Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, Art History (Fine Arts)

This thesis provides an overview of the function of ghosts in late 19th- early 20th century western literature, folklore and art. Born out of Gothic literature and modern Spiritualism; the ghost story became a popular genre in America in the mid to late nineteenth century. Ghosts became a symbolic device used by artists and authors to express issues pertaining to personal trauma, culture, society, and identity. Women, more frequently than men, claimed to have supernatural powers they used to commune with spirits further inspiring their work and shaping their careers. These are the reasons women dominated the spiritual realm and the ghost story genre from the mid nineteenth to twentieth century.

Committee: Jennie Klein kleinj1@ohio.edu (Advisor) Subjects: Art History

Master of Science, University of Akron, 2024, Polymer Science

Adhesives are commonly used in art restoration, and one of the most essential synthetic adhesives was introduced by Gustav Berger's BEVA in 1970 for relining artworks. For improving low-temperature tackiness, this adhesive formulation is dissolved in toluene and applied onto a relining canvas. However, this process relies on the use of solvents that are not good for health and environmental concerns. My research is focused on reducing the use of toluene and developing water-dispersed formulations. The amount of toluene-water mixture was optimized to prepare stable dispersion with the required adhesive content and the optimum activation temperature required for the relining of the canvas. To enhance the duration of suspension stability, surfactants were added, which increased the shelf-life of the dispersion. The goal of my research was to offer a safer and environmentally friendly method for preserving cultural heritage.

Committee: Dr. Ali Dhinojwala (Advisor); Dr. Abraham Joy (Committee Member) Subjects: Materials Science

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2017, Macromolecular Science and Engineering

The lifetime performance and degradation behavior of photovoltaic (PV) modules is of the utmost importance for the success and growth of solar energy as a major resource for fulfilling growing worldwide energy needs. While PV reliability has been a concern for some time, existing qualification testing methods do not reflect a cohesive picture of the science behind module degradation, and are not capable of accurately predicting module lifetime performance. Towards these goals, a statistical methodology, semi-gSEM, was developed and applied to investigate the response of full sized PV modules to accelerated stress conditions. The results of this initial study indicated that a correlation exists between system level power loss and the buildup of acetic acid resulting from the hydrolytic degradation of ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) polymer encapsulant. To further explore this proposed mechanistic pathway, a study was designed and conducted to characterize the degradation of mini-module samples under damp heat accelerated stress conditions. Mini-module samples featured two construction geometries that differed in the thicknesses of screen-printed silver conductive lines (SP-Ag) to assess the impact of gridline size on damp heat induced degradation. Samples were measured non-destructively at many points along their degradation pathway, using techniques that gathered both chemical and electrical information. The semi-gSEM analytical method was applied to this dataset to highlight degradation pathways and mechanisms observed in the experimental results. An EVA encapsulant spectroscopic degradation feature was found to be statistically related to quantified degradation features of simultaneously measured EL images. In turn, the EL image degradation was found to be statistically related to I-V curve parameters describing system level power loss. The degradation pathway observed was attributed to EVA encapsulant degradation leading to metallization corrosion and ultim (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Roger French (Advisor); Michael Hore (Committee Member); Timothy Peshek (Committee Member); Laura Bruckman (Committee Member); Ozan Akkus (Committee Member) Subjects: Materials Science; Plastics; Polymers

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Allied Health Sciences: Communication Sciences and Disorders

Enlarged vestibular aqueduct (EVA) syndrome is considered one of the most common congenital anomalies of the inner ear which is radiologically detectable and associated with hearing loss. It is a minor dysmorphology belonging to the family of Mondini dysplasias. Although there are many studies about the effect of EVA on audiological function, there are only a small number of studies on its effect on the vestibular system especially in children. In spite of the frequent studies emerging in the last few years which proved that vestibular disorders in children are not as rare as thought, the data about one of the most important tests in vestibular assessment, vestibular evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) test, and its response characteristics at different ages in children are scant. This study was designed to collect normative data for VEMP response parameters in children from the age of 3 to 12 years and to examine the effect of age on these parameters. The differences between VEMP responses in normal children and children with EVA were investigated in an attempt to evaluate the effect of EVA on the saccular function. The VEMP test was conducted on 39 normal children and on 28 children with EVA. The results revealed that P1 and N1 latencies in normal children are shorter than published normal latencies in adult. The VEMP response was absent in 10% of children with EVA. Moreover, there was a direct correlation between the vestibular aqueduct (VA) diameter and VEMP threshold. Based on these results, using a specific normative data for VEMP test in children is recommended when assessing the pediatric population. In addition, the saccular function should be investigated using VEMP test in children with EVA. However, further studies using other vestibular tests are recommended to investigate the effect of EVA on different vestibular functions.

Committee: Robert Keith PhD (Committee Chair); David Brown PhD (Committee Member); Fawen Zhang PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Audiology

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, University of Toledo, 2010, College of Engineering

As Computational Aeroacoustics (CAA) codes become more complex andwidely used, robust Verification of such codes becomes more and more important. Recently, Hixon et al. proposed a variation of the Method of Manufactured Solutions of Roache especially suited for Verifying unsteady CFD and CAA codes that does not require the generation of source terms or any modification of the code being Verified. This work will present the development of the External Verification Analysis (EVA) method and the results of its application to some popular model equations of CFD/CAA and a high-order nonlinear CAA code.

Committee: Ray Hixon PhD (Committee Chair); Douglas Oliver PhD (Committee Member); Chunhua Sheng PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Acoustics; Mechanical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Theatre

During the vaudevillian era, the professional careers of all women in popular entertainment operated within and reflected the complex social and cultural tensions surrounding ideas about women's increased participation in public, political, and social life. For the purposes of this study, I bracket the female performers who personified the idealized images of femininity, beauty, and sexuality, and focus instead on the women who performed an oppositional, or transgressive, representation of femininity and American womanhood due to their physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, overt sexuality, or independent, assertive personalities. Representative women of this case study include a diverse group ranging from May Irwin, Marie Dressler, Eva Tanguay, Ethel Waters, Sophie Tucker, and Fanny Brice to the nearly forgotten Cherry Sisters and Trixie Friganza. This dissertation is an examination of the methods used by working women in popular entertainment to negotiate for agency and self-definition, as well as a niche for themselves, within a male-dominated business and society. I draw from Michel de Certeau's theory of strategy and tactics within oppositional power relationships in order to evaluate an entertainer's career as an organic whole: her performance and public personas, marketing and publicity strategies, development of a niche audience, and relative agency in management of her own career. My research project is based on the premise that an analysis of women who exemplified nontraditional femininity in their performances, audience relationships, and career management will reflect the prevailing position of women in American society: their subordinate status, the social constraints and cultural ideologies imposed upon them, the necessity of ongoing renegotiations for autonomy and self-definition, and the strategies and tactics used by women to achieve a measure of agency. Because the women crafted their personas and careers in relation to prevailing id (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Tom Postlewait (Advisor) Subjects: Theater

PHD, Kent State University, 2009, College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Ambassador Crawford / Department of Management and Information Systems

This dissertation comprises of a set of three essays on emerging practitioner relevant theories and methods such as Real Options (RO) and Economic Value Added (EVA) for the valuation of investments in technology. The first essay develops an innovative approach for assessing practitioner relevance of academic research that is based on determining Granger causality between academic and practitioner interests in a given topic, as proxied by publication activity on that topic. The academic and practitioner interests are modeled as a two-component vector autoregressive (VAR) process and in addition to gauging Granger causality, which is done on stabilized components of the VAR model, I also utilize cointegration to evaluate the equilibrium relationship between the components of the VAR regardless of their stationarity. This model is tested on the two topics of EVA and RO.The second essay develops an alternative to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) called the Methodology Adoption Decision Model (MADM) for the adoption of new methodology by a firm. Analogous to the TAM, the MADM is a parsimonious model which views the theoretical soundness and the practical applicability of a methodology as the key drivers of firm-level adoption of methodology. The theoretical soundness and practical applicability are proxied by the sentiments expressed in the academic and practitioner literatures on the methodology in question. The MADM is used to assess the comparative likelihood of adoption of EVA and RO based on a sentiment extraction experiment for determining the inclinations of the academic and practitioner communities towards EVA and RO. The third essay applies RO to the context of investments by firms in XML-based enterprise integration (EI) technology. An interpretive hermeneutic approach is employed to develop a set of decision-making heuristics for the exercise of real options that optimize the RO value construct of Strategic Net Present Value (SNPV). This decision-making (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marvin Troutt PhD (Committee Chair); Alan Brandyberry PhD (Committee Member); Felix Offodile PhD (Committee Member); John Thornton PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Finance; Information Systems; Operations Research

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2011, English

Bringing together life writing and medical sociology, "Constructed Bodies, Edited Deaths: The Negotiation of Sociomedical Discourse in Autothanatographers' Writing of Terminal Illness" interrogates the relationships among autobiographical writing practices, identity, and the cultures of illness in the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Using texts by Emily Shore, Eric Michaels, Harold Brodkey, David Wojnarowicz, and Eva Markvoort, I argue that autothanatographies, or authors' writings of their own terminal illness, explore issues of subjective loss that occurs through bodily deterioration and under external forces of concomitant social and medical stigmatization, often operating in the guise of risk management. Such stigmatization arises from medicine's attention to pathological physiology and categorization rather than to holistic treatment of the ill subject. This study remedies gaps in theories of the genre by going beyond assertions that autothanatographical texts engage with extratextual influences that propose a shared and thus mutually expansive narrative, as proposed by theorists such as Suzanna Egan and Nancy Miller. Rather, I assert the ways in which the multiple external discourses surrounding disease, or sociomedical discourses, alter the actual illness experience and recorded expressions of the author as demonstrated through editing practices and control, thereby illustrating the challenge of representing the self in autothanatographical writing.

Committee: Kimberly Emmons (Committee Chair); Kurt Koenigsberger (Committee Member); Thrity Umrigar (Committee Member); William Siebenschuh (Committee Member); Vanessa Hildebrand (Committee Member) Subjects: Biographies; Health; Individual and Family Studies; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Public Health; Social Structure; Sociology