Digital Commons Network^™

Evil And The Ontological Disproof, Carl J. Brownson Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a revival of the ontological disproof, an ontological argument against the existence of God. The ontological disproof, in its original form, argues that God is impossible, because if God exists, he must exist necessarily, and necessary existence is impossible. The notion of necessary existence has been largely rehabilitated since this argument was first offered in 1948, and the argument has accordingly lost much of its force. I argue that the ontological disproof ought to be combined with the problem of evil, and that the resulting synthesis of the two arguments is far more powerful than either …

La Nación Está En Otra Parte: Cultura Y Neoliberalismo En México (1977-1996), Rafael Lemus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies a series of cultural products and practices that, between 1977 and 1996, either contributed to the formation and propagation of a neoliberal rationality in Mexico or opposed it. By analyzing objects as diverse as cultural magazines, art exhibitions, literary polemics and social movements, it addresses the reconfiguration of the Mexican cultural field triggered by the neoliberal turn in the 1980s as well as the construction of a new national narrative intended to displace the old revolutionary tale and to rationalize and facilitate the insertion of the country into the global economy.

The first chapter focuses on the …

Women’S Sexual Fantasies In Context: The Emotional Content Of Sexual Fantasies, Psychological And Interpersonal Distress, And Satisfaction In Romantic Relationships, Sarah Constantine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Psychoanalytic thinkers propose that aspects of an individual’s sexual fantasies are related to her psychological and interpersonal functioning. The present study aims to elucidate the significance of sexual fantasies with respect to women’s emotional and interpersonal lives. The study evaluated a model, which hypothesized that internal representations of self and others (e.g. attachment security, maturity of object relations) along with psychological and interpersonal factors would predict both the emotional content (guilt, fear, affection) of written sexual fantasy narratives, and overall romantic satisfaction in heterosexual women. Methods: Five hundred and thirty four women completed self-report questionnaires online. Subsequently, the sexual …

Motivating Morphological Constituents: A Learning-Based Analysis Of Hebrew, Navajo, And Spanish, Ignacio Lorenzo Montoya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In both description and theory, a variety of linguistic structures have been posited to account for a multitude of linguistic patterns. In the sub-field of morphology, such units include roots, stems, and morphemes. Previous research that has explored the motivation for linguistic structures and constructs in phonology and syntax has raised questions about the nature of these linguistic structures and constructs. Such work, however, has not focused on morphological constituent structure, a gap which the present dissertation addresses through a focused examination of the evidence motivating morphological constituents in Hebrew, Navajo, and Spanish.

The theoretical framework of this dissertation follows …

Essays On Inequality And Macroeconomic Stability, Thomas Hauner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters. . .

Chapter 1: Aggregate Wealth and Its Distribution as Determinants of Financial Crises: Panel Evidence This essay investigates the relationship between wealth inequality and financial crises across a panel of nine advanced economies over the past 100 years. While substantiation of a role for income inequality is ambiguous in the literature, evidence is presented suggesting a unique capacity for the accumulation of assets to increase the likelihood of a future financial crisis episode. Testing long-run panel data with a reduced form, two-way fixed effects model, estimates suggest that increasing wealth inequality, in an …

From Protest Song To Social Song: Music And Politics In Colombia, 1966-2016, Joshua Katz-Rosene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in the cities of Bogotá and Medellín, this dissertation documents the development of canción protesta (protest song) in Colombia in the 1960s, and tracks its evolution in subsequent decades. At the turn of the 1970s, songwriters affiliated with a grassroots canción protesta movement in Bogotá used music as a vehicle for disseminating leftist political ideology and extolling the revolutionary guerrilla groups that had formed in the Colombian countryside in the preceding years. However, canción protesta was an urban phenomenon that emerged in tandem with other countercultural currents, and their confluence in the late 1960s …

Desire, Curiosity, And The Search For Truth In Proust, Moreno, And Bechdel, Santiago Parga Linares

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marcel Proust’s influence on twentieth century literature is broad and has been well documented. This dissertation attempts a comparative reading of À la recherche du temps perdu that places it in contrast with Colombian writer Marvel Moreno’s 1987 novel, En diciembre llegaban las brisas, and Alison Bechdel’s 2006 comic memoir, Fun Home. Starting from a Deleuzian reading of the Recherche, this dissertation proposes the notion of the “proustian truth seeker”, a thematic and stylistic phenomenon which can be traced in all three writers. The characteristics of the truth seeker can be used to understand the ways in …

Asymptotic Counting Formulas For Markoff-Hurwitz Tuples, Ryan Ronan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Markoff equation is a Diophantine equation in 3 variables first studied in Markoff's celebrated work on indefinite binary quadratic forms. We study the growth of solutions to an n variable generalization of the Markoff equation, which we refer to as the Markoff-Hurwitz equation. We prove explicit asymptotic formulas counting solutions to this generalized equation with and without a congruence restriction. After normalizing and linearizing the equation, we show that all but finitely many solutions appear in the orbit of a certain semigroup of maps acting on finitely many root solutions. We then pass to an accelerated subsemigroup of maps …

A Discussion Of Delimitative In Mandarin Chinese, Qi Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates how delimitative marking in Mandarin Chinese is better considered as an instance of verb-phrase modification instead of aspect marking. The study investigates data with verb reduplication cases caused by delimitative marking from both syntactic and semantic points of view. Through observations and analyses, it is found that delimitative marking does not have the same distribution as other aspect markers, but rather shows resemblance to temporal modifiers syntactically. Semantically, instead of providing a viewpoint as other aspect markers do, delimitative indicates the temporal length (shortness) of the event. In addition, it is found that delimitative marking has strict …

Worlds Of If: Analyses Of The Composed And Improvised Works Of Robert Dick, Melissa Keeling

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Considered one of the most important publications in twentieth-century flute pedagogy, Robert Dick’s seminal method book, The Other Flute (1975),[1] is an extensive catalogue of multiphonic fingerings, microtonal fingerings, glissandi, circular breathing, and other extended techniques. The Other Flute and a handful of his published solos are widely studied, but these works only represent a fraction of Dick’s creative energies.

Equally comfortable in classical, jazz, rock, electronic, and world music, Dick’s oeuvre demonstrates a sophisticated, musical use of contemporary techniques and his pieces have become standard repertoire. Though Dick was not the first flutist to use or notate these …

Clemence Of Barking And Valdes Of Lyon: Two Contemporaneous Examples Of Innovation In The Twelfth Century, Lisa Murray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Twelfth Century in Western Europe was a remarkable time in history. Scholars have noted that Roman law was being revived, Aristotelian theory was being studied, Romanesque and Gothic art was being produced, scholasticism was being cultivated, and economic growth was being fostered by the rise of towns. These are just some of the developments that help give this era the well-known term “twelfth-century renaissance.” Despite the flourishing of creativity that this label suggests, there are few surviving, specific examples of innovation from this time that have been passed down to us. In AD 1175 the Benedictine nun Clemence of …

Some Results In Combinatorial Number Theory, Karl Levy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The first chapter establishes results concerning equidistributed sequences of numbers. For a given $d\in\mathbb{N}$, $s(d)$ is the largest $N\in\mathbb{N}$ for which there is an $N$-regular sequence with $d$ irregularities. We compute lower bounds for $s(d)$ for $d\leq 10000$ and then demonstrate lower and upper bounds $\left\lfloor\sqrt{4d+895}+1\right\rfloor\leq s(d)< 24801d^{3} + 942d^{2} + 3$ for all $d\geq 1$. In the second chapter we ask if $Q(x)\in\mathbb{R}[x]$ is a degree $d$ polynomial such that for $x\in[x_k]=\{x_1,\cdots,x_k\}$ we have $|Q(x)|\leq 1$, then how big can its lead coefficient be? We prove that there is a unique polynomial, which we call $L_{d,[x_k]}(x)$, with maximum lead coefficient under these constraints and construct an algorithm that generates $L_{d,[x_k]}(x)$.

The Effects Of Childhood Irritability On Adolescent Outcomes And Treatment Response In Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Estrella Heber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Childhood irritability has received considerable attention in recent research due in part to the highly impairing consequences of severe irritability and its association with poor long-term outcomes (Leibenluft, Cohen, Gorrindo, Brook, & Pine, 2006; Stringaris, Cohen, Pine, & Leibenluft, 2009; Stringaris & Goodman, 2009a). While the frequency and severity of irritability typically declines with age, there are individuals who continue to display irritability at stable or increasing levels (Wiggins, Mitchell, Stringaris, & Leibenluft, 2014). Regardless of whether it persists or remits, the effects of childhood irritability resonate for many years and it remains a potent predictor of poor outcomes across …

The Relationships Among Different Traits Of Masculinity And Intimate Partner Violence, Jennifer E. Loveland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research has shown that distinct yet overlapping concepts of dominance, hostility towards women, and sexism—all indices of masculinity—influence the occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV), although the mechanisms are unclear. This paper seeks to explore the relationship between these individual-level trait measures of masculinity and two aspects of IPV, physical violence and coercive control. With inconsistent findings and the limited study of clinical populations, further examination of these concepts may provide increased understanding of the mechanisms behind IPV perpetration. Results will provide a greater understanding of the complexity of this violence in order to better assist individuals experiencing IPV.

Butch Between The Wars: A Pre-History Of Butch Style In Twentieth-Century Literature, Music, And Film, Karen Allison Hammer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Butch Between the Wars is a pre-history of “butch,” a twentieth-century masculine style that became an identity category for lesbians in the 1940s and ’50s. Between the two world wars and in the early postwar period, women used the energy of butch to create literature, music, and character on film. Butch-styled artists expressed a muscular orientation to the world, one with close associations to lower and working class black and white masculinities. Those who were recognizably lesbian and those with less clearly defined sexualities challenged the idea that strength, authority, and independence are qualities “naturally” bound to the male body. …

Mental Illness Stigma And Community Integration: Linking Perceived Experiences With Reported Behavior, Lauren L. Gonzales

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the relationship between individual and neighborhood characteristics, stigmatizing experiences, and measures of community integration among individuals with mental illness. Surveys were administered to two samples: 608 community member participants and 343 participants with mental health diagnoses. Participants in both samples were recruited from 3 community sites in the New York City metropolitan area: East/Central Harlem in Manhattan, Crown Heights/East Flatbush in Brooklyn, and Yonkers and Mt. Vernon in Southern Westchester. Negative symptoms and perceived level of community microaggressions were strong predictors of community integration for participants with mental illness. Prior contact with mental illness predicted less stigmatizing …

Hatred Simmering In The Melting Pot: Hate Crime In New York City, 1995-2010, Colleen E. Mills

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hate crime proves prevalent in American society, inflicting a variety of harms on victims as well as society at large. Scholars have long sought to understand the motivations and conditions behind hate crime offending. Green and his colleagues conducted the classic neighborhood studies examining the conditions that foster hate crime (Green, Glaser, & Rich, 1998; Green, Strolovich, & Wong, 1998; Green, Strolovitch, Wong, & Bailey). Using data from the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, the current study replicates and extends Green's neighborhood studies by investigating hate crime in New York City from 1995 to 2010. This study …

An Examination Of Therapeutic Alliance During Prolonged Exposure In The Treatment Of A Comorbid Ptsd And Sud Population, Annelisa Pedersen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prolonged exposure has emerged as a highly effective method of treating PTSD (Foa, Hembree, & Rothbaum, 2007; Ruzek et al., 2014), yet for some individuals it has proven to be anxiety-arousing to the point of being contraindicated (Morris, 2015). As a treatment, prolonged exposure can be a challenging procedure to implement given the high levels of avoidance, fear, and resistance that often accompany a diagnosis of PTSD (Arntz, Tiesema, & Kindt, 2007; Hoffart et al., 2013; McLaughlin et al., 2014). When it is used to treat individuals who carry an additional diagnosis of SUD, further complications may arise with respect …

The Conceptualization Of A Crime Event As A Process To Analyze Crime Commission And Behavioral Consistency In Serial Sexual Assaults, Kimberley R. Schanz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examined the two main questions of why and when behaviors change. In the course of five studies, four aims were addressed. The first aim examined why behaviors change by examining whether the behavioral subtypes of control, sex, and violence could differentiate offenses within the elements of a crime (e.g. the offender, victim, and situation. The second aim addressed when behaviors change by examining whether the behavioral subtypes of control, sex, and violence could differentiate offenses within the temporal phases of a crime (e.g. before, during, and after the crime). The third aim examined which behaviors to use as …

Minding The Baby®: Maternal Adverse Childhood Experiences And Treatment Outcomes In A Mother-Infant Home Visiting Program, Jessica G. Albertson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in a sample of women participating in Minding the Baby® (MTB), a mother-infant home-visiting intervention known to have positive effects on mother-infant attachment. In addition to documenting maternal childhood trauma exposure within the sample, this study explored whether such exposure affected the intervention outcome or service delivery. We looked specifically at whether maternal childhood trauma exposure affected mother-child attachment or frequency of contact with home-visitors. We also examined the relationship between maternal early childhood trauma exposure and reflective functioning capacity (RF), a potential resiliency-promoting factor.

Methods: The study’s participants were 29 first-time …

Interstructure Lattices And Types Of Peano Arithmetic, Athar Abdul-Quader

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The collection of elementary substructures of a model of PA forms a lattice, and is referred to as the substructure lattice of the model. In this thesis, we study substructure and interstructure lattices of models of PA. We apply techniques used in studying these lattices to other problems in the model theory of PA.

In Chapter 2, we study a problem that had its origin in Simpson, who used arithmetic forcing to show that every countable model of PA has an expansion to PA^∗ that is pointwise definable. Enayat later showed that there are 2^ℵ₀ models with …

The Column Of Constantine At Constantinople: A Cultural History (330-1453 C.E.), Carey Thompson Wells

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis discusses the cultural history of the Column of Constantine at Constantinople, exploring its changing function and meaning from Late Antiquity to the end of the Byzantine era. Originally erected as a pagan triumphal column in celebration of Constantine’s re-foundation of Byzantium as Constantinople in 330 C.E., this monument was soon reinterpreted within a Christian context and acquired its own relic tradition, most significantly relics from Christ’s Passion. In addition, as the centuries passed, this relic tradition increased to include objects significant not only to Biblical history but also Constantinopolitan history. Because of this, in the middle Byzantine period, …

Detecting Majorana Fermion Induced Crossed Andreev Reflection, Lei Fang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is devoted to a study of detecting the Majorana fermion induced crossed Andreev reflection.

Majorana fermions are particles that constitute their own antiparticles. In condensed matter physics, Majorana fermions are zero energy modes that reside at edges or around vortices of topological superconductors. The special properties of Majorana fermions result in their potential to conduct topological quantum computation, which has been attracting a lot of current research. One of the most important issues in the field of the Majorana fermion physics now is to detect their existence in realistic systems. Among many classes of detecting methods, a transport …

Who Influences Your Outcomes? The Effect Of Culture And Ethnic Origin, Neighborhood And Peers On Personal Income: A Spatial Econometric Analysis Of New York City, Anna Arakelyan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Being a “social animal”, each person is inherently embedded into a complex structure of social relations. He has role models to aspire to, conformity rules to follow, and expectations to meet. This paper explores the different social influences each person experiences in life. Specifically, I consider how a person’s ethnic community, age reference group, occupational and industry group peers, and residential area neighbors affect his total income. I introduce a novel model of multiple social networks and discuss various identification implications. I apply the model empirically to New York City, which naturally is a very favorable environment to test for …

Transferring Paremias. Cultural, Linguistic, And Literary Transitions Of Proverbs And Proverbial Phrases By Vincenzo Brusantino, Pompeo Sarnelli, And John Florio, Daniela D'Eugenio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation demonstrates how literary paremias, i.e. proverbs and proverbial phrases, constitute a rich archive of considerable historical, cultural, and linguistic significance. As discursive phenomena, paremias are usually studied in the context of oral traditions, but this study examines them in terms of what they reveal about the literary works in which they appear. Specifically, it analyzes the context in which they are employed and, through them, it extracts the author’s perspectives, references to and borrowings from previous works, responses to the social and cultural conditions of the time, and effects on the narrative. The exploration of paremias in literary …

The Role Of Glutamate Neurotransmission In The Ventral Tegmental Area In The Expression Of Conditioned Approach Learning, Priscila Hachimine-Merli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Conditioned stimuli (CSs) come to function as CSs by acquiring the capacity to activate the same mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) neurons activated by primary rewards, producing conditioned activation of these neurons and their associated motivational states. This model stipulates that CSs activate mesocorticolimbic DA systems through the activation of glutamate receptors on DA neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). We tested the hypothesis that glutamate receptor stimulation in the VTA is necessary for the expression of conditioned approach. Rats were tested in a conditioned approach protocol that consisted of 7 consecutive conditioning sessions (light presentations and food were paired), one …

The Effects Of Presession Attention On The Acquisition Of Tacts And Intraverbals, Mirela Cengher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the effects of presession attention on the acquisition of tacts (Experiment 1) and intraverbals (Experiment 2) in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. There were 3 conditions in each experiment. In the first 2 conditions, the experimenter first exposed the participants to a 15-min interval of either presession attention (PA) or no presession attention (NPA), then immediately conducted a teaching session. The third condition was a control condition, which involved no pressession interval or teaching procedures. The consequence for emitting tacts and intraverbals consisted of different forms of attention (e.g., praise and clapping). Across experiments, all participants acquired …

Toxic Gas Sensing On Nanoporous Carbons, Nikolina-Eleni Travlou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Activated carbons, either synthetic, developed in our laboratory, or commercial, were prepared or further modified, in order to introduce specific heteroatoms such as oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur to their matrices. Chips coated with thin layers of the carbon samples were used for the sensing of gaseous ammonia. They were exposed to continuous cycles of various ammonia concentrations (10-500 ppm), and changes in normalized resistance were analyzed. In all cases linear responses were recorded and the chips reached sensitivities as high as 31%, which are comparable to those of modified graphene-based sensors. The applied specific surface chemical modifications were an effective …

Dinosaurs For The Digital Age: Democratic Party Organization In The Twenty-First Century, Aaron B. Shapiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces Democratic Party organization roughly over the Obama era. It conceptualizes the party at the national, state, and local level, with a particular focus on Ohio. This project seeks to reconcile changes in the political environment that incentivize strengthening party structures, with American electoral institutions that complicate party organizational development. I suggest that while demographic change, polarization, and big data are powerful incentives to focus Democratic electoral strategy on an Obama-like organizational model and campaign strategy, institutionalization remains hampered by significant structural impediments. These are institutional as well as coalitional. While party integration has been uneven, I find …

Essays In Financial Development And Income Inequality, Samuel M. Jung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays of original research. Chapter 1 is a survey of the literature on the theoretical and empirical interactions among financial development, economic growth, and income inequality.

Chapter 2 describes empirical research on the relationship between financial development and income inequality based on Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method using a Chinese provincial dataset between 1998 and 2014. The empirical findings support the notion that well-developed financial markets increase income inequality in China. After adding a year dummy for 2001 to examine the impact of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, which caused the financial …