Catalase, a highly efficient enzyme to convert hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and water, has been chosen for this study and its distribution and interaction with Janus liposomes are followed with fluorescence microscopy