Middle Tennessee State University
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Leda’s Lament: A Musical Adaptation of Sexual Assault Themes with Greek Mythological Origin Arranged for Flute Choir
No full text“Leda’s Lament” was created to raise awareness for the hundreds of thousands of
women worldwide who have experienced domestic and sexual violence. I chose three
songs, all based on stories from Greek Mythology, and organized a performance that
debuted on November 18th, 2023. These musical selections included Syrinx, by Claude
Debussy, The Four Moods of Pan, by Graham Powning, and Swan Upon Leda, by
Andrew Hozier-Byrne. I arranged Swan Upon Leda for an ensemble consisting of
piccolo, four c flutes, two alto flutes, two bass flutes, and the contrabass flute. I also
contacted the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, and any
proceeds from the concert were donated to this organization. I worked with my flute
professor Dr. Deanna Little to arrange Hozier’s piece, and as the Fall semester began, I
was responsible for rehearsing the concert with the MTSU Flute Choir
Student Understanding of Conditional Probability
No full textWith increased availability of data, the need to be statistically literate has become crucial for a person to consume news. One major branch of statistics is probability which describes the likelihood of an event to happen. This uncertain nature of probability can often cause confusion. Specifically, conditional probability has been shown to be difficult to comprehend for students.
This paper examines the importance of probability literacy. It highlights cognitive issues in learning conditional probability as well as difficulties teaching the concept. Research from the past few decades discussing student misconceptions, student understanding frameworks, and teaching strategies to overcome cognitive issues is reviewed and utilized to construct a unit plan for teaching conditional probability. The unit plan is presented in full and justified using research-based suggestions in aims to improve the teaching and learning of conditional probability.M.S
Macroeconomic Welfare versus Microeconomic Inertia: a Survey of Prison Privatization and Punitive Policy
No full textThis thesis explores the behavior of public policymakers and private corrections
firms through the lens of economic incentives and highlights agency problems
policymakers face when deciding how to fulfill corrections obligations. Specific attention
is paid to CoreCivic, Inc. due to its significant market share in the private corrections
industry and particular relevance to the Tennessee economy. Advocacy methods are
evaluated using a multidisciplinary corpus of existing literature including economic and
econometric studies, investigative journalism, financial statements, and other publicly
available documentation. A novel econometric analysis suggests that direct political
donations by CoreCivic and/or its Political Action Committee in a given state have a
linear relationship to the level of prison privatization in that state
Developing an Application as a Learning Supplement for Key Concepts in x86_64 Assembly Language Programming using NASM
No full textAt Middle Tennessee State University, the Introduction to Assembly Language
(CSCI 3160) course is open to students from different fields of study. If students need
extra help with the content of the course outside of class, there are not many resources
that they can use to effectively learn and gain additional practice. We observed that some
students struggle and possibly fail the course. Although office hours are available, some
students do not utilize them. Previous research shows that a supplemental application can
benefit students finding difficulty with a course. For those reasons, the author has
developed an application as a learning supplement for students struggling with key
concepts in the course. The creation of the supplement consists of two phases: research
and implementation. The resulting application is a user-friendly interface that covers
thirteen topics crucial to the course's successful completion. Students can now utilize the
application to get extra help for the course. We believe that the application will improve
the pass rate for the course
Through My Mother's Eyes: History, Memory, and Trauma in Narratives of the "Strong Black Woman"
No full textThis thesis examines Black womanhood through the lenses of postmemory, trauma and survival, social capital, and the strong Black woman archetype. Using the life narrative of one Black woman from Atlanta, Georgia, this work demonstrates how the strong Black woman archetype is directly related to the African American postmemory of slavery that has been ingrained into the lives of Black women for generations. It exemplifies how the strong Black woman model is both a tool of survival and a trauma response and is at once traumatizing and fortifying to the individual Black woman. It also demonstrates how multigenerational maladaptive behaviors, violence, and rigid obedience training are rooted in slavery and continue to be traumatizing. It is within this context that the strong Black woman identity is formed. The narrator’s story reveals how survival networks, often headed, or strongly supported by Black women, have been essential to the survivance of the Black community, often acting through the Black church or other mutual aid associations.M.A
DIGITAL SEED GRANT WINNERS AND FINAL PROJECTS 2022-2023
No full textIntercultural Engagement in Short-Term Faculty-Led Study Abroad Programs Across Disciplines, Dr. Priya Ananth; MATLAB/Simulink Simulations for an Autonomous Vehicle Sensors Testbed, Dr. Jorge Vargas; Database of American Synagogue Iconography (DASI), Dr. Laura Cochrane; and The African American Material Culture of Death in Middle Tennessee, Dr. Stacey Graham.Walker Library Digital Scholarship Initiatives supports individual and collaborative digital projects in research, teaching, and public outreach from any discipline on campus. The Digital Seed Grant is an annual award for start-up funds, developed to encourage and create opportunities for faculty, staff, and graduate students to use digital technologies in their research, service, or teaching.
The Digital Seed Grant (dsi.mtsu.edu/dsgrant) had impressive applications for its sixth year. The Digital Seed Grant Review Committee and Library Dean decided to award four grants for the 2022-2023 academic year.
The AY 22-23 awardees were announced on the website at https://dsi.mtsu.edu/dsgrant22-23. Below is a summary of the four winning projects and resulting outcomes.The Digital Seed Grant is made possible by generous funding and support from the Library Dean and the Digital Scholarship Initiatives team. For many, this is a starter grant, which can lead to national grant opportunities in the future and Walker Library wants to encourage and support such creativity activity.
As a competitive grant, evaluation of applications and assessment of digital lifecycles of selected projects takes time. The Digital Seed Grant is indebted to the time of the Review Committee and colleagues at Walker Library who support operational aspects. Thanks also go to those who help promote the grant and encourage participation. The grant program was initially launched in 2016 for the award period of 2017-2018. Since 2017, the library has jumped-started campus research by funding 15 digital seed grant projects across various academic disciplines.
The 2023-2024 cycle is on pause. Information on future cycles will be available at https://dsi.mtsu.edu/dsgrant
Disconnected: ERCOT's use of Twitter during Winter Storm Uri
No full textIn February of 2021, a severe arctic weather event known as Winter Storm Uri caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to lose control of the power supply. An estimated 10 million people were left without electricity in subfreezing temperatures, resulting in hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. This case study examines ERCOT’s Twitter response to Winter Storm Uri through the crisis communications lenses of the stealing thunder and digital stealing thunder strategies, and Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). The study utilizes news reports and Tweets from the @ERCOT_ISO account between February 10, 2021, and February 20, 2022, to explore the company’s response in three stages: before, during, and after the crisis. This examination of digital communications surrounding a high-profile crisis event contributes to the existing research literature on stealing thunder, digital stealing thunder, and SCCT while examining the practical value of the strategies and theories for utility companies facing severe weather events.M.S
AURONE-DERIVED TRIAZOLES AS POTENTIAL SCAFFOLDS FOR FLUORESCENT AND ANTI-INFLAMMATORY MOLECULES
No full textNatural products derived from various plants have been used throughout history for many different purposes. One such naturally occurring compound, flavonoids, are responsible for the pigmentation in most flowering plants. Flavonoids have been demonstrated to have unique properties, both biological and photophysical. Various classes of flavonoids exist including flavones and flavonols, which have been studied for their biological activities. Two flavonoids, Quercetin and Apigenin, are commercially available and have been shown to possess anti-inflammatory properties. One derivative of flavone, the aurone, has been predominantly examined for their photophysical properties as fluorophores and their biological activities in cancer cells. Recently, studies have implicated aurones as anti-inflammatories, though their mechanism has yet to be thoroughly elucidated. Aurones are highly modifiable, and many substitutions can be added to either the benzofuranone or benzylidene groups, or both, thus modulating their biological activities and fluorescent properties. Compounds containing the 1,2,3-triazole moiety have been explored for their use as COX-2 inhibitors and as fluorophores. Therefore, it was thought that the incorporation of a 1,2,3-triazole as a modification of existing aurones may lead to similar, if not more potent fluorescent and biological activities. This dissertation explores the use of novel aurone-derived salicyl-substituted 1,2,3-triazoles (ATs) as fluorescence molecules and anti-inflammatory compounds. It was found that, with the appropriate modifications, certain ATs may exhibit such properties. A single representative AT was utilized for each purpose. AT5 was shown to have unique properties as a fluorophore, yielding an excitation and emission spectra with a large Stokes shift, which increased as polarity of the solvent increased and was maximal in phosphate buffered saline, while also increased in other aqueous or protic solutions. Another AT, AT111, was demonstrated to have anti-inflammatory properties, limiting the effect of LPS on the induction of an inflammatory response in macrophages. AT111 lowered the production of inflammatory mediators such as IL-6, MCP-1, and iNOS, while not interfering with expression of other inflammatory proteins such as TNF-α and COX-2. It was determined that AT111 did not mitigate the initial TLR4 driven NF-κB response but did increase phosphorylation of ERK2. AT111 was also shown to increase histone, TRAF4, and MKNK2 transcription in both PMA-differentiated U937 human and RAW 264.7 murine macrophage-like cells. Gene expression profiles, along with the modulation of LPS-induced expression of many inflammatory proteins, but not all attributed to LPS, possibly implicates various mechanisms that are different from those observed in many anti-inflammatory compounds. Though the aforementioned effects were only apparent in the higher micromolar range, this dissertation demonstrates the potential for these novel ATs to function as both a fluorescent and anti-inflammatory scaffold that may be modified to augment these effects.Ph.D
Revision as Method for Reshaping Multimodal Pedagogy in First-Year Composition
No full textFrom online classrooms to Instagram posts, podcasts, and portfolios, students
regularly interact with multiple modes of expression and communication. While students
habitually consume all manners of multimodal texts, they are increasingly expected to
produce them as well. Writing presciently from the 1990s, the New London Group
coined the term “multimodal,” which they define as any combination of audio, linguistic,
spatial, visual, and/or gestural modes (80). This group of scholars views combining
modes in “remarkably dynamic relationships” (80) as significant and note that “[i]n a
profound sense, all meaning-making is multimodal” (81).
Multimodal strategies are used in myriad ways in the composition classroom; yet,
these methods often reinforce print writing strategies rather than treating multimodal
composition as an independent form of expression. As a result, multimodal composing
becomes a throughway for students instead of their final destination, a step to take on the
way to writing the “real” paper or a creative outlet permitted only after a print paper is
finished. In exploring this topic, my goal is to examine how multimodal composing is
currently positioned in First-Year Composition classrooms through two data points: a
discourse analysis of the course descriptions of 14 Tennessee universities and the results
of a survey conducted at Middle Tennessee State University. Based on this data, I then
explore how multimodal forms of composing are often mapped onto traditional
composing processes, even when the two do not always align. I end by addressing
systemic barriers that continue to disrupt multimodal pedagogy.M.A
Extending LDA functionality using cosine similarity in tracking the COVID-19 Publications
No full textData is being created at an alarming rate, and it is becoming unrealistic to gather important information in a timely fashion without the use of machine learning techniques. The COVID-19 pandemic is one instance where the medical community came together and generated a large amount of data in a short period of time to gain a better understanding of the issues at hand. In this research, a new process called LDASine was developed that extended the Latent Dirichlet Allocation methodology for tracking topic changes over time. Two experiments were conducted to test the viability of LDASine. The first experiment involved determining which number of topics produced the most unique topics for three different time periods. The second experiment involved associating topics from different time periods and analyzing the changes between topics using the LDASine process. The results of the experiments proved the viability of LDASine as a process to analyze how topics change over time and determine which number of topics produced unique topics for a given measure of time.M.S