2021 MU Dissertations - Freely available online
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Item Functional myology of the primate head and neck with implications for hominin evolution(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2021) McGechie, Faye; Ward, Carol V.[EMBARGOED UNTIL 5/1/2026] The primate nuchal region has been widely cited as reflecting postural and locomotor behaviors. Postural and locomotor reconstructions of fossil primates, particularly fossil hominins, have relied upon untested hypotheses linking nuchal muscle form and function to bony morphologies. This thesis addresses the gap in knowledge of variation in the primate nuchal musculature and its relationship to positional behaviors through the use of gross cadaveric dissections and in silico visualization and quantification of muscle variables. Nuchal muscle mass is best predicted by body size alone across primates. Additionally, in situ attachment sites of the nuchal musculature are similar among closely related taxa rather than among species with similar positional behaviors. Semisuspensory taxa have more dorsoventrally oriented trapezius muscles when compared to closely related but nonsuspensory taxa. Orthograde primates have less powerful longissimus capitis muscles than pronograde primates do. Further, primates that engage in extreme neck rotation demonstrate differentially oriented and more powerful sternocleidomastoid muscles. These combined results, however, do not translate to overall differences in the moment-generating capacity of the nuchal musculature. The main exception is that primates that engage in extreme neck rotation have larger estimates for moments of lateral flexion of the neck when compared to all other taxa. Overall, this study does not support the idea that nuchal muscle function is driven by positional behaviors alone. It further demonstrates the need to consider muscle morphology and function when using a biomechanical framework to interpret the primate fossil record.Item Secondary music educators' curiosity dimensions and perceptions of curiosity in the classroom(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2021) Franks, Kendra; Sims, Wendy L.This descriptive study used a survey to examine the curiosity dimensions of secondary music educators (SMEs) and their perceptions of curiosity and creativity in student learning. Participants responded to a curiosity measure, the Five Dimensions of Curiosity Scale Revised (Kashdan et al., 2020), which explains curiosity as functioning within five dimensions: Joyous Exploration, Deprivation Sensitivity, Stress Tolerance, Thrill Seeking, and Social Curiosity (overt and covert). The results indicated that the Joyful Explorer scale was the strongest for these participants, indicating that they enjoy learning new things with others and work diligently to solve problems. Problem-solving and innovation are not only goals of music education for students but are also important 21st-century skills related to creativity. The SMEs in this study indicated in their written responses that they observed enhanced creativity when students were involved in projects where the students had choices and the opportunity to lead through curious inquiry. The teacher can influence student curiosity by exhibiting an open demeanor and designing lesson plans where students have a voice in the learning process. Students who are encouraged to be curious in their own way may increase their creative output. Gaining an understanding of curiosity dimensions may assist music educators in planning and designing lessons, connecting with student interests, and furthering student engagement with creativity.Item Instrumental analysis, sensory analysis and consumer acceptance of strained yogurt in frozen desserts(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2021) Bullock, Yanni; Gruen, IngolfThere is a surging demand from consumers for healthier products that are lower in calories but maintain their original flavor and texture. Many countries around the world have worked to develop new techniques to improve our food supply and food products, including the utilization of functional foods and nutraceuticals. Utilizing Greek style yogurt (GSY) as a functional ingredient in frozen desserts will be a unique approach to enhancing the texture and flavor of frozen yogurts without sacrificing consumer acceptance. The objective of this study was to investigate various formulations of set yogurt and GSY with an ice cream mix in order to assess the physico-chemical effects and organic acid and carbohydrate changes. The second objective was to assess these formulations from a sensory perspective, with a combination of descriptive analysis and consumer acceptance to determine which treatments were preferred in relation to a control ice cream. Another objective was to investigate various statistical techniques that link the Overall Liking attribute among the treatments with the measured sensory and non-sensory based attributes. A one-way ANOVA analysis with orthogonal contrasts found that that despite the lack of significant differences among macronutrients (e.g., protein, fat, and carbohydrates), significant differences could be observed among pH, titratable acidity, hardness, gumminess, chewiness, particle size and flow behavior at small changes in the frozen dessert formulation. Treatments containing higher yogurt concentrations, especially those with Greek yogurt, were significantly different than the treatments with lower concentrations of yogurt.Item Communication at the end-of-life among advanced cancer patients in Ghana: what patients have to say(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2021) Yevu Johnson, Justina Serwaa; Popejoy, LoriIndividuals with life-limiting illnesses require information and good communication throughout their illness. Effective end-of-life communication (EOLC) improves patients' understanding of their condition, care, and treatment choices, and facilitates informed involvement in decision making at the end-of-life. Studies on patients' experiences with end-of-life (EOL) care and communication in low- and middle-income countries, such as Ghana, are lacking. The objective of this descriptive phenomenological study was to describe the Ghanaian advanced cancer patients' experiences when interacting with the palliative care team about end-of-life care and decisions. Thirteen advanced cancer patients were purposively interviewed. Data was analyzed using a modified version of Colaizzi's method for qualitative data analysis. Nine major themes emerged from the analysis: Breaking of bad news, reaction to cancer diagnosis, fears and worries, managing physical symptoms, EOL discussions, economic burden of cancer diagnosis, culture of optimism, preparing for EOL, and attitude towards death. The lack of EOL communication affected participants QOL. Financial burden of cancer diagnosis was a significant problem for participants, because they could not work and there was no social safety net available in the system for them to use. Lack of available, accessible, and affordable healthcare led to the use of herbal medicine as first line of treatment Culture and religion profoundly impacted the EOL discussions, and there was no culturally appropriate EOL communication guidelines. Findings from this study has provided information for HCPs to use as a guide to design strategies to use when interacting with advanced patients at the EOL to enhance quality of life.Item Accurate, fast, and robust 3D city-scale reconstruction using wide area motion imagery(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2021) Yao, Shizeng; Palaniappan, KannappanMulti-view stereopsis (MVS) is a core problem in computer vision, which takes a set of scene views together with known camera poses, then produces a geometric representation of the underlying 3D model Using 3D reconstruction one can determine any object's 3D profile, as well as knowing the 3D coordinate of any point on the profile. The 3D reconstruction of objects is a generally scientific problem and core technology of a wide variety of fields, such as Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD), computer graphics, computer animation, computer vision, medical imaging, computational science, virtual reality, digital media, etc. However, though MVS problems have been studied for decades, many challenges still exist in current state-of-the-art algorithms, for example, many algorithms still lack accuracy and completeness when tested on city-scale large datasets, most MVS algorithms available require a large amount of execution time and/or specialized hardware and software, which results in high cost, and etc... This dissertation work tries to address all the challenges we mentioned, and proposed multiple solutions. More specifically, this dissertation work proposed multiple novel MVS algorithms to automatically and accurately reconstruct the underlying 3D scenes. By proposing a novel volumetric voxel-based method, one of our algorithms achieved near real-time runtime speed, which does not require any special hardware or software, and can be deployed onto power-constrained embedded systems. By developing a new camera clustering module and a novel weighted voting-based surface likelihood estimation module, our algorithm is generalized to process di erent datasets, and achieved the best performance in terms of accuracy and completeness when compared with existing algorithms. This dissertation work also performs the very first quantitative evaluation in terms of precision, recall, and F-score using real-world LiDAR groundtruth data. Last but not least, this dissertation work proposes an automatic workflow, which can stitch multiple point cloud models with limited overlapping areas into one larger 3D model for better geographical coverage. All the results presented in this dissertation work have been evaluated in our wide area motion imagery (WAMI) dataset, and improved the state-of-the-art performances by a large margin.The generated results from this dissertation work have been successfully used in many aspects, including: city digitization, improving detection and tracking performances, real time dynamic shadow detection, 3D change detection, visibility map generating, VR environment, and visualization combined with other information, such as building footprint and roads.