Digital Commons Network^™

The Morphometric Relationship Of Upper Cave 101 And 103 To Modern Homo Sapiens, Deborah Lenz Cornell

Masters Theses

Upper Cave 101 and Upper Cave 103 (UC 101 and UC 103), the much argued over Homo sapiens fossils from Zhoukoudian, China, figure prominently into discussions of modem human origins. Adherents to the Multiregional model see the Zhoukoudian fossils as exhibiting some of the same Asian characteristics that can be seen in modern Asian populations. On the other hand, proponents of the Out-of-Africa model see anything and everything but Asian features, frequently pointing out African characteristics which they claim are retentions of features from the initial exodus of modern humans.

UC 101 and UC 103 were compared to Howells' modern …

The Pack Horse Library Project Of Eastern Kentucky: 1936-1943, Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer

Masters Theses

This study examines the Pack Horse Library Project, partially supported by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), in eastern Kentucky from 1936 to 1943 . The WPA supported the project by providing work relief for local women and a few local men. Communities, individuals, and organizations such as county boards of education, civic clubs, and Kentucky PTAs funded materials, operating expenses, and overhead. For hundreds of isolated mountain communities, schools, and individuals the Pack Horse Library Project provided the first public library service ever experienced.

The Pack Horse Library Project provided library service to an area of Kentucky that was geographically …

Household Management Of Endoparasitic Infection In A Border Community In Tamaulipas, Mexico, Charles Thomas Faulkner

Doctoral Dissertations

Fecal samples from 438 children in 217 families were examined for helminth eggs/larve and protozoan cysts to study the occurrence of parasitic infection and household knowledge of cholera preventive measures in a border community in Tamaulipas, Mexico. The age of the children ranged from 1 month to 16 years. Parasitic infections occurred in 30% of children residing in 79 of 217 households. Giardia lamblia accounted for 12.5% of all infections. Other endoparasitic species found in the children were: Hymenolepis nana, (28/438), Ascaris lumbricoides (16/438), Trichuris trichiura (6/438), Enterobius vermicularis (6/438), Ancylostoma-Necator (1/438),Strongyloides sercoralis (1/438), Entamoeba coli (27/438), Ent. …

The Plains Paradox: Secular Trends In Stature In 19Th Century Nomadic Plains Equestrian Indians, Joseph M. Prince

Doctoral Dissertations

This study documents the occurrence of secular trends in height in an historic population of 19^th century nomadic Plains equestrian Indians. The eight tribal samples utilized are a subset of the Boas North American Indian anthropometric data set. A cross-sectional design was used to examine the span of years from 1800 to 1870 for adult individuals over 20 years of age, sexes analyzed separately, male n=1,123 and female n=362. Adult heights were adjusted for aging effects on three variables: standing height; sitting height; and sitting height/subischial length ratio. Combined with an unadjusted subischial length, these variables were used to …

Being Cherokee In A White World: Ethnic Identity In A Post-Removal American Indian Enclave, Betty J. Duggan

Doctoral Dissertations

Within a few years of 1838, when most members of the Cherokee Nation were forced to emigrate to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears, a small group of Cherokee families reestablished settlements in and around the Ducktown Basin in the southeastern comer of Tennessee, away from the major Eastern Cherokee remnants in North Carolina. This dissertation reconstructs the history of these Cherokees from 1838 through the 1910s, focusing on the nature of their communities; their economic, social, and religious relationships with local whites; their associations with other Cherokee enclaves and individuals; and their ultimate disappearance from the Basin.

Data …

Turkistan: Kazak Religion And Collective Memory, Bruce G. Privratsky

Doctoral Dissertations

This study in the anthropology of religion examines the relationship between Kazak ethnicity and religion, exploring how the collective memory is mediating Muslim values in Kazak culture in the 1990s. Ethnographic field research was conducted in the Kazak language from 1992 to 1998 in the city of Turkistan (Turkestan) in southern Kazakstan (Kazakhstan). Turkistan is the site of the Timurid shrine of Ahmet Yasawi (Ahmed Yasavi), a key figure in the Turkic Sufism of Central Asia. Today it is also a cultural center of the new Pan-Turkism and the site of a Kazak-Turkish international university.

The findings of the study …

Latitudinal Gradient In The Body Mass Index (Bmi), And The Bmi's Geometric And Statistical Relationships To The Surface Area: Volume Ratio And Body Shape, Brandy Lea O'Neil

Masters Theses

The body mass index (BMI), weight/height² (W/H²), is currently the index of choice for assessment of nutritional status. Statements in the literature about the BMI as a potential expression of “cold adaptation” or “Bergmann’s Rule” beg the question: What does that BMI measure in terms of size, shape, and the surface area:volume (SA:V) ratio? Geometric modeling shows that the BMI captures both size and shape and is inversely related to the SA:V ratio. This admixture of size/shape information, combined with the unmeaningful absolute value of the BMI, preclude precise understanding of what it measures. A new weight-height-based …

Microscopic Enamel Defects In A Contemporary Population: Biological And Social Implications, Lise Marie Mifsud

Masters Theses

In this study, the frequency of microscopic defects in enamel, termed Wilson bands, are analyzed according to socioeconomic affiliation, the sex, and ethnicity of the individual. The sample consists of 193 anterior teeth collected from private practice and public health oral surgeon's offices. These defects have been studied in great detail by dental researchers, dental anthropologists, and bioarchaeologists to ascertain: etiology, morphology, inter- and intra- population differences, prehistoric diet and health, and dietary and morbidity conditions of underprivileged contemporary populations.

The results of this study are compared to results of previous researchers and similarities and differences in findings are discussed. …

Murder For Hire: Event Characteristics And Causal Implications, Nicole Madonna Corsaro

Masters Theses

The problem of criminal homicide has been extensively studied. A productive way to examine it has been through detailed analysis of homicides as criminal events. There are a number of characteristics that are common to all homicide events, such as background circumstances, participant characteristics, and interrelationships of offenders. However, murder-for-hire events contain distinctive interactive features that are not present in other types of criminal homicide, i.e. solicitor, hitman, and target scenarios and that have not received empirical attention. Using trial transcripts, news reports, pre-sentence investigations, and Tennessee Department of Correction records, 30 murder-for-hire events have been identified involving 60 individuals …

Urban Slave Diet In Early Knoxville: Faunal Remains From Blount Mansion, Knoxville, Tennessee, Carey Lamar Coxe

Masters Theses

The vertebrate faunal remains recovered during excavations at the Blount Mansion Slave Cabin, located at Blount Mansion, Knoxville, Tennessee provide a rare opportunity to address the dietary refuse from an urban slave context in the Upland South region. The material was analyzed and data compared to faunal data from three other slave sites on Upland South plantations, Mabry, Locust Grove, and the Hermitage, and one Upland South yeoman farm site, the Gibbs House site. These comparisons revealed that the urban slaves at Blount Mansion appear to have consumed much more fish than rural slaves and farmers in the uplands. Also, …

Reporting Technology: A Content Analysis Of Newsweek's Cyberscope Column, A. Scott Duncan

Masters Theses

Introduction: The Internet is perhaps the most rapidly developing communications technology in history (Eighmey and McCord 1998). In January 1995, there were 4.8 million people online. By January 1996, the number had almost doubled to 9.5 million (Lottor 1996). Today there are an estimated 110 million people worldwide using the Internet (NUA 1998). Most studies indicate that the primary use by consumers of the Internet is exploration and entertainment (Pitkow and Recker 1994: Eighmey and McCord 1998). However, consumers are not the only people using this new technology. Many businesses are trying to take advantage of this new commercial outlet. …

The Performance Of Industry Culture: Assumptions, Sources And Evolutionary Patterns As Revealed In The Paradigmatic Interplay Of Reporting Structures And Communicative Processes, Linda Lyle

Doctoral Dissertations

This study (1) describes cultural assumptions in the student travel industry, relying upon protocols previously established within the functionalist perspective and (2) explains how these assumptions may have evolved by examining the basic communicative processes (performances) wherein industry culture has been made manifest.

The study identifies eight members of the student travel industry and uses qualitative methods that consist of in-depth interviews with the industry's "elite" members, as well as content analysis of selected historical and contemporary documents. Data were analyzed, first by thematic coding and then by interpretive analysis of codes that emerged. To frame the analysis, Phillips' (1990) …

An Examination Of The Relationships Between Value Conflict, Quality Of Worklife, Job Satisfaction And Job Retention Among Employees Working In Urban And Rural County Human Service Departments In The State Of Ohio, Laurie Gracheck White

Doctoral Dissertations

Public human service settings are highly bureaucratic organizations with tight centralization of policy decision-making. They can be inhospitable places for conducting professional work and most appropriate for performing routine tasks based on standardized procedures. Against this backdrop of control, human service workers are asked to respond to the unique and unpredictable problems of people struggling unsuccessfully in society. The inconsistency between work structure and professional responsibility can generate value conflict for public human service employees. There are conflicts of loyalty to employers, laws, clients, colleagues, funding sources, regulations, and the community at large. These conflicts can have profound implication for …

Induced Altruism In The Maintenance Of Institutionalized Celibacy, Hector N. Qirko

Doctoral Dissertations

Celibacy is an altruistic act when it involves an individual's sacrifice of lifelong reproduction for the benefit of others. Where this occurs for the primary benefit of non-kin, as in many institutions which demand celibacy of their members, it will often be difficult to maintain. This dissertation explores the institutionalized maintenance and reinforcement of celibacy vows through the concept of induced altruism. Because humans generally recognize kin only by means of indirect cues, these cues may be manipulated so that individuals behave altruistically for the benefit of non-kin. Human kinship-recognition cues include association, phenotypic similarity, and the use of kinship …

Late Paleoindian Through Middle Archaic Faunal Evidence From Dust Cave, Alabama, Renee Beauchamp Walker

Doctoral Dissertations

This research involves the faunal evidence from the site of Dust Cave in northwest Alabama. The site was occupied by prehistoric hunter-gatherers from 10,500 to 5,200 years ago. Dust Cave is significant to archaeological research because it represents one of the earliest known, stratified Late Paleoindian and Archaic deposits in the Southeast. Test excavations were conducted at the cave from 1989-1994 and the materials for this dissertation were collected during this period. Results of the faunal analysis indicate that changes occurred in resource selection, habitat exploitation, and natural environment through time. A shift from a concentration on avian species to …

A Formative Evaluation Of An Empathy Training Model, Beverly Mckee

Doctoral Dissertations

Statement of the Problem: No specific, short term model of empathy has been developed and tested with the general adult population even though researchers have established a link between empathic skills and the art of helping and caring for others. Additionally, as a major component of "emotional intelligence," it is argued that empathy enhances successful living in general (Gibbs, 1995). A large body of research suggests that more empathic people tend to engage in more altruistic behaviors, are less aggressive, are more affiliative, score higher on measures of moral judgement, and are more pleasant to be around (Mehrabian, Young, and …

A Biocultural Analysis Of Intentional Dental Modifications, Derek Christiaan Benedix

Masters Theses

When we consider how painful dental drilling is now in spite of the advances of science with respect to anesthesia and modern instruments, we cannot help but think how much those people must have suffered from the filing and dental preparations which were performed. (Fastlicht 1948:319)

Human teeth provide an excellent source of information about an individual's past. Because of this, scientists study the range of characteristics manifested in teeth. One such characteristic is dental modification. Modification of the human dentition has a long and varied history in numerous cultures (see Milner and Larsen 1991). This study explores the practice …

The Impacts Of Tourism On Space And Place In Jonesborough, Tennessee, Elizabeth E. Van Horn

Masters Theses

Small towns have increasingly begun to look to tourism as a means of promoting economic growth and development. While the positive economic impacts of tourism development have been widely recognized, the sociocultural impacts (which are often negative) have traditionally been overlooked. The transformation of sense of place for residents of small towns represents one of the many sociocultural impacts essential to the understanding of tourism's overall impact. Transformation of sense of place has been largely disregarded as a consideration in tourism development (and other development strategies), but the alteration of sense of place should be included in the evaluation of …