Digital Commons Network^™

Perceval's Sister And Juliet Capulet As Disruptive Guides In Spiritual Quests, Joanna Benskin

Open Access Dissertations

Perceval’s sister in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and Juliet in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet act as disruptive guides in spiritual quests by contradicting the expectations placed on them as women characters.

Though women are banned from the quest for the Holy Grail, Perceval’s sister accompanies the Grail knights as an authoritative spiritual guide and a symbol of the Eucharist. Previous critics have not recognized Perceval’s sister as a fundamental disruption to the systemic misogyny of the Morte or her Eucharistic significance. She challenges both the chivalric misogyny that sees her as an object of rescue and the …

The Role Of African Leafy Vegetables In Food Security, Marcia M. Croft

Open Access Dissertations

African leafy vegetables (ALVs) are a diverse set of crops grown across sub-Saharan Africa. They have been a staple of traditional diets and contain many critical micronutrients but their importance has been largely ignored by researchers and policymakers at the expense of imported crops. Availability, accessibility, and utilization of ALVs are limited by factors across the supply chain. This research investigated seed systems, drought tolerance, hydroponic production, market barriers, consumer preference, and the impact of gender as related to ALVs. We found that ALVs play an important role in food security and that critical differences exist between formal and informal …

Bad Girls In Corsets: Women And The Transgressive Body In The Nineteenth Century, Colleen Warwick Green

Open Access Dissertations

Women, and their bodies, posed an increasing anxiety for Victorian society. Culturally and outwardly, the Victorian era strove to maintain a level of decorum that, increasingly, the nineteenth-century woman were, rebelling against. The urge for women to break through social barriers and constraints binding them to the century created a divergence in thought from the traditional mores of the past, in turn affecting the ways in which womens’ bodies were portrayed, displayed and manipulated by the authors and artists of the century.

As women entered actively entered into spaces once closed to them, they furthered the rift of uncertainty and …

Finding The Ghost With The Machine: Breaking Through The Assessment Center Validity Ceiling By Exploring Decisional Processes Using New Sources Of Behavioral Data Within Virtual Assessments, Brett W. Guidry

Open Access Dissertations

Decades of assessment center (AC) research has resulted in an inevitable “validity ceiling” whereby increasing the validity of the AC method is becoming increasingly difficult. To overcome this challenge, new avenues for collecting and evaluating AC participant behaviors must be explored, with a particular focus on overcoming the inherent limitations of human observation—a hallmark of the AC method. This study examines detailed logs of AC participant behaviors captured automatically and unobtrusively during a computer-based simulation assessment. Using a decision making framework, basic characteristics of the new behavioral data are tested against existing theories of decisional efficacy. The construct-related validity of …

Quantifying Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Dynamics With Mechanistically-Based Biogeochemistry Models And In Situ And Remotely Sensed Data, Shaoqing Liu

Open Access Dissertations

Terrestrial ecosystem plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle and climate system. Therefore, it is important to accurately quantify the carbon dynamics of terrestrial ecosystem under future climatic change condition. This dissertation evaluates the regional carbon dynamics by using upscaling approach, mechanistically-based biogeochemistry models and in situ and remotely sensed data.

The upscaling studies based on FLUXNET network has provided us the spatial and temporal pattern of the carbon fluxes but it fails to consider the atmospheric CO2 effect given its important physiological role in carbon assimilation. In the second chapter, we consider the effect of atmospheric CO2 …

Race, Class And Gender In Engineering Education: A Quantitative Investigation Of First Year Enrollment, Canek Moises Luna Phillips

Open Access Dissertations

Research explanations for the disparity across both race and gender in engineering education has typically relied on a deficit model, whereby women and people of color lack the requisite knowledge or psychological characteristics that Whites and men have to become engineers in sufficient numbers. Instead of using a deficit model approach to explain gender and race disparity, in the three studies conducted for this dissertation, I approach gender and race disparity as the result of processes of segregation linked to the historic and on-going perpetuation of systemic sources of oppression in the United States. In the first study, I investigate …

Classification Of Road Users Detected And Tracked With Lidar At Intersections, Cristhian Guillermo Lizarazo Jimenez

Open Access Theses

Data collection is a necessary component of transportation engineering. Manual data collection methods have proven to be inefficient and limited in terms of the data required for comprehensive traffic and safety studies. Automatic methods are being introduced to characterize the transportation system more accurately and are providing more information to better understand the dynamics between road users. Video data collection is an inexpensive and widely used automated method, but the accuracy of video-based algorithms is known to be affected by obstacles and shadows and the third dimension is lost with video camera data collection.

The impressive progress in sensing technologies …

A Mixed Methods Study: Evaluating The Relationship Of Project Manager Competencies And It Project Management Methodologies, Keith A. Mcdermott

Open Access Theses

Determining skillsets that are particularly important to the development of an effective project manager can be useful for a variety of applications. These applications range from the hiring of a new project manager for an organization to continued training for current employees. Past research has called upon current project managers to rate what skillsets they see as important to the cultivation of an optimal or effective project manager. Additional research has expanded this idea to determine how skillsets vary between project managers and functional managers (El-Sabaa, 2001). While this research is certainly important, skillset grouping can be further explored. This …

User Acceptance Barriers For Warehouse Environment Mobile Wireless Technology, Anran Wang

Open Access Theses

This research adopted Technology Acceptance Model 2 to investigate users’ acceptance barriers for mobile wireless technologies such as RFID, bar-code scanners and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) in warehouse environments in Lafayette and West Lafayette, Indiana.

Through survey data collections from two companies that met the research requirement and through statistical analysis of the data, the researcher found answers to the research question.

System functionality is the most important factor in determining the users’ intention to use. System failure would be the biggest acceptance barrier. Secondly, it is critical for companies to establish and strengthen the link between job relevance and …

The Swiss German Language And Identity: Stereotyping Between The Aargau And The Zurich Dialects, Jessica Rohr

Open Access Theses

Swiss German dialects contribute to the social identity of a speaker, especially on a local level (Christen, 1995). Many dialects of Switzerland are associated with a common stereotype which relates to the identity of the speakers (Rash, 2002). This research looks at these notions and investigates concepts of identity ascription and stereotyping that arise between and from the dialects of canton Aargau and canton Zürich, in Switzerland. The generation of a definition of identity for the project, drawing off existing identity theories in sociolinguistics, and stereotyping theories, allow for an investigation of how the Aargau and Zürich dialects fit into …

Subsidies, Aquaculture Technology Adoption, And Welfare Impacts In Ghana And Kenya, Akuffo Amankwah

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation empirically examines subsidies, aquaculture technology adoption, and welfare implications of fish farming households in Ghana and Kenya. It is divided into three separate chapters, each addressing a specific empirical issue related to aquaculture in the countries.

The second chapter of this dissertation applies the lognormal double hurdle model to a cross-section of fish farms to analyze commercial demand for improved feed, and whether the government feed subsidy program influences private demand for the feed. The results indicate that households’ decisions to participate in improved feed market are affected by the quantity of the subsidized feed received. Once the …

A Unique Perspective On The Demand For Livestock Product Attributes, Elizabeth S. Byrd

Open Access Dissertations

Consumers are increasingly concerned about the social and environmental impacts of the foods they purchase. Both choice experiments and best-worst scaling (BWS) methodology have been used to elicit consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for food attributes and the relative importance of food attributes to consumers. The dissertation consists of four essays. Chapter 2 presents a formal law review article exploring the laws associated with wild game harvest, consumption, and inspections. The remaining three essays (Chapters 3-5) each address an extension or application of choice experiment and/or BWS methodology focused on credence attributes of meat products. Two online surveys were used …

Essays On Malawian Agriculture: Micro-Level Welfare Impacts Of Agricultural Productivity; Profitability Of Fertilizer Use; And Targeting Of Fertilizer Subsidy Programs, Francis Addeah Darko

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation comprises of three essays that address different aspects of agriculture in Malawi using a two-wave panel data collected by the National Statistical Office of Malawi with support from the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) program. Each essay stands alone as an independent study because of differences in research questions and the methodologies used in addressing the questions.

The first essay analyzes the micro-level welfare impacts of agricultural productivity. Welfare is measured by various dimensions of poverty and food insecurity; and agricultural productivity is measured by maize yield and value of crop …

Essays On Value Creation In Online Marketplaces, Warut Khern-Am-Nuai

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays that study the transformative impact of new information technologies under three specific contexts using both empirical and theoretical approaches. Chapter 2 examines the online review system, which is the new type of information technology that replaces the traditional word-of-mouth communication. Particularly, we study the practice of the platform owner that uses monetary incentives to attract reviewers. The research problem is important as firms, which seek to strengthen their online review platforms, have considered various forms of incentives, including extrinsic rewards, to encourage users to write reviews. We encountered a natural experiment design where one …

State Judicial Selection Methods As Public Policy: The Missouri Plan, James A. Gleason

Open Access Dissertations

State judiciaries are foundational institutions of governance in the United States. They are coequal, policy-making branches of government whose members, along with the legislative and executive branches, are constitutionally authorized and empowered in all fifty American states. Extant research on judicial selection in the American states provides neither a comprehensive theory of why states choose their particular judicial selection method nor a comprehensive empirical assessment of this important question. This research seeks to fill this lacuna by increasing understanding of American state courts through the formulation of a theory of state judicial selection, a short but comprehensive history of state …

A Unicorn's Tale: Examining The Experiences Of Black Women In Engineering Industry, Monique S. Ross

Open Access Dissertations

Black women have recently been identified as the most educated demographic in the United States, and yet they are grossly underrepresented in engineering. They comprise 6.4 % of the U.S. population and only 0.72 % of engineering industry. Meanwhile, engineers have been identified as the key to the United States’ ability to maintain its prominence and leadership in a competitive global economy due to their contribution to maintaining and improving our infrastructures and standard of living. This significance to society has spawned national initiatives geared towards broadening participation in engineering. This research study was designed to explore the experiences of …

Understanding The Formation Of American Mental Health Policy Preferences, 1952-1981, Andrew D. Tuholski

Open Access Dissertations

In the United States, the emergence of an outpatient-centered, drug-based model of mental health care was physically feasible from the 1950s onward, with the introduction of thorazine and other first-generation antipsychotics. However, it was not until 1981, with President Reagan’s veto of the Mental Health Systems Act, that American mental health policy tipped over definitively into the outpatient-centered, drug-based model. In this quantitative study of the formation of policy preference, the delay between the feasibility of the outpatient-centered, drug-based model and its adoption was explored through five research questions answered through corpus analysis and time series statistics: How do shifts …

Identifying And Prioritizing Critical Success Factors For Fixed Base Operators In The United States: A Mixed Method Approach, Yu Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Fixed Base Operators (FBOs) are major service providers for the general aviation (GA) sector, which closely connect the public with the aviation industry. However, over the past decade, the U.S. GA industry has experienced a decline in the numbers of registered aircraft, pilots, and airports. Due to the fact that FBOs significantly contribute to the aviation industry, further research studies regarding the FBO-sector at a national level are needed. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and prioritize the critical success factors (CSFs) that promote the success of FBO operations in the United States.

The methodology consisted of a …

Facebook And User Experience: Evaluating Brand Equity Of Purdue University Residences, Jackelyn Perkins

Open Access Theses

This study investigated how brand equity was perceived on the Purdue University Residences’ Facebook page by applying a user experience method. From a review of previous literature, Website Experience Analysis was identified and performed to evaluate brand equity. This study addressed and explored various themes throughout the data. The results showed how page content and user interactions within a Facebook page influence participants’ perceptions of brand equity.

A Study Of Short-Season Winter Cover Crops For Organic High Tunnel Production Systems, Luke Riley Freeman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This two-year study investigated short-season winter cover crops to improve soil quality and growth of subsequent vegetable crops in an organic high tunnel production system. Five winter cover crop treatments including a nontreated control, Austrian winter peas (Pisum arvense), bell beans (Vicia faba), mustard (Brassica juncea cv. Kodiak), and Daikon radish (Raphanus sativus var. longipinnatus) were grown in a high tunnel in a randomized complete block design from mid-November to mid-March, mowed and incorporated into the soil, and followed by a succession of vegetable crops including tomato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum, cv. ‘Plum Dandy’) and broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica, cv. ‘Bay …

The Impact Of Unions On Information Asymmetry, Caroline Burke

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prior literature documents a positive association between union power, calculated using industry-level union data, and information asymmetry. Prior literature also finds a mitigating effect from employee ownership on the negative association between union power and voluntary disclosure. Using a sample of company observations for fiscal years 2008 through 2010, I examine the effect of company-specific measures of employee unionization on market-based measures of information asymmetry (proxied for by insider trading activity, analyst following, and analyst dispersion). I also examine whether employee ownership impacts the effect of company-specific measures of employee unionization on my market-based measures of information asymmetry. I find …

Willingness To Pay For Irrigation Water Under Scarcity Conditions, Tyler Robert Knapp

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reliance of Arkansas agricultural producers on groundwater for irrigation has led to depletion of the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer. Without intervention, consequences include insufficient groundwater to meet irrigation demand as well as drawdown of the deeper Sparta Aquifer, upon which communities in eastern Arkansas rely for non-agricultural use. Among proposed solutions to combat groundwater decline is the construction of off-farm surface water infrastructure to meet the irrigation needs of producers. Despite the importance of irrigated agriculture to Arkansas, there is little know about the economic value of irrigation water to producers. Thus, we implement a double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent …

Fitting Eyewitness Identification And Confidence To A Diffusion Model Of Processing, Brittany Nicole Race

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It is necessary to better serve justice to understand the mechanisms behind eyewitness identification and reports of confidence. The material contained within attempt to fit eyewitness identification to a diffusion model of processing, RTCON (Ratcliff & Starns, 2009). Participants saw eight mock crime videos and were then tasked with using eight showups or eight lineups to identify the suspects within the video. Half of the presentations were target present and half were target absent. Additionally, participants were either presented with biased or unbiased instructions. Strangely, unbiased lineups led to higher hit rates which is contrary to most findings in the …

Big Data And Organizational Impacts: A Study Of Big Data Ventures, Taha Havakhor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

New information technology (IT) ventures are at the forefront of developing IT innovations. In spite of their importance in the advancement of IT and the unique risks of survival that distinguishes them from established firms, the organizational literature on IT has mostly overlooked new IT ventures. Specifically, Big Data industry is a context where new IT ventures actively change the landscape of IT innovations. However, less is known about the factors influencing the economic success of Big Data ventures (BDVs), as well as the established firms that invest in them. To shed light on these factors, three essays are designed …

A Gis Approach To Modeling Groundwater Levels In The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, Josef Orion Lilly

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Groundwater depletion, a subject of growing concern for a significant portion of Arkansas, may lead to future economic challenges for the Arkansas Delta region. The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer is the uppermost aquifer and features the largest groundwater capacity in the Mississippi Embayment Aquifer System. The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, commonly referred to as the “alluvial aquifer”, spans 53,000〖 km〗^2 underlying portions of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee. As the alluvial aquifer trends southward for approximately 250 miles alongside the Mississippi River, its geographical extent ranges from 50 to 125 miles wide. There is a …

Apparel Design Process: Shifting The Basic Pattern Block Into A New Framework To Fit The Demands Of Post Double Mastectomy Women, Shan Gao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer is a leading cancer among women today. Mastectomy is one of the most common paths for breast cancer prevention and treatment. However, this treatment path can cause noticeable body changes around the woman’s bust area. Recently more and more post mastectomy women are deciding to live without breast reconstruction surgery. This decision referred to as “going flat” or “living flat.” Due to the changed bodies and a lack of information on functional and aesthetic concerns related to clothing, clothing selection becomes difficult for post mastectomy women who choose to “live flat.”

The purpose of this study was to …

Perceptions Of Division I Athletic Director Career Paths, Eric A. Wood

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is increased information about the profile of current collegiate athletic directors as it relates to education, age, race, and gender. However, there is a gap in the knowledge of the career paths of the modern day Division I collegiate athletic director position compared to the athletic directors studied over 20 years ago. There is also a gap in the knowledge of the skills necessary to be an effective athletic director from the perspective of Division I athletic directors. The purpose of this study was to use the Perceptions of Division I Athletic Director Career Paths (PADCP) scale to determine …

Query Theory Applications: Choice Experiments Under Oath, Attendance To Attributes, And Genetically Modified Food Labeling Policy, Nathan Paul Kemper

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been an intensifying campaign by some stakeholders regarding concern over genetically modified (GM) foods in the U.S. As a result, the issue of labeling has entered into the federal agenda. This research uses Query Theory to provide a deeper understanding of the demand for GM foods and the preferences for GM policy. Query theory is first applied to the formation of hypothetical bias in the estimation of consumers’ willingness-to-pay. To address this, the honesty oath is used as an ex-ante technique to reduce hypothetical bias.

Paper one using Query Theory in a discrete-choice experiment (DCE) …

Eveleth, Minnesota: A Portrait Of My Home Town, Judith I. Luna

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This 30-minute documentary film provides snapshots of the small northeastern iron mining town of Eveleth, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range. It uses a two-pronged approach: 1) a first-person return to the town by the filmmaker almost 50 years after graduating from high school to see how the town may have changed, 2) a look at some historical and cultural factors which made the town what it was when the filmmaker was growing up and what continues to animate the town in the face of iron mining’s decline and rebirth. The latter include the immigrant experience and influence as the …

Initiating Race: Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, And Public Discourse In American Culture, 1865-1917, John D. Treat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on ritual books, organizational records, newspaper accounts, and the data available from cemetery headstones and census records, this work argues that adult fraternal organizations were key to the formation of civic discourse in the United States from the years following the Civil War to World War I. It particularly analyzes the role of working-class white and African-American organizations in framing racial identity, arguing that white organizations gave up older, comprehensive ideas of citizenship for understandings of Americanism rooted in racism and nativism. Counterbalancing this development, now-forgotten African-American fraternal organizations were among the earliest advocates of Afrocentrism. These organizations, form …