After the hit of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hotel industry's efforts need to focus on recovering travelers' confidence by introducing new safe and clean programs or seals. However, there is a lack of guidelines regarding which hotel safety/cleaning programs and what communication strategies are more effective when approaching guests. This study aims to address this gap by using a 2 (COVID-19 Message Type: Fear Appeals vs. Hope Appeals) × 2 (Hotel Safety/Cleaning Program Type: Internal vs. Third-Party) between-subject experiment design. Specifically, it applies the protection motivation theory in investigating the effects of different messages (hope vs. fear) along with different types of hotel safety/cleaning programs (internal vs. third-party) on guests' booking intentions. The moderating role of risk propensity was also explored. The data were collected in a public university located south of the U.S. Different ANOVA and MANOVA tests were conducted. The results suggest that hope appeal messages and hotel internal cleaning programs arouse higher booking intentions. When presenting COVID-19 related information provided by hotels, hope appeals represent a better communication strategy. In addition, the coping and threat appraisals showed to be correlated with hotel guests' booking intentions. Moreover, response efficacy was the strongest predictor with a positive correlation, whereas …

In recent years, deep learning based computer vision technology has developed rapidly. This is not only due to the improvement of computing power, but also due to the emergence of high-quality datasets. The combination of object detectors and drones has great potential in the field of rescue and disaster relief. We created an image dataset specifically for vision applications on drone platforms. The dataset contains 5000 images, and each image is carefully labeled according to the PASCAL VOC standard. This specific dataset will be very important for developing deep learning algorithms for drone applications. In object detection models, loss function plays a vital role. Considering the uneven distribution of large and small objects in the dataset, we propose adjustment coefficients based on the frequencies of objects of different sizes to adjust the loss function, and finally improve the accuracy of the model.

Engine Running: Essays is a collection of creative nonfiction that explores, in parts, a persona's distancing from home and self against the backdrop of an increasingly fractured family doing the same. Through a variety of forms, the essays seek to balance themes like loss, self-discovery, and manhood in reflections on the role of childhood memory, the early revelations and experimentation of sexuality, and the carving-out of personal identity in West Texas.

Like many institutions of high education throughout the United States, the University of North Texas requires all students to pass introductory United States History courses. While the purpose of these courses should be to create a population well versed in U.S. history and sociopolitical and economic context, the foundational textbooks utilized in these courses promote American exceptionalism and U.S. supremacy. Their omission of the complex and controversial history of the United States creates a false master narrative based on an idealized version of U.S. history. Even textbooks that include diversity continue to uphold a progressive master narrative that ignores issues of systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. My theoretical analysis of the required textbooks, Exploring American Histories: A Survey with Sources, is applicable to all introductory U.S. history textbooks. Decolonialism, critical race, and intersectional feminism are theoretical lenses that disentangle and highlight otherwise invisible aspects of American exceptionalism and the serious consequences of the subjugation of subaltern historical narratives. This thesis applies theory with examples of how textbooks or supplemental teaching can expose foundational oppression, violence, and discrimination to teach students critical thinking and help them see connections between the past and their present.

This thesis demonstrates a queer perspective stemming from a qualitative analysis of data gathered in interviews with LGBTQ+ people to analyze a transforming ethos of gayborhoods and queer desires. In particular, the research focuses on the interactive relationship between self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) participants; the cyberspace(s) of LGBTQ+ mobile-dating applications (apps); and tangible urban places. The topic of gayborhood demise and whether such places are worth saving has been debated by scholars and journalists for the last decade. The demise of gayborhoods is often thought to be a symptom of neoliberal urban processes such as gentrification within the context of the post-gay era and broader societal acceptance of homosexuality. This means the question of "if the gayborhood is worth saving" is inherently imbedded in an assumption that homosexuality is not viewed or treated as different or lesser than heterosexuality. In this imagined post-gay era, gayborhoods are declining because the dangers posed to the LGBTQ+ population are purported to no longer exist, so there is no longer a need for designated queer and/or safe places. This research destabilizes the assumptions embedded within the conception of the post-gay era by asking whether the gayborhood meets the needs and …

Where people go between evacuation and recovery remains an understudied aspect of disaster research. Whether experiencing multiple displacements, permanent displacement, or undergoing recovery in a damaged dwelling, the spatial and temporal dimensions of disaster displacement can have direct impacts on the recovery experiences of survivors. Pulling from focus group data gathered in 2017 from Hurricane Sandy survivors in New Jersey, this qualitative research focuses on the experiences of those who recovered in-situ, or within their damaged dwelling following the storm, and the various ways this non-displacement impacted their recovery. A content analysis following a grounded theory approach produced the emergent themes of the in-situ experience, including: a lack of suitable shelter, an exposure to secondary hazards, and an inability to achieve satisfactory emotional recovery. This study contributes to the growing body of literature surrounding recovery experiences, and it introduces valuable insights into the challenges that survivors face while recovering in-situ.

Sprint acceleration training has been highly researched and found that resistance sleds are one of the most effective tools for maximizing training adaptations. The resistance sled is being used by many of the world leaders in athletic training but has yet to be researched for the kinetic and kinematic effects some of its key components cause. The aim of this study was to better understand the effects of the attachment height on the sled and sled rail material on the user's trunk lean and jerking effect caused by the sled. This was done because it was hypothesized that the attachment height has a direct impact on trunk lean and sled rail material has a direct impact on jerk caused by the sled. To test these assumptions, experimental and theoretical data was collected using a single subject study analyzing trunk lean and acceleration values of the sled. The results presented a significant decrease in trunk lean (more horizontal line of action) when the attachment height was raised. Additionally, no significant values were attained to support the assumption that by modifying the sled rail material, jerking effects will decrease. The results indicate that there is a direct correlation between attachment height and …

An important question in teaching language is, what accounts for the emergence of either receptive or expressive labels when teaching only one of them? The teaching procedures in the present study were intended to reproduce the natural development of bidirectional naming in which caregivers comment on the items a child is interacting with and children echo those vocalizations they hear. Thus, the only vocalizations presented by the researcher during teaching occurred after the learner pointed to a specific stimulus, and were specific to the stimulus being targeted. These vocalizations are referred to in this study as stimulus-specific consequences. The purpose of this research was to investigate if the stimulus-specific consequences could become discriminative stimuli for receptive labels, and lead to the emergence of expressive labels. Three studies were conducted, each with four adults. Results demonstrated that using a stimulus-specific consequence during teaching led to receptive labels for all participants, but led to the emergence of expressive labels for only four participants. In other words, bidirectional naming did not occur for the majority of participants. Factors that may improve interrelations between receptive and expressive labels were analyzed, but further evaluations are needed to account for the inconsistent demonstrations of naming.

Piezoelectricity in two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) has attracted significant attention due to their unique crystal structure and the lack of inversion centers when the bulk TMDs thin down to monolayer. Although the piezoelectricity effect in atomic-thickness TMDs has been demonstrated, they are not scalable. Herein, we demonstrate a piezoelectric effect from large-scale, sputtered MoS2 and WS2 using a robust defect-engineering based on the thermal-solvent annealing and solvent immersion process. This yields a higher piezoelectric output over 20 times after annealing or solvent immersion. Indeed, the piezoelectric responses are strengthened with the increases of defect density. Moreover, the MoS2 or WS2 piezoelectric device array shows an exceptional piezoelectric sensitivity with a high-level uniformity and excellent environmental stability under ambient conditions. A detailed study of the sulfur vacancy-dependent property and its resultant asymmetric structure-induced piezoelectricity is reported. The proposed approach is scalable and can produce advanced materials for flexible piezoelectric devices to be used in emerging bioinspired robotics and biomedical applications.

Doing, undoing, and redoing gender debates have established the omnirelevance and performativity of gender. Yet, little is known about the ways that individuals "do" gender in spaces that provide the opportunity for norms to be disrupted, such as subcultures. This study offers an empirical investigation into the performance of gender within the subculture known as EDM (electronic dance music) culture. Using 20 in-depth interviews that were conducted virtually, I analyze the way ravers experience and give meaning to gender within the EDM culture. I find that individuals within the EDM culture can participate in the doing, undoing, and redoing of gender and do so through the embodiment of their subcultural beliefs and ideology, known as PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect). I argue that the embodiment of PLUR is gendered, and describe the body-reflexive practices that are associated with PLUR.

Making Sense of Things is a piece composed through consideration of the relationship between music, meaning, and materiality. The piece, written for voice, flute, percussion, and live electronics, explores topics of the "sensible" and "nonsensical" in music, moving through a variety of sonic episodes that feature different notational approaches, electronic textures, technical instrumental practice, and theatrical elements in order to explore a variety of expressive possibilities while unified around the central musical ideas of scratching sounds and metal bars. The critical essay examines the relationship between the piece and the theoretical writings which inspired it. Reading through the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I examine the relationship between Making Sense of Things and new materialist discourses, affect theory, and semiotics.

Switchable adhesives using stimuli-responsive systems have many applications, including transfer printing, climbing robots, and gripping in pick and place processes. Among these adhesives, electroadhesive surface can spontaneously adjust their adhesion in response to an external electric field. However, electroadhesives usually need high voltage (e.g. kV) and the adhesion disappears upon turning off the signal. These limitations make them complicated and costly. In this research, we demonstrated a gold-coated silica microsphere (GCSM) with highly switchable and memorable adhesion triggered by a relatively small voltage (<30 V). In the experiment, a silica microsphere with a diameter of 15 μm was glued to a tipless atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever. The nanoscale thick gold coating was sprayed on the surface of the microsphere by a sputter coater. AFM was used to explore the tunable adhesion with an external voltage at different relative humidity (RH). The results revealed that when applying a positive electrical bias at high RH, the adhesive force increased dramatically while it decreased to almost zero after applying a negative potential. Even if the bias was turned off, the adhesive force state could still be kept and erased on demand by simply applying a negative voltage. The adhesive force can be …

Youth in the United States are experiencing a steep increase in mental health issues. Concurrently, unique political, economic and social dynamics in the U.S. make the circumstances of nonwhite children's mental health partially contingent on experiences of racism. In this study, I examine the relationship between racial minority children's mental health and perceived racism, while also examining the moderating effects of gender on this relationship. I first review prior research which suggest that racism is a salient determinant of several health outcomes among racial minorities and racial minority children, including depression and anxiety. I then review research on both gender and racial socialization and posit possible implications of these differentials on mental health. Considering both the racialized and gendered factors contributing to youth's mental health outcomes, this study fills a gap in previous research by exploring the differences by gender and race in the effect of perceived racism on children's mental health. I use data from the National Survey of Children's Health from 2016 to 2019. Using average marginal effects, calculated from a series of logistic regression models predicting depression, anxiety, behavioral and emotional problems, I find support for previous research which suggests that perceived racism predicts poor mental health …

The present study investigated how engaging in a behavior that is potentially incompatible with covert verbal behavior, singing aloud, affected the percent of correct responses and reaction time during equivalence tests as compared to engaging in a behavior considered compatible with covert verbal behavior, alternating foot tapping, during testing. Results varied between participants with some participants showing higher accuracies in the incompatible condition and some in the compatible condition. Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction time were correlated, with higher accuracies in the compatible condition being correlated with faster reaction times in the compatible condition. Limitations discussed include a low number of participants due to COVID-19, the covert nature of the behavior of interest, the length of time required to complete the experiment, and the challenges to monitoring the incompatible behavior due to social distancing requirements. Potential future research is discussed in light of these limitations.

Low-cost sensors have the potential to create dense air monitoring networks that help enhance our understanding of pollution exposure and variability at the individual and neighborhood-level; however, sensors can be easily influenced by environmental conditions, resulting in performance inconsistencies across monitoring settings. During summer 2020, 20 low-cost particulate sensors were deployed with a reference PM2.5 monitor in Denton, Texas in preparation for calibration. However, from mid to late-summer, dust transported by the Saharan Air Layer moved through the North Texas region periodically, influencing the typical monitoring pattern exhibited between low-cost sensors and reference instruments. Traditional modeling strategies were adapted to develop a new approach to calibrating low-cost particulate sensors. In this study, data collected by sensors was split according to a novel dust filter into dust and non-dust subsets prior to modeling. This approach was compared with building a single model from the data, as is typically done in other studies. Random forest and multiple linear regression algorithms were used to train models for both strategies. The best performing split-model strategy, the multiple linear regression models split according to dust and non-dust subsets (combined R2 = 0.65), outperformed the best performing single-model strategy, a random forest model (R2 = 0.49). …

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects motor abilities with increasing severity as the disease progresses. Traditional methods for diagnosing PD require specialists scoring qualitative symptoms using the motor subscale of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS-III). Using force-plate data during quiet standing (QS), this study uses machine learning to target the characterization and prediction of PD and UPDRS-III. The purpose of predicting different subscores of the UPDRS-III is to give specialists more tools to help make an informed diagnosis and prognosis. The classification models employed classified PD with a sensitivity of 87.5% and specificity of 83.1%. Stepwise forward regression indicated that features correlated with base of support were most useful in the prediction of head rigidity (r-square = .753). Although there is limited data, this thesis can be used as an exploratory study that evaluates the predictability of UPDRS-III subscores using QS data. Similar prediction models can be implemented to a home setting using low-cost force plates as a novel telemedicine technique to track disease progression.

The method of optical emission spectroscopy has been used with Fe-Ni and other complex alloys to investigate in-situ compositional control for additive manufacturing. Although additive manufacturing of metallic alloys is an emerging technology, compositional control will be a challenge that needs to be addressed for a multitude of industries going forward for next-gen applications. This current scope of work includes analysis of ionized species generated from laser and metal powder interaction that is inherent to the laser engineered net shaping (LENS) process of additive manufacturing. By quantifying the amount of a given element's presence in the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, this amount can be compared to the actual amount present in the sample via post-processing and elemental dispersive x-ray (EDX) data analysis. For this work a commercially available linear silicon CCD camera captured metallic ion peaks found within the ultraviolet (UV) region to avoid background contamination from blackbody radiation. Although the additive manufacturing environment can prove difficult to measure in-situ due to time dependent phenomena, extreme temperatures, and defect generation, OEM was able to capture multiple data points over a time series that showed a positive correlation between an element's peak intensity and the amount of that element found in the …

The Age of Trump witnessed the visible rise of intense culture wars and polarization in the United States. While culture wars are not new phenomena, the current iteration has digital media acting as new discursive structures and mediating battlegrounds for all sides of the cultural conflict. This project chronicles these online culture wars, demonstrating how within a neoliberal and postmodern socio-cultural condition, the rise of ambivalent, profit-driven digital technologies and platforms structure affect and mediate newly networked neo-reactionary populist (sub)cultural ideologies and discourses. The resulting online ecosystems afforded the digital formations of obscure reactionary subcultures (trolls, antifeminists, the alt-right, etc.) with particular personalized and affectively driven memetic communicative logics. These reactionary affective publics eventually began converging under perceived common ideological and social interests as online actions and reactionary discursive (re)formations and (re)networkings were catalyzed by (sub/cross)cultural conflicts and moments of sentimental activation. This led to the emergence of affectively charged and informally networked reactionary publics which began spilling out into the offline world alongside Trump's ascendancy to the White House. The increasing progressive reactions during the Trump Era also faced limitations in combatting reactionary politics due to structural dynamics of digital media and the larger culture war filtering of politics. …

The Risorgimento or "resurrection" of Italy united a collection of independent Italian kingdoms, duchies, and principalities under the auspices of the Piedmontese House of Savoy. No longer was Italy a mere expression géographique, as Austrian Chancellor Klemens von Metternich snidely remarked in 1847, but a united nation state. Studies of the Risorgimento successfully highlight the role of famous Piedmontese and Italian nationalists in demonstrating the success of the movement. However, the smaller states of the peninsula have largely disappeared from these histories. Among these overlooked states is the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Tuscany's last grand duke, Leopold II of Habsburg-Lorraine. Both are consistently omitted from broader surveys of the peninsula. In rare situations when Leopold II enters the historical narrative he is dismissed as a reactionary, although he maintained a reputation as an enlightened and relatively liberal ruler for the majority of his rule. Especially in anglophone literature, little to no discussion of his thirty-five-year reign is available. This omission creates an unfortunate lacuna in the historiography of the Risorgimento. It is in studies of these smaller Italian states that the intricacies of statecraft, nationalism, and localism are most visible. To understand the extent of the Risorgimento's success, it …

The Godzilla media franchise is one of the longest running media franchises, which means the character himself has gone through many changes throughout the years. However, in American pop culture, the characters of Godzilla is perceived as a hero, a friend of humanity and defender of Earth. This reputation comes from the Showa Era, where Godzilla often fought on the side of humanity, rather than trying to destroy them as depicted in the original Gojira. In recent years, Toho, Godzilla's corporate owners, have been steering the King of the Monsters back into the villain role. Despite this tone shift by Godzilla's owners, American Godzilla paratexts still generally depict Godzilla as a hero. These depictions of Godzilla are used to maintain his status as a family friendly heritage brand and keep a door open for parents to introduce their children to the brand. Such a strategy allows Godzilla to survive into the modern day as an international powerhouse franchise.

Purity culture was a movement created by evangelical Christian organizations in the United States and backed by marketing campaigns, media, churches, and sex education beginning in the 1990s. This movement was founded on the idea that young men and women should remain abstinent before marriage, thereby remaining in a state of "purity" for their future spouse. In purity culture messaging, women were positioned as sexual gatekeepers while men were framed as having little or no control over their sexual impulses, causing most of the purity expectation to fall on women. While the concept of remaining "pure" is not new, purity culture taught a new generation of women to feel ashamed and fearful of their sexuality and existed alongside an increasingly sexualized media landscape. This study analyzes purity culture and anti-purity culture themes that exist within television shows as well as how women perceive purity culture messaging and the effects this messaging had on their lives.

Social media plays an important role during multiple phases of a disaster. While it is widely known that citizens turn to social media during disasters to gain information and send help requests, there is a significant gap in our knowledge of how, or if, first responders use social media to conduct disaster response operations. To help address this gap this study employed qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a sample of first responders (N = 20) who were deployed to Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The interviews sought to gain a better understanding of how social media was used to conduct response operations and identify both limitations and advantages of social media as perceived by first responders. Through a systematic coding process the analysis identified four themes related to social media usage among first responders to disasters: (1) more than just Twitter; (2) rumor has it; (3) one size does not fit all; and (4) timing is everything. The findings of this research highlight the importance of social media for both organizations and individuals involved in responding to disasters.

West Dallas AR is an interactive location-based app, using the power of multimedia and augmented reality to highlight the stories shared by West Dallas residents.

Waste-heat-to-power (WHP) recovers electrical power from exhaust heat emitted by industrial and commercial facilities. Waste heat is available in enormous quantities. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates 5-13 quadrillion BTUs/yr with a technical potential of 14.6 GW are available and could be utilized to generate power by converting the heat into electricity. The research proposed here will define a system that can economically recover energy from waste heat through a thermal regenerative electrochemical system. The primary motivation came from a patent and the research sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The proposed system improves on this patent in four major ways: by using air/oxygen, rather than hydrogen; by eliminating the cross diffusion of counter ions and using a dual membrane cell design; and by using high concentrations of electrolytes that have boiling points below water. Therefore, this system also works at difficult-to-recover low temperatures. Electrochemical power is estimated at 0.2W/cm2, and for a 4.2 M solution at 1 L/s, the power of a 100 kW system is 425 kW. Distillation energy costs are simulated and found to be 504 kJ/s for a 1 kg/s feed stream. The conversion efficiency is then calculated at 84%. The Carnot efficiency for …