Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Moving Pain Home: Cultural Production and Performance Out of Black Trauma and Terror(2020) Gray, Leslie Jewell; Harding, James; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project looks at performances of terror and trauma centering Black bodies and the ways that they perform in everyday life and bracketed performances. In this project, I examine how the work of Black cultural producers questions the imaginary logic of white supremacist hegemony. I argue that this is best theorized through lived experiences of Black people, real and imagined. It is only through the interrogation of performed Black embodiment as traumatic negotiation that we can understand the complex instruments that have ensured the survival of precarious black bodies in a metaphorical war zone. I discuss how Suzan-Lori Parks's 2015 play, Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts I, II, and III as a theatrical development that has responded to intentional and unintentional sites of harm in the forms of oppression and violence. I question the idea of what it means to “go to war” in the context of police brutality inflicted on Black bodies. In the midst of anti-Black sentiment, or a metaphorical war with material consequences enacted against Black bodies, I look at Black people's subjection to hypersurveillance and how countersurveillance or sousveillance can serve as self-defense. If one is able to survive the war, one must then ask how do we come home from it intact, despite the invisible traumas of unending threats. Examining dance as of an act of corporeal linguistic agency, in the final section I look at the transhistorical phenomenon that is blues dancing, specifically honing in on the Slow Drag. I consider how moving beyond its potential as a strategy of survival can lead to identifying in it sources of recovery, resistance, and emancipation. In doing so, I attempt to sift through a history of Black vernacular dance in order to illuminate the possibility that dance, among these other Black cultural products, creates spaces of joy, solidarity, and healing.Item Comparative Analysis of the Effectiveness and Safety of Drug-eluting Versus Bare-metal Coronary Stents Among Patients Registered in the Multi-Payer Claims Database(2015) Bermudez, Jessica; Carter-Pokras, Olivia; Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There is conflicting evidence as to whether bare-metal stents (BMS) or drug-eluting stents (DES) are more effective at preventing restenosis. The purpose of this study is to compare the safety and effectiveness of BMS versus DES in the coronary artery using unconventional and potentially more efficient post-market surveillance methods. A retrospective cohort study was conducted of 217,654 Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance beneficiaries ages 41 years and older who were treated with coronary stenting between January 2007 and December 2010. Incidence of coronary health outcomes was measured for 2-3.5 years after stent implantation using claims data and assessed using Cox proportional hazards regression models stratified by gender and race. At baseline, DES recipients were younger, had higher rates of ischemia and high cholesterol, and had lower rates of prior myocardial infarction and hypertension compared to BMS recipients. Compared to BMS, DES use was associated with a significant reduction of myocardial infarction (Hazard Ratio (HR): 0.811; CI: [0.774, 0.84]), coronary artery bypass graft (HR 0.627; CI: [0.590, 0.666]), and repeat percutaneous coronary intervention (HR 0.910; CI: [0.888, 0.933]) at a median follow-up of 659 days. Use of DES was associated with superior CHD outcomes compared to BMS regardless of gender. Increased event-free probability for DES compared to BMS was seen among whites and Asians for AMI, among whites only for CABG, and across all races for repeat stenting.Item HUNTED BY THE CROWD: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF COLLABORATIVE INFORMATION SEARCHING IN CHINA(2013) Pan, Xiaoyan; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores a particular form of cyber surveillance in China known as "human flesh search," in which unrelated Internet users collaboratively conduct surveillance on fellow citizens. Its theoretical framework draws up the notion of panoptic model, first articulated in the early 1800s by Jeremy Bentham and then developed by the French social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault. Unlike some previous studies on human flesh searching, which focus on highly publicized search incidents, this study examines cyber surveillance in its daily practice, and probes how and why collaborative searches occur in China. It also explores structural constraints and empowerment experienced by search participants through the lens of power, in order to understand such a controversial activity. The study involved content analysis of a Chinese leading search forum--MOP Human Flesh Search Forum; an online survey with 158 search participants; and in-depth interviews with 9 search participants. The study found that Chinese human flesh search often took the forms of coveillance (peer-to-peer surveillance) and sousveillance (bottom-up surveillance). Fun-seeking was the primary motive for participants, who are mainly male youths; being helpful is the next. Privacy invasions and power abuses have complicated or even undermined search practices, limiting the potential of this activity to contribute to civil governance. In terms of empowerment, participating in the human flesh search seemed to give individual searchers a sense of empowerment, but such effects vary greatly depending on individuals' knowledge, social resources and search experiences. Privacy invasions and power abuses were consistently evident in searching practices, limiting the potential of this crowd-based searching, even when this is said to promote justice, to contribute to civil governance. The study also found that the panoptic model is still highly relevant and useful in understanding collaborative online surveillance, especially the function and effects of "gaze." Once conducted in a collective manner, the gaze of fellow citizens can be greatly extended in its reach and intensified by massive participation. The human flesh search mechanism studied here has great potential to profoundly change China's media landscape, but such potential is limited by current media censorship and the lack of accountability of search participants. Although the study examines searching phenomenon only in Chinese cyber space, the findings may shed light on similar surveillance practices which have emerged elsewhere in recent years. The whole question of citizen participation might benefit from the explication of the role of participation in this form of surveillance.Item SELF ORGANIZING WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS(2007-10-26) Kordari, Kamiar; Blankenship, Gilmer L; Electrical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is concerned with the properties of self-organizing network systems, where a large number of distributed sensor nodes with limited sensing, processing and communication capability organize themselves into a cooperative network without any centralized control or management. Due to the distributed nature of the management and lack of global information for in-node decision making, sensor management in such networks is a complicated task. The dynamics of such networks are characterized by constraints and uncertainty, and the presence of disturbances that significantly affect aggregate system behavior. In this dissertation we examine several important topics in the management of self-organizing wireless sensor networks. The first topic is a statistical analysis to determine the minimum requirements for the deployment phase of a random sensor network to achieve a desired degree of coverage and connectivity. The second topic focuses on the development of a viable online sensor management methodology in the absence of global information. We consider consensus based sensor data fusion as a motivating problem to demonstrate the capability of the sensor management algorithms. The approach that has been widely investigated in the literature for this problem is the fusion of information from all the sensors. It does not involve active control of the sensors as part of the algorithm. Our approach is to control the operations of the nodes involved in the consensus process by associating costs with each node to emphasize those with highest payoff. This approach provides a practical, low complexity algorithm that allows the nodes to optimize their operations despite the lack of global information. In the third topic we have studied sensor networks that include "leaders," "followers," and "disrupters." The diffusion of information in a network where there are conflicting strategies is investigated through simulations. These results can be used to develop algorithms to manage the roles in the network in order to optimize the diffusion of information as well as protect the network against disruption.