Honors Theses

Integral domains behave mathematically like the set of integers, and as a result, mathematicians are often interested in applying properties and functions of Z to other integral domains in order more thoroughly analyze these sets. One such integral domain is the set of Gaussian Integers, denoted Z[i]. The set of Gaussian Integers shares many characteristics with the set of integers, and it has multiple algebraic and number theoretic applications, including identification of pythagorean triples. In addition to being an integral domain, Z[i], like Z, is further classified as both a unique factorization domain and a euclidean domain. Along with the Gaussian Norm Function, these classifications allow us to analyze relative primality within the set. Because of this, the Euler-o function, which has historically been applied to Z, can also be analyzed within the set of Gaussian Integers.

Application of the Euler Phi Function in the Set of Gaussian Integers

Introduction
Recently, attention for chemistry research has been directed towards "Green Chemistry" which is the design of chemical "processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances".(1) The Twelve Main Principles of Green Chemistry encompass this definition over a wider range. Specifically the 1st principle which states to prevent waste which needs to be specially treated or cleaned up.(2) Not only are these principles better for the environment, they are able to save money as well.(3) While the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has funded several projects under Green Chemistry, there are still processes which involve hazardous materials.(4) One of those is the method of soil dissolution for heavy metal analysis.(5) Before this is looked into; however, the causes and effects of soil pollution must be looked into, as soil digestion is part of a process used to determine qualitative and quantitative data about soil contamination.

Development of Green Digestion Methods of Soils for the Recovery of Cadmium, Arsenic, and Lead

The present study sought to determine the relationship between job satisfaction, autonomy and motivation. Sections pertaining to selected facets of the Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1985), Work Autonomy Scale (Breaugh, 1985), and Work Tasks Motivation Scales (Fernet, et al., 2008) were used to measure the correlates. Each correlate was separated into different facets that were measured: Job Satisfaction (Supervisors, Coworkers, Pay, & Operating Procedures), Autonomy (Work, Scheduling, and Method), and Motivation (Complementary Tasks, Administrative Tasks, and Teaching Tasks). The survey was administered to public school teachers in a large suburban area. There was no significant correlation between the correlates and most of the facets. A significant relationship was found between Autonomy and Job Satisfaction of Pay as well as between Criteria Autonomy and Job Satisfaction of Pay. Additionally, Motivation for Administrative Tasks and Method Autonomy also had a significant positive correlation.

The Relationships among Autonomy, Job Satisfaction and Motivation

Many beehive products such as propolis, Manuka honey, bee pollen, and royal jelly have been used by people due to their popular known health benefits. A novel bee product, bee venom, has demonstrated effective in treating various debilitating conditions, and thus bee venom therapy has been the subject of scientific studies to quantify its medical efficacy. Although bee venom has been used for millennia in Eastern medicine, modern bee venom therapy (BVT) originated in Europe in the 19th century, but was brought to the U.S. by Dr. Bodog Beck after World War I. The treatment became more widespread in the West as the 20th century progressed (Cooney et al, 2011). There are currently various application methods with the most popular being apipuncture (acupuncture with bee venom where needles are initially dipped into the venom before applied to the patient) and bee venom injections (Mohammadi et al, 2015). The multiple beneficial effects of bee venom include increased blood circulation, stimulation of the pituitary-cortical system, and reduced pain and inflammation (Mohammadi et al, 2015). These responses help treat the symptoms of many diseases and chronic inflammatory conditions. With additional research, the use of bee venom can be included as a means to safely alleviate the symptoms of several autoimmune diseases, especially rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Therapeutic Effects of Bee Venom on Rheumatoid Arthritis

Synesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon that occurs in about 5% of the population, is characterized by the involuntary expression of a stimulus through association with another stimulus, usually in another sense, such as associating purple with the letter “A” (Yon & Press, 2014). There are several different forms of synesthesia, involving every combination of every sensory modality. Spector and Maurer (2013) found that the most common forms of synesthesia include grapheme-color synesthesia, in which graphemes such as letters and numbers induce a specific color, and time-space synesthesia, in which weekdays, months, etc. occupy a specific space either inside the synesthete’s mind or outside their body. These forms of synesthesia can be categorized in several ways, from their function to their onset of symptoms. Rogowska (2011) refers to one particular category of synesthesia pertaining to associational, artistic synesthesia. Famous painters, writers, and other artists such as painter Vassily Kandinsky and novelist Vladimir Nabokov have reported synesthetic-like experiences, which has led to the study of the relationship between synesthesia and creativity (Mulvenna, 2007). Synesthesia and its effect on creativity holds an interesting topic of study, as understanding the link between synesthesia and creativity may reveal aspects of synesthesia such as its possible causes and whether it can benefit individuals. History

A Colorful World: Synesthesia’s Effect on Creativity Through Firsthand Abstract Representations of Grapheme-Color and Ordinal-Linguistic Personification

Genetic testing has opened new doors into understanding a patient’s future health. The human genome is extremely vast and complicated. Testing an entire genome for the innumerable genetic variants that have a bearing on the development of cancer is costly both in time25 and efficiency. Testing for just a single gene results in seeing a whole group of variations, which may or may not be pathogenic11. Pathogenic, in this case, is defined as a variant known to cause or increase risk of a disease, the degree of which is determined by how co-segregated it is with the disease16,17. One of the genes that is examined when looking at hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC) often is Cadherin-1, or CDH1.

Identification of Clinically Relevant Regions of the Human CDH1 Gene for Determining Predisposition to Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9th, 1989, marking the end of over 30 years of division between the German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany, and the Federal Republic of Germany, also known as West Germany. The two states were remarkably different: East Germany's economy was dictated by communism, and West Germany's by capitalism.(1) A similar situation exists today between North and South Korea, with the North ruled by communism and the South by capitalistic markets.(2) Many experts believe that the two Koreas are destined to eventually reunify as well. However, there are widely differing opinions on how such a reunification would occur. Should it occur, there would be massive economic consequences, both regionally and globally.(3) Therefore, preparation for reunification is essential.
By examining the fall of the Berlin Wall, one may be able to glean insight into how this Korean reunification may unfold. This is the essence of this study's hypothesis: whether an in-depth examination of the major events surrounding the divisions of Germany and Korea and the effects those divisions had on each country economically and socially, as well as an examination of the reunification of East and West Germany, will provide a model for Korean reunification in the future.

Predicting the Effects of Korean Reunification by Examining the Fall of the Berlin Wall

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence. - Edsger Dijkstra (1)
This statement may be hyperbole, but Dijkstra's view on the language reflects underlying feelings about COBOL throughout the programming world. The language was created in 1959 to allow for interactivity between computation machines.(2) More than half a century later, COBOL is still used extensively in mainframes, computers designed for large-scale calculation and record processing. Numerous factors have contributed to the longevity of COBOL, including ease of use compared to its contemporaries and an upgrade to object orientation in the 1990s.(3)
This longevity has also contributed to problems with COBOL. The chief criticism is that it has become difficult to learn as other programming languages become more user-friendly.(4) COBOL software tends to be verbose, even for simple tasks. It's said that the average size of a COBOL program is 600 lines of code, whereas a Java program performing the same operation should be 30 lines or fewer.(5) Difficulties with the language will only increase as the workforce knowledgeable in COBOL's use retire.

COBOL as a Modern Language

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and other sexual minority, or LGBTQ+, youth are at high risk for suicide. In fact, youth identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual are four times more likely to attempt suicide compared to their heterosexual peers; the rates are higher for transgender/transsexual youth. Various factors contributing to these rates include bullying, lack of acceptance, and lack of academic material available to support LGBTQ+ youth (“Facts About Suicide”). Because of the severe need for LGBTQ+ resources, high school libraries should offer more literature with queer* characters and teachers should practice bibliotherapy with these books in their classrooms. Researchers Vare and Norton define bibliotherapy as “healing through literature… and guiding someone’s reading to foster an understanding of self or to help solve therapeutic needs” (2004, p. 190). In this same research, the authors articulate that the foundation to using bibliotherapy, especially for LGBTQ+ youth, is having educators make known that queer literature exists and is available for these students. However, while bibliotherapy is ideal in a group classroom setting, the likelihood of a queer book being taught in the classroom is still small. Thus, it is vital that these texts are still available in high school libraries so students have the ability to find a book with a character representing their own struggles in its bindings. This pilot study seeks to first ascertain the number of queer books available in select Georgia high schools while offering a sample lesson for teachers wanting to use bibliotherapy in the classroom with queer literature; next steps are included for future studies.

Reading the Rainbow: Availability and Content of Young Adult Queer Literature in Georgia Secondary Schools

This paper studies the connections between individuals’ childhood allowances and financial education and their subsequent financial capabilities in adulthood. Earning an allowance as a child can instill a work ethic in the formative years and help children progress towards financial independence. The lessons learned through earning an allowance can translate to a better grasp of financial concepts in adulthood (Danes, 2005). Conversely, an allowance that is given freely without any means of earning it can be detrimental to a child by imparting a sense of entitlement. Having this mindset in adulthood can lead to a faulty understanding of financial concepts (Danes, 2013). Additionally, the lessons parents or guardians teach in combination with giving an allowance play a crucial role in developing a financially responsible adult. For example, when parents or guardians require children to save a portion of their allowance, they simulate an environment like the one they will encounter when they become working adults (Danes, 2005). This study anonymously surveys participants about their upbringing (whether or not they received an allowance, the nature of the allowance, and how well their parents educated them on finances) and current financial situations (employment, debt, income, and savings plans). The information gained from the survey will provide real-world examples of these concepts. The researcher hypothesizes the following: First, individuals who earned an allowance will be more financially capable than those who received an unearned allowance. Second, individuals who received an unearned allowance will be less financially capable than those who did not receive an allowance at all. It is unrealistic to expect adults to understand how to manage money if they have never done so before. This study seeks to demonstrate that the foundations for financially capable adults are built during childhood.

The effects of childhood allowances on adult financial capabilities

Methamphetamine (METH) is a widely used drug of abuse in the United States (NIDH 2013). The characteristic “high” associated with METH intoxication comes from the excessive release of dopamine (DA) into the neuronal synapse. The oxidative damage due to DA release is amplified by blocked reuptake of the neurotransmitter (Ajjimaporn et al., 2005; Ajjimaporn et al., 2008; Cadet et al., 1994;Mirecki, 2004). During the increased time in the synapse, DA causes irreparable damage to the neuron terminals leaving lasting effects on the brain (Cadet et al., 1994; Riddle et al., 2006). In the laboratory, the damaging effects of METH are used to model neurodegenerative disease states that affect the dopaminergic pathways. Three major dopaminergic pathways exist in the brain. The mesocortical pathway begins in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and extends to the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The mesolimbic pathway projects from the VTA to the striatum (STR). The nigrostriatal pathway projects from the substantia nigra (SN) to the STR. Due to their close proximity, for the purpose of this thesis, the SN and VTA are paired together and collectively referred to as the midbrain (MB). Dopaminergic cell bodies reside in the MB and project their axons to the PFC and STR. Therefore, all three regions (PFC, STR, and MB) are key in studying the neurotoxic effects of METH.

In Vivo Effects of Chronic Methamphetamine Exposure: A Study of Elemental and Inflammatory Responses and Potential Mechanisms for Zinc Accumulation in the Midbrain.

Prior to contact, the Native American tribe hierarchy looked much different to how history immortalizes it. Since most history was written from a Euro-centric point of view, the nuances of European society, including the idea of a patriarchal society, are assimilated into the varying tribal histories. This, in turn, provides a skewed perception of what Native American society truly looked like. In 1702, Francis Louis Michel, a visiting Swiss noblemen to the colonies, reported:
A Frenchman and I were astonished at the baskets and that two of them could speak English. One of them looked at us and said in poor English whether we thought that if they had been taught like we, they could not learn a thing just as well as we. I asked him where he had learned to speak English. He answered, they were not so stupid, because they had to come every year, they could hear us speak and learnt it that way. It is certain that good talents are found among them. (“Becoming American: The British Colonies” 2)
In this example, Michel only finds the Native Americans useful and valid when they exhibit European qualities, such as learning English, and this mentality has permeated recorded history, particularly the history of Native Americans. The current history portrays Native societies as inherently patriarchal and placing women in a subservient class, but further anthropological study reveals that Native American society differed from what the first colonists believed.

Tracing Native American Feminism Through Myth and Poetry

Bullying is a problem that reaches its way into schools across the nation. A study done by the U.S. Department of Education reported that 27.8% of students between grade 6 and grade 12 experienced being bullied at school. (National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011). A bully is commonly thought of as an individual being unnecessarily cruel to someone else, usually someone weaker. Locus of control is the extent to which an individual views consequences as either results from their actions or controlled by an outside force. (Rotter, 1954). Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s own capabilities to change outcomes in his/her life (Bandura, 1977). An individual’s perceived self-efficacy likely affects his or her ability to adapt with difficult situations. One hundred forty-five college students enrolled in a Southeastern university, all over the age of 18 and with a history of being bullied, voluntarily participated in this study. The General Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995), Rotter’s Locus of Control (Rotter, 1966), and an adapted Bullying Survey (Kingsthorpe College, 2016) were used in this study. The hypothesis for this study was those with an internal locus of control and high self-efficacy will have a shorter duration of childhood and adolescent bullying. While that hypothesis was not supported, a significant positive correlation was found between longer durations of bullying in elementary school and having a current external locus of control.

An Exploratory Look at Locus of Control, Bullying, and Self-Efficacy

Though tragic, the case of Florida’s Terri Schiavo offers an unprecedented case study. The instance's unique circumstances provide one with a valuable and illustrative example of political theory and the complexities of public policy formation. The Terri Schiavo case gripped the attention of the public on a national level. According to Terence Smith, “76 percent of the public polled (said) that they (were) following (The Terri Schiavo case) either very closely or somewhat closely” (Cosgrove-Mather, 2005). However, despite national media attention and the infamous case’s lengthy court proceedings, the Terri Schiavo saga failed to make any legitimate national policy changes. The following research will discuss how public policy’s Process Model, despite the case of Terri Schiavo and subsequent national concern, as well as “media malpractice,” contributed to the stagnation of euthanasia legislation on a federal, state, and local level, and analyze what progress, if any, the mass media has made in their coverage of Schiavo nearly two decades after their initial coverage began. Tough Terri Schiavo’s case can only be applied to the first half of the utilized theoretical model, the insight this application provides is certainly valuable nonetheless.

The Process Model, the Verbiage of the Mass Media, and the Stagnation of New Public Policy: An In-Depth Analysis of the Terri Schiavo Case

This overview examines the usage of the term “Latinx” from its coinage to its inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary’s top ten candidates for “Word of the Year” in 2016. The study evaluates the term’s future based on its projected use in certain geographical areas and its adoption by certain professions and niche social groups. The most common motives for usage include a desire to disrupt the social normative of a binary gender system, to acknowledge the intersectionality between the LGBTQ and Latino communities, and to battle the subjugation of non-gender conforming Hispanics. This work analyzes which professional arenas endorse “Latinx,” including journalism and academia, as well as which writing mediums espouse it most often. Those who advocate against “Latinx” cite the imposition of English onto Spanish, which does not morphologically accommodate a word-final “x.” This study analyzes whether the term more effectively addresses a social issue or delays the solution to one, as well as whether its goal is to take away majority privilege or to belabor an indiscriminate equality of all.

A Sociolinguistic Survey of "Latinx"

This paper will discuss the challenges modern healthcare providers face in maintaining full compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Acts. It will provide an overview of the pertinent sections of both the HIPAA and HITECH Acts. Further, the paper will discuss potential large-scale violations of HIPAA involving potential vulnerabilities in commonly-used enterprise health records systems. In addition, the paper will discuss the traditional weak points of information security, including: people susceptible to social engineering, software that cannot be or is not updated, and targeted attacks. It will then compare these to challenges to the challenges of the United States health system prior to 1995, specifically looking at information handling procedures, and how they have changed as relating to the effectiveness.

An Examination of Modern Challenges in Maintaining HIPAA and HITECH Compliance

Quick-service restaurants (QSRs) play an important role in the overall economy. Globally, this sector accounts for over $570 billion, with the US bringing in over $200 billion in revenue in 2015 (“Fast Food Industry Analysis 2016- Cost & Trends,” 2016). To put it in perspective, QSRs account for over 50% of sales in the entire restaurant sector (“Fast Food Industry Analysis 2016 - Cost & Trends,” 2016). However, while QSRs seem to be a major portion of the food industry, not much research has been done that looks solely at this sector, and even less research aims to look at contributors to voluntary turnover in the quick-service industry (DiPietro, Milman, & Thozhur, 2007).
This study will focus on the human resource practices of the quick-service restaurant sector, specifically with how these practices relate to voluntary employee turnover. The results will help managers direct their human resource practices to better reflect the wants and needs of the employee.

Effects of human resource factors on employee retention in the quick-service industry

In looking at a current BSN class today, one will find many different types of students. There are those coming back to school, having realized their current career was not for them, there are those freshly out of high school that know they want to become nurses, and there is a plethora of those in between. The beauty of these differences though, is the way in which the student with the previous career, and the student with no career experience at all can teach each other extremely valuable lessons. These lessons can be regarding study habits, time management, social support, or most any other factor. And these lessons are needed. Due to the difficulty of the nursing curriculum at any university, there are many students that, despite past academic successes, struggle to get their footing. Oftentimes, however, the group that seems to have an overall steady footing is that of the nontraditional student.

Traditional and Nontraditional Nursing Students: Piloting a BSN Mentor Program

Due to the ever changing advancements in technology, photography is a constantly growing field. What was once an art form solely used by professionals is now accessible to every consumer in the world. This study analyzes the history of photography from where it all began to where it is today. The literature being studied focuses heavily on the history of photography, specifically in the analog, alternate process, and pre-digital era, where the earliest discoveries were made in creating what is commonly known today as a camera. The goal of this research is to study the evolution and history of photography and use this information to predict where photography will go in the future with technology ever changing. The following research will cover the early discoveries of photography, how the technology evolved from film to digital, and where digital is today, predicting the use of photography in the future.

Evolution of Photography: Film to Digital

The health benefits of breastfeeding infants for at least the first six months of life are widely known, but the majority of women begin supplementing breast milk with formula within three months after birth. In 1991, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to increase breastfeeding rates worldwide. This initiative focuses on providing evidence-based, maternity care with an emphasis on improving breastfeeding rates. There are ten steps that hospitals must implement to some degree in order to become a Baby-Friendly hospital; these steps focus on educating the staff and the mothers on breastfeeding techniques, encouraging exclusive breastfeeding to include the first night after labor, and providing continuing support for breastfeeding mothers after they leave the hospital. Nurses play a large role in the success of the BFHI because they work so closely with the mothers. Nurses should be able to provide care without their personal attitudes toward breastfeeding affecting the quality of care, but a positive attitude toward breastfeeding would be beneficial to implementing the BFHI effectively. The BFHI is mentioned in several newer editions of maternal nursing care textbooks, exposing nursing students to the idea and goal of the BFHI earlier than in the past.

Attitudes Among Senior BSN Nursing Students Toward Breastfeeding

The study of misinformation blossomed with the work of Elizabeth Loftus in the 1970s, looking, for example, at how the presence of information in leading questions overshadowed the existing memory of a car crash. Loftus and Palmer (1974) first used the term misinformation effect and found a connection between language and episodic memory. At first, this term only referred to when participants were asked to recall an event when prompted by a biased question, and their memory of the misinformation was measured. Quickly there grew two types of misinformation effect, one in which the misleading information is presented before the event occurs as ‘priming’ the individual ((Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz & Cook, 2012), and one in which the biasing information is presented afterwards, as in the original study. More recently, Dalal, Diab and Tinsdale (2015) applied misinformation to hiring decisions in the use of rumors by employers, a specific type of misinformation. This study was groundbreaking for misinformation research as it showed the effect could impact not just declarative memory but person judgements as well. While many variables have been studied with respect to misinformation effects on memory, there has been very little work focused on the influence of misinformation on personal judgements and feelings.

How the Authority of Misinformation Influences Personal Judgments of Others

1-naphthyl methylcarbamate or carbaryl remains one of the most commonly used pesticides. It has neurotoxic properties, thus making it important to understand the longterm effects of its chemical persistence in environmental systems. In this study, fluorescence was used to determine the concentration of carbaryl pesticides in aquatic systems. Samples were collected over a period of 48 hours from an empty fish tank with an initial carbaryl concentration of 28μg/L in both dark and ambient light conditions. Fluorescence was then used to determine the concentration of carbaryl using an emission wavelength of 336nm and an excitation wavelength of 270nm over time. This was a baseline study conducted to be used as comparison values to future experiments on the rate of carbaryl degradation when fish are introduced into the system. Despite photosensitivity, there was only a small difference in the determined rate constants of the light vs. dark trials with carbaryl half-lives of 24.35 and 30.67 days, respectively.

Carbaryl in Aquatic Systems: A Kinetic Analysis of Degradation Rates

The age-old adage, “actions speak louder than words,” has become very relevant in communication in today’s society. With the growing amount of service oriented jobs, hard skills are not enough in today’s economic climate (Lazarus, 2013). In order to succeed, workers need both hard and soft skills. Hard skills are skills such as accounting or finance skills, whereas soft skills include verbal and nonverbal communication. A study by Albert Mehrabian, currently Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA, is most famous for the rule of 7%-38%-55%. Mehrabian finds in any communication scenario 7% of information received is through the words spoken, 38% is through the tone of voice, and 55% is though bodily movements (depicted in Figure 1). According to this study, 93% of what is communicated is done through nonverbal communication (Mehrabian, 1981).

The Importance of Nonverbal Communication in Business and How Professors at the University of North Georgia Train Students on the Subject

Densely connected convolutional neural networks are currently one of the best object recognition algorithms. Given the plasticity of neural networks, the DenseNet algorithm should perform similarly in NLP tasks. In its attempt to verify whether the DenseNet algorithm can yield equally impressive results on NLP tasks, this paper has modified the DenseNet algorithm and tested it on text classification. For this purpose, three differently sized datasets have each been encoded as Tf-IDf vectors and word vectors and then the DenseNet’s performance on these different feature sets was compared to more conventional methods including Naïve Bayes classifiers and other neural networks. The paper finds that DenseNets can perform on par with these algorithms but scale especially well with large datasets and semantically rich features.

Densely Connected Convolutional Neural Networks for Natural Language Processing

The Corps of Cadets is a diverse group of individuals with different motivations for pursuing a college degree while participating in a Senior Military College ROTC program. The purpose of this study was to determine if gender, contracted status, or a combination of both influenced cadet self-efficacy levels. Self- efficacy levels were determined by surveying a company of cadets using an ROTC specific experience measure and behavior models measure, as well as Eisengerger’s abbreviated perceived organizational support scale, the Positive and Negative Affectivity Schedule, and the Big Five Inventory. The hypothesis was that overall there would be a significant difference between males and females with males having higher levels of the self-efficacy antecedents measured. Additionally, it was hypothesized that in general contracted cadets would have overall higher efficacy levels.