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Cardinal Scholar is the University Libraries Institutional Repository for archival and scholarly research produced at Ball State University.
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Item Grocery run: a game to reduce stigma through identification(2024-12)Stories can shape the way we see the world, especially in interactive media like video games. With players having direct agency in the narrative, this can increase a player’s identification with a playable character in the story and lead to an impact on the player's opinions by seeing through a different perspective. Games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice use this heightened level of identification to reduce the stigma associated with those who experience mental health difficulties, but some games reinforce negative stereotypes through misrepresentation. Utilizing previous research on loneliness and leveraging the increased transportation and subsequent identification of interactive storytelling, a game designed to depict loneliness in an accurate and empathetic way was created. By creating this portrayal of mental health struggles Grocery Run may reduce the stigma players may hold towards loneliness by seeing through the lens of a character who struggles with these difficulties.Item Personality, social structure, and suicide mortality rates: a comparative dada mining approach(2024-12)Suicide is a growing problem in the United States, yet research often emphasizes either individual psychological factors or environmental influences, typically favoring the former, with limited studies integrating both. Given the complex and multifaceted nature of suicidal behavior, a more comprehensive approach may yield greater insights. This study compares three state-level datasets using Random Forest models. The first dataset, from 2008, includes state-level estimates of the Five Factor Model’s personality traits and various sociodemographic variables. The second dataset excludes personality data to assess the impact of its absence, while the third replicates the second dataset but with updated predictors for 2022. Several predictors, such as divorce rates, gun ownership, permit laws, per capita income, and educational attainment, were consistently important predictors across all models. Additionally, the inclusion of personality data explained the most variance in suicide mortality rates. Notably, predictor importance shifted from 2008 to 2022, emphasizing the dynamic nature of factors associated with suicide mortality over time.Item Showing up: advocating visibility of local journalistsf(2024-12)This thesis argued that visibility is crucial to local journalists’ coverage of events within the communities they serve. A local journalist’s ability to engage connects further to news consumers' attitudes as stakeholders within a community. Whether audiences may feel positively or negatively about the stories they create and disseminate, the movements of local journalists are about them “showing up.” This analysis investigated two questions: 1) Does consistent coverage by local journalists instill confidence from news consumers in their reporting, and 2) does their “showing up” influence attitudes about local news outlets’ visibility in their covering communities. The research contributed to literature about localized coverage and discourse on what consumers may expect from local journalists. The implication became that local journalists who maintain this presence care about their communities' well-being. This thesis took a qualitative approach to journalists’ visibility, and it was found that this movement can solidify engagement in the first place. Civic leaders were interviewed about their views of one local news outlet’s trustworthiness and commitment to covering the area it serves, especially in terms of the visibility of its journalists. An analysis examined relationships between local journalists and sources and how local news outlets can build trust with news consumers. A series of semi-structured interviews gathered observations from local leaders about the Banner Graphic newspaper in Putnam County, Indiana. Finally, a discussion considered the analysis’ implications of local news outlets investing in their journalists’ visibility in communities, as well as noted limitations of the analysis’ scope which can be broadened with future research.Item Development and characterization of engineered rieske dioxygenases with non native activity(2024-12)Rieske dioxygenases, a class of enzyme systems commonly found in soil bacteria, play an important role in the bacterial metabolism of aromatic “pollutants” in their environment. Rieske dioxygenases have long been utilized in organic synthesis due to their ability to catalyze the cis-dihydroxylation of aromatics to produce chiral diene-diol metabolites. Despite their utility, the potential applications for these green catalysts have historically been limited by steric and electronic constraints on their substrate scopes and activity levels. Our work in the Ball State Laboratory for Biocatalysis Research is focused on the development of new green-chemical tools, in the form of engineered enzymes that operate in aqueous solutions, to help the chemical industry diminish their reliance on non-renewable energy sources. To this end, we have developed new variants of the widely used enzyme toluene dioxygenase with expanded reactivity through the use of multiple mutagenesis strategies along with a recently reported high throughput screening platform. Through this work, we have developed toluene dioxygenase variants with activity for amide-functionalized substrates that are not metabolized by the natural enzyme and revealed key residues that modulate the enzyme’s activity and selectivity. This research has led to the production and characterization of novel chiral metabolites with significant potential for utility in organic synthesis. Computational analysis (homology modeling, docking studies, molecular dynamics simulations, and substrate tunnel mapping) of the engineered enzymes produced in this work has led to the identification of key generalizable strategies that can be applied to engineer improved dioxygenases in a variety of contexts.Item Changing hydrology alters microbial community structure in a boreal peatland(2024-12)The goal of this study was to examine changes in aquatic microbial biofilm diversity at Alaskan peatland sites exposed to a long-term water-table (WT) manipulation, including drought (lowered water-table treatment), flooding (raised water-table treatment), and control (no manipulation) treatments. We examined the composition of bacteria, fungi, eukaryotic algae, and cyanobacteria using metabarcoding of the 16S rRNA, 18S rRNA, and ITS2 rRNA gene regions. Despite ubiquitous flooding at the time of sampling, microbial community composition was similar between the control and lowered treatment, but was dissimilar in the raised treatment. Increased microbial richness within our lowered WT treatment compared to the raised treatment suggested that conditions following WT drawdown and rewetting may enhance biofilm species richness. However, these conditions may not yet be extreme enough to drive this separation as our observed changes in the community composition within the lowered WT treatment were not different from ambient condition. We observed similarities among most biofilm taxa in all three water-table treatments and biomarker taxa that were associated with specific WT treatments and environmental conditions (i.e., dissolved oxygen, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, and conductivity) correlated with biofilm community composition. However, we did observe that there were distinct differences in the relative abundance of bacterial phyla and fungal, eukaryotic algal, and cyanobacterial genera among treatments. This likely suggests that the long-term natural variation in water-table position regulates species membership of the microbial community, but altered nutrient dynamics associated with interannual variation in hydrology probably regulates the relative abundance of species that are available to colonize substrates.
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