Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Utilizing Gis To Examine The Relationship Between State Renewable Portfolio Standards And The Adoption Of Renewable Energy Technologies, Chelsea Schelly, Jessica Price

Department of Social Sciences Publications

In the United States, there is no comprehensive energy policy at the federal level. To address issues as diverse as climate change, energy security, and economic development, individual states have increasingly implemented Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs), which mandate that utility providers include a specified amount of electricity from renewable energy sources in their total energy portfolios. Some states have included incentives for individual energy technologies in their RPS, such as solar electric (also called photovoltaic or PV technology). Here, we use GIS to visualize adoption of RPSs and electricity generation from renewable energy sources in the US and examine changes …

Review Of Cox, Anthony, Empire, Industry And Class: The Imperial Nexus Of Jute, 1840-1940, Jonathan Robins

Michigan Tech Publications

No abstract provided.

Policy Dialogue And Engagement Between Non-Governmental Organizations And Government: A Survey Of Processes And Instruments Of Canadian Policy Workers, Bryan Evans, Adam Wellstead

Department of Social Sciences Publications

Various analysts have raised concerns respecting declining research, evaluation and analytical capacities within public services. Typically, the decline is attributed to reforms associated with neoliberal restructuring of the state and its concomitant managerial expression in New Public Management (NPM). This has given rise to a conceptual shift now commonly captured as a movement from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. Policy advising from a new governance perspective entails an image of a more distributed policy advisory system where a plurality of actors, including non-state actors, engages with government in deliberating policy interventions to address collective problems. The original research presented here suggests that …

The Neglect Of Governance In Forest Sector Vulnerability Assessments: Structural-Functionalism And “Black Box” Problems In Climate Change Adaptation Planning, Adam Wellstead, Michael Howlett, Jeremy Rayner

Department of Social Sciences Publications

Efforts to develop extensive forest-based climate change vulnerability assessments have informed proposed management and policy options intended to promote improved on-the-ground policy outcomes. These assessments are derived from a rich vulnerability literature and are helpful in modeling complex ecosystem interactions, yet their policy relevance and impact has been limited. We argue this is due to structural-functional logic underpinning these assessments in which governance is treated as a procedural “black box” and policy-making as an undifferentiated and unproblematic output of a political system responding to input changes and/or system prerequisites. Like an earlier generation of systems or cybernetic thinking about political …

Uncovering The Effect Of Selected Moderators On The Disconfirmation-Satisfaction Relationship: A Meta-Analytic Approach, Debi P. Mishra, Junhong Min

College of Business Publications

Customer satisfaction occupies a central role in marketing. Not surprisingly, researchers have produced an impressive body of literature that focuses on the causes and consequences of satisfaction. The antecedents of satisfaction have been investigated primarily through the disconfirmation paradigm which holds that satisfaction is the result of conscious mental accounting comparisons undertaken by customers. Furthermore, empirical findings of the disconfirmation-satisfaction link, which are broadly congruent, suggest that when performance conforms to or exceeds initial expectations, a mental state of positive disconfirmation ensues, leading to satisfaction. Despite this insight, a major gap in our understanding concerns lack of generalizability of the …

Skill Acquisition And The Influence Of Attentional Focus And Practice, Alison Beth Regal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Attentional focus and practice schedules are important components in learning a new skill. For attention this includes focusing inward or outward, for practice this includes interference between tasks. Little is known about how the two interact. Four groups; blocked/extraneous (BE); blocked/skill-focused (BS); random/extraneous (RE); and random/skill-focused (RS), practiced 100 trials of golf putting and 64 trials of a key-pressing task in addition to responding to a random tone distracting attention towards or away from skill movement. Participants performed immediate and delayed retention tests. Results demonstrated the BE group had decreased RTE scores compared to the BS group. Immediate retention demonstrated …

Using A Prediction And Option Generation Paradigm To Understand Decision Making, Joel Suss

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In many complex and dynamic domains, the ability to generate and then select the appropriate course of action is based on the decision maker's "reading" of the situation--in other words, their ability to assess the situation and predict how it will evolve over the next few seconds. Current theories regarding option generation during the situation assessment and response phases of decision making offer contrasting views on the cognitive mechanisms that support superior performance. The Recognition-Primed Decision-making model (RPD; Klein, 1989) and Take-The-First heuristic (TTF; Johnson & Raab, 2003) suggest that superior decisions are made by generating few options, and then …

The Celebrity Burden: Celebrity Campaigns In The Pursuit Of Humanitarianism, Regina Akosua Dede Baiden

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Celebrity participation in humanitarianism and politics has received a lot of attention in recent times. Though many researchers have sought to explain the reasons underlying this phenomenon, there appears to be little information as to the efficacy of these celebrity efforts. The present research thus undertakes an analysis of the celebrity's participation through a study on the effectiveness of the celebrity-led campaign. To achieve this, I conduct a discourse and visual analysis of media publications surrounding two celebrity-led campaigns. The research leans heavy on theories underlining the celebrity mechanism and Street et al's framework on celebrity participation in politics. The …

Living With Differences: From Everyday Fundamentalisms To Invitational Communication, Lisa M. Watrous

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

This project examines fundamentalism understood as an everyday way of living poorly with difference. It demonstrates that the fundamentalist is not reducible to stereotypes of the terrorist, extremist, irrational madman, or religious zealot. All of these characterizations--common in mainstream media--depict the fundamentalist as them, and rarely, if ever, as us. Rather, this project understands fundamentalism in terms of fundamental interpretive constructs that constrain our ways of being-with others, skew our interpretive and responsive possibilities, distort our perceptions of difference, and affirm our poor treatment of others. Following Martin Heidegger's conception of the hermeneutic structure of existence, this dissertation calls attention …

A Study Of So2 Emissions And Ground Surface Displacements At Lastarria Volcano, Antofagasta Region, Northern Chile, Lucie Guihem Krewcun

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Lastarria volcano (Chile) is located at the North-West margin of the `Lazufre' ground inflation signal (37x45 km²), constantly uplifting at a rate of ~2.5 cm/year since 1996 (Pritchard and Simons 2002; Froger et al. 2007). The Lastarria volcano has the double interest to be superimposed on a second, smaller-scale inflation signal and to be the only degassing area of the Lazufre signal. In this project, we compared daily SO2 burdens recorded by AURA's OMI mission for 2005-2010 with Ground Surface Displacements (GSD) calculated from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) images for 2003-2010.

We found a constant maximum displacement rate …

Application Of Remote Sensing In Aquatic Ecosystems, Foad Yousef

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

I utilized state the art remote sensing and GIS (Geographical Information System) techniques to study large scale biological, physical and ecological processes of coastal, nearshore, and offshore waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. These processes ranged from chlorophyll a and primary production time series analysies in Lake Michigan to coastal stamp sand threats on Buffalo Reef in Lake Superior. I used SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor) satellite imagery to trace various biological, chemical and optical water properties of Lake Michigan during the past decade and to investigate the collapse of early spring primary production. Using spatial analysis techniques, I …

Tandem-X High Resolution Dems And Their Applications To Flow Modeling, Kelly M. Wooten

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Lava flow modeling can be a powerful tool in hazard assessments; however, the ability to produce accurate models is usually limited by a lack of high resolution, up-to-date Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). This is especially obvious in places such as Kilauea Volcano (Hawaii), where active lava flows frequently alter the terrain. In this study, we use a new technique to create high resolution DEMs on Kilauea using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from the TanDEM-X (TDX) satellite. We convert raw TDX SAR data into a geocoded DEM using GAMMA software [Werner et al., 2000]. This process can be completed in …

Characterizing The First Historic Eruption Of Nabro, Eritrea: Insights From Thermal And Uv Remote Sensing, Christine Ruth Sealing

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

June 2011 saw the first historic eruption of Nabro volcano, one of an ongoing sequence of eruptions in the Afar-Red Sea region since 2005. It halted air travel in northern Africa, contaminated food and water sources, and displaced thousands from their homes. Due to its remote location, little was known about this event in terms of the quantity of erupted products and the timing and mechanisms of their emplacement. Geographic isolation, previous quiescence and regional civil unrest meant that this volcano was effectively unmonitored at the time of eruption, and opportunities for field study are limited. Using free, publicly available …

Migration Patterns Among Young Adults In The United States: Environmental, Social, And Economic Explanations, Fangming Liu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Young adult migration is a key factor in community development. The goal of this paper is to study what kinds of places attract young adults and what kinds are losing them. Linear regression is conducted to analyze what place-specific factors explain migration patterns among young adults. These factors include economic, social, and environmental variables. This study finds that social and environmental factors are just as important as economic ones. Specifically, employment in the arts increases young adult net migration. Environmental variables, for example, natural amenities and protected federal lands are particularly important in rural settings in attracting young adults. These …

The Problematic Of Privacy In The Namespace, Randal Sean Harrison

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In the twenty-first century, the issue of privacy--particularly the privacy of individuals with regard to their personal information and effects--has become highly contested terrain, producing a crisis that affects both national and global social formations. This crisis, or problematic, characterizes a particular historical conjuncture I term the namespace. Using cultural studies and the theory of articulation, I map the emergent ways that the namespace articulates economic, juridical, political, cultural, and technological forces, materials, practices and protocols. The cohesive articulation of the namespace requires that privacy be reframed in ways that make its diminution seem natural and inevitable. In the popular …

A Decomposition Analysis Of Base Metal Prices: Comparing The Effect Of Detrending Methods On Trend Identification And Cyclical Components, Mahmoodreza Modirroosta

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

This thesis analyzes the long-term trend behavior and cyclical components of real base metal prices. A decomposition approach is used to separate the real prices of base metals into a time trend and cyclical components. In this regard, linear and quadratic detrending methods along with Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King filters are applied to the base metal prices. Linear and quadratic trendlines are good estimates of the trend component and easy to interpret if the coefficients of estimated trends are significant and the coefficient of determination is relatively high. The Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King filters are good fits to the price series, but …

A Cost-Benefit Analysis Of A 25% Rps In Michigan, Fei Li

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Michigan depends heavily on fossil fuels to generate electricity. Compared with fossil fuels, electricity generation from renewable energy produces less pollutants emissions. A Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is a mandate that requires electric utilities to generate a certain amount of electricity from renewable energy sources. This thesis applies the Cost-Benefits Analysis (CBA) method to investigate the impacts of implementing a 25% in Michigan by 2025. It is found that a 25% RPS will create about $20.12 billion in net benefits to the State. Moreover, if current tax credit policies will not change until 2025, its net present value will increase …

Analysis Of Gender Relations In The Industrial Community Of Aguirre, Puerto Rico, Alejandra Alvarez

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

This thesis is a study of the gender relations of the residents of Aguirre, Puerto Rico, between 1940 and 1991. The primary goal of the project was to explore how gender roles and relations in the Aguirre community were impacted by the social class system introduced by the Aguirre Sugar Company. This project was based on the interpretation of the past and present situation of the Aguirre community using oral history, by conducting a series of interviews among its residents. The interviews resulted in three main themes. First, the concepts of `normal and natural' were used to distinguish gender roles. …

Pesky Pests Of The Great Lakes State: Is Public Participation Influenced By Geographic Differences?, Angela Yu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In Michigan, environmental issues, such as invasive species, are not geographically constrained, affecting citizens throughout the state. Regulations and management plans organized by scientists and officials are intended to address issues statewide, but these policies may not adequately tackle the threat from invasive species as it impacts different parts of the state at different times. Participation and contributions from citizens can offer insight into the impacts and changes non-native species have on the local ecosystem. However, chances to participate and contribute may be influenced by geographic location in the state. To understand if this was the case, this research studied …

Assessing Decision Making Skill In Complex And Dynamic Environments Using Representative And Simulated Tasks, Patrick Karl Belling

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Traditional decision making research has often focused on one's ability to choose from a set of prefixed options, ignoring the process by which decision makers generate courses of action (i.e., options) in-situ (Klein, 1993). In complex and dynamic domains, this option generation process is particularly critical to understanding how successful decisions are made (Zsambok & Klein, 1997). When generating response options for oneself to pursue (i.e., during the intervention-phase of decision making) previous research has supported quick and intuitive heuristics, such as the Take-The-First heuristic (TTF; Johnson & Raab, 2003). When generating predictive options for others in the environment (i.e., …