Doctoral Dissertations

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    A 195Pt nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy study of the solvolysis of sodium hexachloroplatinate by dimethyl sulfoxide.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1991) Allbritten, Jeffery ; Chemistry & Physics
    Platinum-195 Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to study the reaction of sodium hexachloroplatinate with dimethyl sulfoxide-dg in the mixed solvent dimethyl sulfoxide-dg: water, 1:2, V/V.
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    A Baseline Study of the Impact of Faculty Awareness of Open Educational Resources on Faculty Perception of Open Educational Resources
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2023) Haupt, Scott ; Rost, James ; Krahenbuhl, Kevin ; Godwin, Kim
    The importance of textbooks and other materials to the educational process cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, the prices on these vital learning materials have continued to grow steadily year over year (Hanson, 2021). Open educational resources (OER), which are “teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities” (Creative Commons, 2020) have been offered by some educational pundits as a potential means of addressing these skyrocketing prices (Parks et al., 2020; Wiley, 2007). This nonexperimental, baseline study sought to analyze the relationship between faculty awareness of OER and their perceptions of OER as a viable alternative for or supplement to the more traditional publisher textbooks and resources. The survey instrument, created by Elder (2018) and administered by Elder et al. (2020), was used to collect demographic information, gauge current knowledge and awareness of OER, measure respondents’ awareness of the OER development support systems available to them, gauge interest in OER, assess familiarity with open licensing, and get a pulse on discipline-specific considerations from among the responding population. The researcher interpreted participants’ self-reported awareness and perception of OER through a primarily quantitative lens to maintain a narrow focus on these variables, though a fair amount of qualitative coding was required for various open-ended questions to allow for those parts to be included in the subsequent analysis in SPSS. Via a chi-square test of independence, the researcher was forced to reject the research hypothesis and was unable to determine if a significant relation existed between faculty awareness of OER and faculty perceptions of OER. This inability to make a determination likely resulted from (1) a low response rate; (2) a plurality of respondents who were already well-versed in the topic; and (3) a tendency for possible respondents who were less than familiar with the topic to shy away from completing the survey for fear of negatively impacting the data (though this last possibility can only be linked anecdotally). It was determined that additional research is warranted to assess the degree to which the findings of this study are generalizable to the university teaching population as a whole; a follow-up study with minor tweaks in methodology could address the issues that occurred during this study. Nevertheless, the results of this study can serve as a starting point for further research and communications.
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    A COMPARISON OF NARRATIVE AND EXPOSITORY TEXT COMPREHENSION FOR STUDENTS AT VARYING LEVELS OF SES: A LATENT GROWTH CURVE ANALYSIS
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2017-04-10) Briggs, Laura C. ; Kim, Jwa ; Elleman, Amy ; Jin, Ying ; Education
    Research on secondary student reading comprehension performance is scant, yet demands for improved literacy at college and career levesl indicate that an understanding of trends and growth patterns is necessary to better inform teaching and learning for high school students. To improve understanding of reading performance at the secondary level, reading growth trajectories were investigated for 9th (n = 5752) and 11th (n = 3754) grade students. Free or reduced lunch membership (FRL) served as a proxy variable for student socioeconomic status (SES). Item performance of narrative and expository text was examined based on SES status by trend analysis and by latent growth curve anaylsis (LGCA) to determine if SES impacts initial starting point and growth on reading comprehension. Results revealed linear and quadratic trends of reading comprehension growth for 9th and 11th grade students. The dominant linear trend for 9th grade performance suggests that performance improved throughout the academic year. The dominant quadratic trend for 11th grade performance indicates that student performance declined at the second test administration before improving at the third test. Performance on English I expository tests showed a negative intercept-slope relationship indicating that students who scored lower initially performed better on subsequent exams compared to those who scored higher initially. The positive SES-intercept impact suggests that SES is correlated with performance on initial test administration. The negative SES-slope impact suggests that, during the academic year, student SES does not correlate with comprehension growth, possibly owing to the equalizing effects of the school environment on student achievement (Alexander, Entwistle, & Olson, 2007; Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996; Entwistle & Alexander, 1992, 1994; Heyns, 1978; Jamar, 1994; Pfost, Hattie, Drfler, & Artelt, 2014). Performance on narrative items revealed a positive relationship on the intercept and slope as well as a positive impact for both SES-intercept and SES-slope. For English III scores, results indicated positive relationships on intercept-slope, SES-intercept, and SES-slope for expository items. Due to the poor model fit for the narrative models, impact and relationship among these variables could not be determined.
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    A District’s Approach to Support Teacher Agency through Teacher-Led Professional Development
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2020) Skaggs, Cara Clayborne ; Dillard, Heather ; Krahenbuhl, Kevin ; Carter, Lando
    School districts invest large amounts of time and budgetary costs to provide professional development to support the professional growth of teachers each year. Although districts are providing professional learning that is appropriate in both content and delivery, studies still show teachers do not experience professional learning to support their professional growth. One missing link to the puzzle may be teacher agency. Teachers who have agency take ownership of their learning to meet their goals and to help others also meet their goals. A mixed methods study was utilized to explore how teacher-led professional development provided by a local school district supports the professional growth of teachers with conditions that support teacher agency. The study found the district has conditions in place to support teacher agency but supporting teacher agency does not automatically remove all the challenges associated with professional learning. The results of the study also determined more research is needed to understand and support teacher agency as well as districts must hire leaders who believe in professional learning.
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    A HISTORY OF FISK UNIVERSITY LIBRARY: 150 YEARS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN PUBLIC HISTORY AND CULTURE, 1866 – 2016
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2020) Owens, Sr., Brandon Alexander ; West, Carroll V ; Kyriakoudes, Louis M ; Hoffschwelle, Mary ; Lambert, Frank
    On January 9, 1866, a formal ceremony opened the doors of Fisk Free Colored School to educate whites and newly freed slaves in Nashville, Tennessee. This dissertation will argue that from the institution’s opening in 1866, Fisk University Library evolved from a passive role of providing materials for students, faculty, and the public to a leadership role in the effort to collect, preserve, and shape the study of African American history and culture. By the twenty-first century, the library was a premier African American historical organization with connections to every sub-field of public history: oral history, archival science, historic preservation, programming, museum curatorship, documentary films, and digital humanities. Overall, this research will explore the various ways an underrepresented and under-studied group of people used their power and agency to produce a new historical narrative that included the contributions of Africans and African Americans to global society.
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    A Life Less Gothic: Gothic Literature, Dark Reform, and the Nineteenth-Century American Periodical Press
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2017-03-20) Gray, Sarah B. ; Renfroe, Alicia ; Ostrowski, Carl ; Phillips, Philip ; English
    Gothic as a genre is particularly concerned with identifying and exposing anachronisms in social law and behavior. Though most scholars, both Gothic and otherwise, view this as a reactionary position, my study exposes how, especially in the hands of American dark reform writers, Gothic became an active genre, illuminating for readers not what they do fear, but what they should fear. Though many nineteenth-century reformers wrote tracts and sentimental novels in the service of social reform, Rebecca Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, E.D.E.N. Southworth, and George Lippard recognized that by paralleling nineteenth-century legal and social issues with Gothic literary elements—coverture with captivity, loss of female “purity” with live burial, and insane asylums and civil commitment with the veil—in short stories and serials published in popular periodicals, their calls for social reform would reach a much more vast and varied national audience.
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    A Mixed Methods Approach Exploring Teacher Emotional Labor and Burnout among Middle School Teachers
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2024) Oats, Christina Lee ; Krahenbuhl, Kevin ; Hover, Ashlee ; Godwin, Kim
    While it is well understood that teachers are leaving the profession, what is less discussed is the why behind teachers choosing to leave. In 2023, 44% of teachers surveyed said they were likely or very likely to leave their job within the next two years. By 2025, unfilled teaching positions are expected to approach 200,000 (Mielke, 2023). This mixed methods study focused on the emotional labor of teaching and its influence on middle school teacher burnout. Research question 1 encompassed the perspectives of middle school teachers who have considered leaving teaching. From the qualitative data, seven themes emerged including: 1) Striving to Thrive with Healthy Balance, 2) Value System of Student-Centered Care, 3) Not Enough to Go Around, 4) A Tired Teacher, 5) Safe Spaces Impact Work Perseverance, 6) Administration Sets the Tone, and 7) Bottling Up or Spewing Out. Research question 2 included whether emotional labor, as measured by surface acting (SA), deep acting (DA), and naturally-felt emotions (NFE), was a predictor of middle school teacher burnout. The null hypothesis was rejected, as emotional labor was found to be a predictor of middle school teacher burnout. Surface Acting was associated with the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization of middle school teachers when combined with Deep Acting and Naturally-Felt Emotions. Additionally, Mental Distance and emotional labor (SA, DA, and NFE collectively) were found to be correlated with Surface Acting being statistically significant. Emotional Impairment showed a positive correlation between emotional labor (SA, DA, and NFE collectively) with Deep Acting found to be statistically significant. The findings do support the impact of emotional labor on factors of burnout as core burnout components are exhaustion and mental distance.
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    A Mixed-Method Evaluation of Anxiety Antecedents Related to Biology Content Among K-16 Educators
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2021) Grimes, Zachary ; Gardner, Grant E ; Baxter, Sarah ; Mangione, Katherine ; Seipelt-Thiemann, Rebecca ; Lampley, Sandra
    This dissertation is comprised of three studies that define and subsequently evaluate different antecedents to STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) anxiety in elementary, secondary, and tertiary faculty. The literature review developed a framework of antecedents to anxiety in STEM classrooms or contexts. This was accomplished through a review of anxiety literature in each of the STEM domains, also incorporating statistics. The STEM anxiety framework was then used to develop research questions for the quantitative and qualitative study. Both studies used a cross-sectional survey design, and data for both studies was collected simultaneously, but separated prior to analysis. The quantitative study used a Likert-style survey to gather teacher efficacy data for a list of biology concepts developed by biology content experts with both secondary and tertiary education experience. The comparison of self-efficacy scores across different demographics found that both the teaching context (elementary, secondary, or tertiary) and the approximate number of undergraduate biology courses had significant impacts on self-efficacy scores. Both those teaching in elementary contexts and those who reported <5 undergraduate biology courses exhibited significantly lower self-efficacy scores, followed by tertiary and secondary educators respectively. The qualitative study utilized a personification writing prompt asking the participants to personify their own relationship with biology. This study found that, in terms of code diversity, those in tertiary education had the highest diversity of relationship codes, followed by secondary and elementary educators respectively. This could be seen as indicative of the amount of training leading to more developed relationships. The findings of these studies, together, indicate that there is a need to revisit the curricula of elementary teacher training programs. Elementary educators are responsible introducing students to formal education, and as shown in the pair of empirical studies herein, those that exhibit lower self-efficacy can unintentionally inhibit their students’ progress throughout the entirety of their education.
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    A PROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FISH INTAKE AND CENTRAL ADIPOSITY
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-03-25) Morris, Tracy Garrison ; Weatherby, Norman ; Colson, Janet ; Owusu, Andrew ; Ragan, Brian ; Health & Human Performance
    Accumulation of visceral adipose tissue, or central adiposity, increases prevalence of many chronic diseases and mortality, this relationship is independent of total of body fat. Central adiposity is commonly defined as having a waist circumference of > 102 cm in men and > 88 cm in women. Increased fish intake may have a beneficial effect on central adiposity. This prospective study examined the longitudinal relationship between fish intake at baseline and central adiposity over time.
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    A PSYCHOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF TEACHER-MADE BENCHMARK ASSESSMENTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2017-03-24) Milligan, Andrea ; Kim, Jwa ; Elleman, Amy ; Magne, Cyrille ; Education
    ABSTRACT
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    A Qualitative Study on the Pedagogical Changes Teachers Experience When They Embrace Project Based Learning and Develop a Transformational Learning Pedagogy
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2020) Crews, Tamera Dawn
    ABSTRACT Change is difficult, but sometimes for those in the teaching profession who have been tasked with changing their teaching style it is more difficult. This case study reflects the process that seven elementary school teachers experience when their district declares a change in pedagogical practice to Project Based Learning (PBL) practices. The teachers emerge from various backgrounds and collaborate as they journey through the change. The researcher’s goal was to determine the driving factor that would encourage a teacher to make the requested change. Not only are the pedagogical practices changed, but the transformation of learning of the teachers themselves. The researcher studied each teacher to determine how the change is affecting their classroom practices and their students. The results deem to be more of a progression than a list of characteristics. Each teacher proved to be on a timeline of the process depending on the experience each one had with the changes. All teams shared characteristics such as a close team relationship and an enthusiasm for PBL. They all agree that time is a factor that makes a difference in the quality of teaching and they all had a passion for student learning. What sets them apart is their background knowledge they bring to the group and their experiences since the process started. The information and knowledge the researcher gained during this study will be the basis for future professional development that will guide other teachers more smoothly through the process of pedagogical change.
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    A SCHOOL-WIDE APPROACH: TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN THE MAINSTREAM CLASSROOM
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2020) Brown, Jacob ; Krahenbuhl, Kevin ; Carter, John Lando ; Hairston, Anna
    Teachers face more challenges in today’s classroom than were faced 20 years ago. The rise of English Language Learners (ELLs) in American schools continues to grow, with 21% of the K-12 student population being ELL (NYU, 2018). With this drastic increase, schools are challenged to meet the diverse academic, social, and emotional needs that these students have. ELL specialists can provide support in these areas; however, the percentage of ELL specialists in most schools is not enough to adequately meet the needs of the ELL population. Because of this factor, ELL students are being primarily served in the mainstream classroom. These mainstream classroom teachers are struggling to adequately meet the needs of the ELL students they serve daily, mainly because most have not received any type of specialty training or support with this special population. If teachers are to best meet the needs of ALL learners, then action must take place; leaders must identify the primary struggles that teachers are experiencing, and prepare a list of resources and training opportunities to support the needs at their schools. Keywords: ELL, Mainstream ELL Instruction, ELL Strategies
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    A SCIENCE FACULTY MOTIVATION ANALYSIS TO ADOPT EVIDENCE-BASED TEACHING
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2019) Carroll, Penny ; Gardner, Grant ; Brinthaupt, Tom ; Grinath, Anna ; Bleiler-Baxter, Sarah ; Seipelt-Thiemann, Rebecca ; Basic & Applied Sciences
    The most common teaching practice in America’s universities is lecturing and this study investigated faculty reasons for continuing this practice in their particular departmental contexts. This study examined data from faculty surveys, interviews, classroom observations and departmental artifacts using the expectancy-value theory as an analytical framework for understanding faculty motivational components to adopt evidence-based teaching. Some key expectancies and values identified in this study included class size, the need for credible evidence, department communication, department teaching expectations, and achieving tenure. This work also updated previous EVT models by identifying new expectancies and values to consider when working at a local level with faculty. This study proposes a new professional development model for future use when working with faculty on the research-to-practice gap issues.
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    A STUDY IN THE SOURCES OF B. TRAVEN’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2024) Blade, Lauren ; Neth, Michael ; McDaniel, Rhonda ; Hollings, Marion
    This study presents a revisionist reading of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by “B. Traven,” the pseudonymous 1927 German novel published in English in 1935. Contrary to the scholarly perspective uniformly evident in previous criticism, in which Sierra Madre is presented as evincing the unknown author’s implicit Marxist/collectivist political and economic ideology, the dissertation posits that the book endorses the American versions of Libertarian democracy and free-market capitalism. The dissertation argues that the actions of, and dialogue between, the central characters―especially as embedded in the novel’s elaborately-developed internal narratives― parallel and suggest the author’s familiarity with key tenets of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), the second of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). Chapter One explores how past and contemporary Traven scholars have invariably approached the entire body of Traven’s fiction―including Sierra Madre―with political preconceptions that identify the major elements of those works as condemnations of such negative human impulses as greed, unbridled selfishness, and lust for money, gold, and material goods. Using extant Traven scholarship, the study demonstrates how free-market capitalism is often reflexively condemned in these same pejorative terms, despite its origin in Enlightenment principles such as social and religious freedom and individual liberty― the tradition of Classical Liberalism―derived largely from these three epochal texts. Drawing on both older scholarship and the recent work of Thomas Pangle and Timothy Burns as well as that of Jeffrey Collins, Chapter Two discusses how historians of ideas have drawn lines of influence from Hobbes through Locke to Smith and considers the documented dissemination of the ideas of these three philosophers in Germany during the (likely) years of Traven’s youth. Following the overview provided in Chapter Three of the principles that most distinguish the systems proposed by each of these three philosophers, Chapter Four examines passages from America’s founding documents and examples from early American case law and legal commentary suggesting that the precepts advanced therein similarly appear to have been derived from Hobbes and Locke, cognizant of Smith, and woven into the country’s framework in ways that fundamentally shaped American representative government and laissez faire economic policy. Chapter Five documents both verbal and substantive parallels in Sierra Madre consistent with Hobbes’, Locke’s, and Smith’s related views of civil governance and economics. Chapter Six examines in detail two of Sierra Madre’s embedded metanarratives, and the connecting episode that appears in between them, as allegorical embodiments of key principles drawn from Hobbes, Locke, and Smith.
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    A STUDY OF ANTICANCER AGENTS DERIVED FROM PLANTS UTILIZED IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE (TCM)
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2018-03-27) Almosnid, Nadin ; Altman, Elliot ; Gao, Ying ; Altman, Elliot ; Gao, Ying ; Farone, Anthony ; Farone, Mary ; Wang, Chengshan ; Biology
    ABSTRACT
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    A study of how two potential anticancer agents affect major cancer hallmarks: apoptosis and metastasis
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2020) Alsaif, Gheda Abdulaziz ; Altman, Dr Elliot ; Gao, DrYing ; Farone, Dr Anthony ; Ding, DrKeying ; Wang, DrChenshang
    Cancer is characterized by continuous growth of cells that divide uncontrollably, escaping the standard eliminating mechanism known as apoptosis, which is a form of programmed cell death or suicide. Although abundant efforts have been dedicated to finding an effective cure for cancer, treatment remains a difficult challenge. Many of the current cancer therapies, including chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, immunosuppression, cause many side effects for patients. For that reason, many researchers focus on natural products as they have been used for thousands of years to prevent many chronic diseases, including cancer. Cancer cells are distinguished from healthy cells by certain hallmarks, where each one of those hallmarks requires distinctive capabilities. These hallmarks were defined by Hanahan and Weinberg in 2000, and they include: sustaining proliferating signaling, evading growth suppressors, resisting cell death “apoptosis”, enabling replicative immortality, angiogenesis, activating invasion and metastasis, reprogramming of energy metabolism and evading immune destruction. In this study, we focused on the ability of natural products, either aurones or an oligostilbene, to affect two of the primary cancer hallmarks, inducing apoptosis and inhibiting cancer cell metastasis. Our findings suggest the ability of four aurone derivatives (A3, A5, A10 and A14) based upon five-membered heteroaromatic rings as well as cis- and trans- gnetin H, trimeric resveratrol oligostilbenes, to exhibit the most anticancer activity; growth inhibition was associated with induction of apoptosis as well as repression of cell motility at low concentrations. Together, these findings suggest that aurone derivatives and both cis- and trans- gnetin H could be potential leads for new anti-cancer agents.
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    A Telltale Narrative: American Horror Film and Metacinema
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2020) Teague, Savanna Rae ; Brantley, Will ; Badley, Linda ; Helford, Elyce
    The film genre of horror will not and possibly cannot die. The genre’s metacinema tradition existed in the first flickers of the motion picture industry with its reliance on adaptation and serialization, and it continues, producing along the way an expanding range of scholarship. To understand the trajectory of current genre trends is to examine horror’s inherently meta nature—its need to reference itself and its audience’s growing awareness of horror’s intertextuality. With metanarratives as the focus of analysis, a singular, linear progression of the genre emerges. This progression links films to one another through their reflexivity; it relies less upon historical categorizations that group films on the basis of dates or production cycles. Metatextual remnants, such as characters like Igor in any Frankenstein iteration, carry on through decades of films in the form of references, adaptations, and fourth-wall breaks, resulting in a visible metanarrative within the horror genre. By confronting tropes self-referentially, meta becomes a language that horror filmmakers use to speak to their audiences, to other filmmakers, and to the genre itself. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) achieves meta status by creating multiple points of view through careful camerawork that invites an audience to examine its understanding of horror. Films like Scream 4 (2011), however, demonstrate the risk of relying too heavily on a metanarrative to stand in place of a coherent story, especially with an audience aware that certain meta elements are expected in a film franchise. A crucial difference between most of the overt meta-horror films of the 2010s and their predecessors, including Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and the original Scream (1996), is the purposeful use of meta. Whereas horror films of the 1990s and 2000s use meta to engage audiences with reminders of the real world, meta-horror films of the 2010s devolve into satire without advancing a metanarrative conversation. The horror genre is still recovering from its most meta era of the last three decades with a better appreciation for what meta can do when employed strategically and with knowledge of its various imitations.
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    A Way Back: Educator Perceptions of Restorative Practices and Its Effect on the Learning Environment
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2022) Campbell, Casey Wade ; Quarto, Chris ; Hooser, Angela ; Carter, Lando ; Krahenbuhl, Kevin
    Over the last decade, restorative practices have emerged as an alternate form of school discipline as a result of the negative effects of exclusionary discipline practices. Restorative practices seeks to limit exclusionary practices and keep more students in the classroom while focusing on student accountability and relationship building. The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to explore the perceptions of school staff on the implementation of restorative practices and their effect on the learning environment in order to answer the following research questions: (1) How do teachers and administrators perceive and experience the discipline process in schools where restorative practices are emphasized? (2) How do teachers and administrators perceive the effect student behavior has on the learning environment in schools that emphasize restorative discipline practices? An urban Tennessee middle school that had been implementing restorative practices school-wide for four years, was chosen as the case for this study. Four school staff members were chosen utilizing purposeful sampling techniques to participate in individual semi-structured interviews. To provide context to interview data, the researcher also collected and examined four consecutive years of student achievement data, student discipline data, and student attendance data. Interview data was analyzed using first and second cycle coding methods. This study found mixed results for the utilization of restorative practices. All participants perceive restorative practices as having a positive effect on school culture and believed their use resulted in fewer behavior incidents. Positive effects reported included a focus on building relationships, more caring classroom communities, and conflict mediation strategies that helps to teach students how to successfully deal with conflict. However, participants still expressed reservations that the amount of time dedicated to the RP could take away from instructional time. Participants also reported serious concerns about how students who do not seem to respond positively to restorative strategies affect the learning environment.
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    A ZERO-HOUR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY PROGRAM'S BENEFIT ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN ELEMENTARY AGED SCHOOL CHILDREN
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2017-11-09) Phillips, Kristin Lynn ; Dunlap, John ; Palmer, Thomas ; Belcher, Donald ; Health & Human Performance
    With childhood obesity on the rise and the need for American children to be academically successful compared to peer nations, it is imperative that physical activity become part of the typical school day for all elementary aged school children. There is an understanding that physical activity not only benefits physical fitness and health, but that it positively affects children’s academic achievement. With only one-half of American children meeting the CDC’s recommendation of 60 minutes daily, the physical and cognitive effects of inactivity have been widespread and undeniable.
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    Ab initio analysis of the energy and geometry during the rearrangement of cyclopentadienylboranes and the evaluation of the dapsic computer tutorial.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1999) Hill, Brian ; Chemistry
    The equilibrium and transition state geometries of the degenerate 1,5-sigmatropic rearrangement of cyclopentadienylborane, cyclopentadienyldifluroborane, cyclopentadienyldichloroborane, pentamethylcyclopentadienylborane, pentamethylcyclopentadienyldifluroborane, and pentarnethylcyclopentadienyldichloroborane were optimized using ab initio (RHF/3-21G*, RHF/6-31G*, RMP2/3-21G*, and RMP2/6-31G*) calculations. Activation energies were predicted and compared with previously published experimental data [P. Jutzi, B. Krato, M. Hursthouse, A. J. Howes, Chem. Ber. (1987), 120, 565--574.] The molecule optimized to an asymmetrical geometry with the boron atom shifted away from its symmetric h1 position and toward one of the two neighboring carbons. This geometry was predicted for each molecule at each level of theory except for C 5H5BH2 at the RMP2/6-31G* level and C5H 5BH2 at the RHF/6-31G* level. This geometry was also predicted for bis(pentamethylcyclopentadienyl)fluoroborane.