Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Little Science Confronts The Data Deluge: Habitat Ecology, Embedded Sensor Networks, And Digital Libraries, Christine Borgman, Jillian Wallis, Noel Enyedy

Jillian C Wallis

e-Science promises to increase the pace of science via fast, distributed access to computational resources, analytical tools, and digital libraries. “Big science” fields such as physics and astronomy that collaborate around expensive instrumentation have constructed shared digital libraries to manage their data and documents, while “little science” research areas that gather data through hand-crafted fieldwork continue to manage their data locally. As habitat ecology researchers begin to deploy embedded sensor networks, they are confronting an array of challenges in capturing, organizing, and managing large amounts of data. The scientists and their partners in computer science and engineering make use of …

Environmental Evaluation Of A Quaternary Wastewater Treatment Wetland, Olivia Demeo, '09

Outstanding Senior Seminar Papers

Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment have become a sustainable alternative to environmentally harmful traditional wastewater treatment methods. This case study evaluated the Schroeder Wildlife Sanctuary, a wetland area constructed for removal of nutrients from wastewater. An environmental evaluation of the wetland was completed that addressed three parameters: the water quality of wetland effluent, the avian biodiversity within the sanctuary, and an assessment of community outreach and education initiatives. Water quality testing was conducted using rudimentary LaMotte and Hach testing kits. The data was contrary to the literature and showed no nutrient removal occurring. However, the results were inconclusive because the …

Building A Knowledge Economy Index For Southern Metropolitan Areas, Kristine Koutout

All Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to determine if the methodology used to build the South Carolina Research Authority Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) for states can be replicated and applied to Southern Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Data to imitate the KEI measures for workforce education and fast growth firms were available at the MSA-level; however, academic R&D was used as a proxy for industrial R&D in this index because data was not available for MSAs. An index for Southern MSAs was built based on the coefficients from the OLS results. Workforce education was the most important factor for increasing mean …

Family Sources Of Educational Gender Inequality In Rural China: A Critical Assessment, Emily C. Hannum, Peggy A. Kong, Yuping Zhang

Emily C. Hannum

Mentoring Dialogues: An Investigation Of The Dialectical Tensions And Management Strategies In Mentoring Relationships, Paul J. Kosempel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past 30 years, mentoring has gained perhaps the largest recognition of any phenomenon related to career success. Much of the current research that has explored mentoring relationships has been conducted in fields other than communication studies, although better communication is often the recommended solution to improve mentoring. The majority of research has focused on the outcomes of mentoring relationships, rather than the process of mentoring relationships. Mentoring has also not been studied through a relational dialectics perspective. This study explored the communication dynamics within mentoring relationships through a relational dialectics theoretical lens. The study utilized multiple methods including …

Academic Achievement Of Students In A Charter Homeschool, Mary A. Leeds Edd

Dissertations

A recent development in education is the public charter school as a homeschool model. In several states across the nation, a child may enroll in an independent study program of a public charter school and base his or her studies in the home. This model in the realm of education is called charter homeschool. The state of California has over 120 operating charter homeschools, also known as independent study programs or non-classroom based charter schools. The delivery of instruction from non-classroom based programs has begun to challenge traditional definitions of public schooling. The increased state accountability demands of student academic …

The Revitalization Of Older Industrial Cities: A Review Essay Of Retooling For Growth, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This review essay debates the policy issues raised by the book Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in America's Older Industrial Areas, edited by Richard M. McGahey and Jennifer S. Vey (Brookings Institution Press, 2008). I argue that the main rationale for adopting policies to revitalize older industrial cities is to improve the per capita earnings of urban residents. Therefore, urban economic development policy should be seen as urban labor market policy. Increasing city residents' earnings requires progress on two fronts: increasing metropolitan labor demand; increasing the quantity and quality of the effective labor supply of city residents …

Teaching Urban History, Steven Corey

Steven H. Corey

No abstract provided.

Creative Rights Management For Intellectual Property In K-12, Dave Yates

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

See presentation description.

“Adolescent Literature And Second Life: Teaching Young Adult Texts In The Digital World”, Laura Nicosia

Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Coweta Public Library Partners With University Of West Georgia

Georgia Library Quarterly

The article reports on the partnership formed by the Coweta Public Library--Central Library with the Carrollton-based University of West Georgia's Ingram Library and Newnan Campus to enhance educational services within the community. The objective of the Central Library is to reflect on the importance of educating children and of providing access to materials and programs to people of all ages in support of lifelong learning. Its Book Bundles are another aspect of the public library of allowing its customers to be independent but provide the library staff an avenue of virtual engagement. It also focuses on the key areas when …

Poverty And Proximate Barriers To Learning: Vision Deficiencies, Vision Correction And Educational Outcomes In Rural Northwest China, Emily Hannum, Yuping Zhang

Emily C. Hannum

Few studies of educational barriers in developing countries have investigated the role of children’s vision problems, despite the self-evident challenge that poor vision poses to classroom learning and the potential for a simple ameliorative intervention. We address this gap with an analysis of two datasets from Gansu Province, a highly impoverished province in northwest China. One dataset is the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF, 2000 and 2004), a panel survey of 2,000 children in 100 rural villages; the other is the Gansu Vision Intervention Project (GVIP, 2004), a randomized trial involving 19,185 students in 165 schools in two …

Program Approach For Childheaded Households In Zambia, Samson Chama

Theses and Dissertations

Using an emergent design, this study developed a program approach for young people in the child headed households of Zambia. Phase I dealt with prior ethnography, Phase II focused on independent living services, and Phase III concerned translation to Zambia. A total of 36 participants from Richmond, consisting of 20 Richmond Department of Social Services workers and youth and 16 Africans, were recruited. Three major themes emerged: feasibility, content, and quality. Lessons learned about translational research highlight the need for uniformity in a cultural screen’s composition. This might enhance the richness of perspectives on young people. Lessons for the Department …

Building A Blog From Scratch, Jonathan Bacon

SIDLIT Conference Proceedings

The presenter takes the audience step-by-step through the creation of a Weblog, a tool which can be used for distance education.

A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have caused atmospheric concentrations with no precedents in the last half a million years, inducing serious uncertainties about future climates and their effects on human welfare. Recent climate science supports the view that the climate stabilization will require very low GHG emissions in the future. We ask: Is a path of low emissions compatible with sustainable levels of human welfare? With steady growth in human quality of life? Addressing these questions requires both defining welfare criteria and empirically estimating the possible paths of the economy. We specify and calibrate a dynamic model with four intertemporal …

A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Climate science indicates that climate stabilization requires low GHG emissions. Is this consistent with nondecreasing human welfare? Our welfare index, called quality of life (QuoL), emphasizes education, knowledge, and the environment. We construct and calibrate a multigenerational model with intertemporal links provided by education, physical capital, knowledge and the environment. We reject discounted utilitarianism and adopt, first, the Intergenerational Maximin criterion, and, second, Human Development Optimization, that maximizes the QuoL of the first generation subject to a given future rate of growth. We apply these criteria to our calibrated model via a novel algorithm inspired by the turnpike property. The …

Reproduction Of Cultural Knowledge And Practices Interviews With Spanish-Speaking Parents Of Deaf Children In South Texas, Christina J. Quilantan-Cavazos

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The Hispanic population is the largest and fastest growing cultural and language minority group in the United States (Figueroa et al. 1989); consequently, "as the number of Hispanic individuals in the United States increases, so does the number of Hispanic hearing impaired children" (Walker-Vann 1998: 46), making them the fastest growing population among deaf and hard of hearing school age students (Gerner de García 1995b). Yet, little is known about Mexican families raising a deaf child because "there is a shortage of research that looks at Hispanic deaf children in their home environment or in the community of their families" …

A Public Policy Institute Year Of Discovery: Building Capacity For Citizen Dialogue, Gary Petree

MTAS Publications: Full Publications

“A year of discovery” best describes the first year of Public Policy Institute (PPI) activity at the University of Tennessee Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS).

Report Of The Commission To Assess The Threat To The United States From Emp Attack: Critical National Infrastructures, William R. Graham

George H Baker

The physical and social fabric of the United States is sustained by a system of systems; a complex and dynamic network of interlocking and interdependent infrastructures (“critical national infrastructures”) whose harmonious functioning enables the myriad actions, transactions, and information flow that undergird the orderly conduct of civil society in this country. The vulnerability of these frastructures to threats — deliberate, accidental, and acts of nature — is the focus of greatly heightened concern in the current era, a process accelerated by the events of 9/11 and recent hurricanes, including Katrina and Rita. This report presents the results of the Commission’s …

Academic Writing And The Pedagogical Practices Of Effective Teachers, Thomas Devere Wolsey Edd

Dissertations

Composition, particularly when academic register is required, is a complex task. Because cognitive flexibility theory explains how humans can spontaneously restructure knowledge and adapt to situational demands, it is ideally suited to the ill-structured domain of transactional writing. Global aspects related to paragraph and whole-text structure and local operations related to word and sentence-level features define academic writing. A mixed-methods design used quantitative methods for investigation of five corpora of 10th grade students' work. Qualitative methods were used to explore the means teachers used in promoting academic writing and the interactions they intended to promote via teaching cues, including prompts. …

Changing Roles Of Parental Economic Resources In Children's Education Attainment, Yunju Nam, Jin Huang

Center for Social Development Research

We investigate whether the relationship between parents’ economic resources and children’s educational attainment has changed over time by comparing two cohorts from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We examine multiple measures of economic resources, including income, net worth, liquid assets, and homeownership. We employ probit regressions and Chow tests in multivariate analyses. Results show that the associations between parents’ liquid assets and college attendance became significantly stronger among the later cohort, suggesting the increasing importance of liquid assets. of particular interest is a change in the role of negative liquid assets (unsecured debt exceeding savings) in high school graduation: …

Parental Assets: A Pathway To Positive Child Educational Outcomes, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Yeong H. Yeo, Kate Irish, Min Zhan

Center for Social Development Research

A growing body of evidence suggests parental assets have positive effects on children’s well-being. Using 2004 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study tests the effect of parental asset holding on child educational outcomes, and explores whether this relationship is mediated by parental involvement and expectations. Results indicate that assets are a significant predictor of all child academic outcomes of our study, however income is not a significant predictor for school outcomes when controlling for assets. The mediation analyses show the effect of assets on school outcomes is mediated by two of the three parenting measures: …

Equal Opportunity For All?: Parental Economic Resources And Children's Educational Achievement, Yunju Nam, Jin Huang

Center for Social Development Research

We investigate the roles of parents’ economic resources in children’s educational attainment and test the liquidity constraint hypothesis. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that parents’ liquid assets have significantly positive associations with years of schooling, high school graduation, and college attendance. We find that the relationship between liquid assets and education is non-linear: children from negative liquid asset households have a higher chance of finishing high school but a lower chance of graduating college than those from zero liquid asset households. Results suggest that we should consider assets when seeking to understand educational mobility.

Summary Of 2008 Homeland Security Symposium At The National Academies: Fostering Public-Private Partnerships, George H. Baker, Cheryl J. Elliott

George H Baker

Recent U.S. high consequence events have made clear the importance of government collaboration with industry. The benefits of such collaboration were clearly seen as a lesson from Hurricane Katrina. The resources owned and controlled by American industry dwarf those available to local, state and even the federal government departments. Better agreements and incentives to bring the full capabilities of industry squarely into the national response agenda will be indispensable in effectively responding to large-scale catastrophes. General Russel Honoré who led the National Guard response to Katrina has said, “We need the partnering between local, state, and federal governments; but the …

Slides: Beyond Rethinking: Redoing Western Water Law, Janet Neuman

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Professor Janet Neuman, Lewis & Clark Law School

17 slides

Slides: Threats To Biological Diversity: Global, Continental, Local, J. Michael Scott

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: J. Michael Scott, U.S. Geological Survey, Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Idaho

38 slides

The Role Of Assessment In Furthering Student Engagement, Inclusion, And Achievement, Mary Allen, Patricia A. Iannuzzi

Library Faculty Presentations

Assessment is a vital component of any program or initiative in terms of monitoring and strengthening its impact. Assessment involves establishing outcomes (programmatic, learning, etc.), verifying that efforts are aligned with those outcomes, assessing impact, and “closing the loop” by using what is learned to make improvements. This presentation focused on characteristics of quality assessment, such as the need for it to be valid, reliable, actionable, and efficient. AAC&U’s cluster of intellectual and practical skills for a liberal education include inquiry and analysis; critical and creative thinking; written and oral communication; quantitative literacy; and teamwork and problem solving. Information literacy …

A Historical Analysis Of The Creation Of A Cabinet-Level Department Of Education, Shayla Lois Marie Mitchell

Educational Policy Studies Dissertations

This dissertation uses historical analysis to understand the political and social conditions that allowed for the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Education when many congressional representatives, state governments, and citizens of the United States were ideologically against federal involvement in education. A cabinet-level Department of Education posed problems for the United States because nowhere in the nation’s Constitution is education mentioned, thus leaving education to be a function of the states according to the 10th Amendment. This dissertation looks at calls for a department of education leading up to and including the one initiated by Jimmy Carter. Conducting a …

Grounded History: A Keynote Address To The 14th Annual Massachusetts Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference, Amilcar Shabazz

Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Grounded History: A Keynote Address To The 14th Annual Massachusetts Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference, Amilcar Shabazz

Amilcar Shabazz

No abstract provided.