This dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive portrayal of doula care in the lives of pregnant and parenting adolescent mothers. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationships between psychosocial stress, social support, institutionalized constraints, and their impacts on health and well-being among adolescent mothers in the Northwestern...
Human development researchers consider adolescence a rich time for interest development and identity exploration. A relatively new movement in the Free-Choice Learning (FCL) arena, the Maker movement, offers learners interest-driven, experiential, often collaborative, and process-oriented activities ranging from game design (computer-based and otherwise) and robotics, to sewing LEDs into clothing...
This dissertation draws on ethnographic data and political ecological theory to analyze the experience of residents living in the IBM-Endicott Superfund site in Endicott, New York. Combining in-depth narratives and quantitative measures from a household survey, it highlights residents' perceptions of 1) environmental health risk, 2) risk mitigation, 3) deindustrialization...
The persistent underrepresentation and marginalization of women of color in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are well-documented. However, much of the existing literature takes an “either/or” approach, focusing solely on the experiences of either “women” or “minorities” in STEM, without adequately examining the unique experiences of...
The topic of this study is the cultural impact of the computer in a school. "Impact" is 'defined as the cultural consequences of intended and unintended learning that occur when computers are used in the school. The major theoretical orientations of the work include the concepts of manifest and latent...
Assessing the risk from exposure to a chemical mixture in the environment can seem prohibitively challenging. Most components of the mixture are not readily identifiable, chemicals may interact to cause other-than-additive toxicity, and the number of potential combinations of environmental contaminants is enormous. These challenges can make it seem impossible...
Organic semiconductors are of interest for (opto)electronic applications due to their low cost, solution processability, and tunable properties. Natural product-derived organic pigments have attracted attention due to their extraordinary environmental stability and unexpectedly good optoelectronic performance, in spite of only partially conjugated molecular structures. Fungi-derived pigments are a naturally sourced,...
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., and new approaches to control cancer are constantly sought. This dissertation is comprised of two parts: (i) improving the uptake and retention of gadolinium in tumors for potential gadoliniumneutron capture therapy (Gd-NCT) and (ii) integration of gemcitabine or...
Purpose: The purpose of this investigation was to identify a deep-water running (DWR) style that most closely approximates terrestrial running. Methods: Twenty healthy male and female intercollegiate (NCAA III) distance runners were videotaped from the right sagittal view while running on a treadmill (TR) and in deep water at 55-60%...
Since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, a number of common problems have emerged. Primarily they involve the difficulties both experienced and created by public schools attempting to fulfill the federal mandate to provide students with disabilities an appropriate public education. The purpose of...