Digital Commons Network^™

Global Research Productivity In Nuclear Waste Management: A Scientometric Analysis, Fayaz Ahmad Loan, Ufaira Yaseen

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Scientometrics has emerged as one of the prominent and fast-growing fields in the Library and Information Sciences. The present study also deals with the scientometric aspect of one of the prominent fields of Nuclear Science and Technology i.e. Nuclear Waste Management. The data for the said study has been collected from the Web of Science database over the period 1989-2019. The results reveal that a total of 1824 publications have been published on Nuclear Waste Management and the highest number has been contributed by the USA (23.7%) of the total global output. Most of the Nuclear Waste Management literature …

Interactions Between Humans, Virtual Agent Characters And Virtual Avatars, Tamara Griffith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Simulations allow people to experience events as if they were happening in the real world in a way that is safer and less expensive than live training. Despite improvements in realism in simulated environments, one area that still presents a challenge is interpersonal interactions. The subtleties of what makes an interaction rich are difficult to define. We may never fully understand the complexity of human interchanges, however there is value in building on existing research into how individuals react to virtual characters to inform future investments. Virtual characters can either be automated through computational processes, referred to as agents, or …

Paleoethnobotanical Analysis Of Starch Grains And Phytoliths From Pre-Columbian Ceramic Residues In The Bolivian Amazon, Danielle Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The Llanos de Mojos of the southwestern Amazon region of Bolivia once supported large Pre-Columbian indigenous populations who were regarded as skilled farmers, and whose agricultural pursuits are still documented on the landscape through tens of thousands of raised fields. Nevertheless, the plants that were cultivated on these fields that contributed to a large part of the local cuisine are not well understood. Microbotanical analyses using starch grains and phytoliths of food residues were conducted on 55 archaeological ceramic fragments from four forest islands in Mojos where people resided recurrently from cal BCE 1200 to cal CE ~1430. The results …

Cute Panda Or Evil Dragon? Market Economy, Conflict Behavior And China's Peaceful Rise, Xiongwei Cao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

China has two contrasting images in the West: a cute panda and an evil dragon. In recent years, a near-consensus seems to be forming among policy makers in Washington that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is more of an evil dragon than a cute panda, using "sharp power" to threaten U.S. interests and world peace. The PRC is regarded by the current U.S. administration as a "strategic competitor," and a new Cold War seems to be looming between the world's two largest economies. Is the rise of China destined to cause conflicts or even war? After analyzing the conflict …

Household Economies And Socioeconomic Integration: An Analysis Of Obsidian Artifacts From Coba, Quintana Roo And Yaxuna, Yucatan, Mexico, Danielle Waite

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Using Handheld XRF (X-Ray Fluorescence), this thesis explores how household economies at two Maya archaeological sites, Coba and Yaxuna, differed during a period of expansion and integration from the Early to Late Classic transition period (A.D. 500-750/800). Previous research suggests that during this time, Yaxuna was under the direction of Coba, however, due to the lack of household archaeology at both sites, how the bridging of these two centers impacted households and their domestic economies remains unknown. A compositional analysis of 1,186 obsidian artifacts recovered by the Proyecto de Interaccion Politica del Centro de Yucatan and the Proyecto Sacbe Yaxuna-Coba …

Freedom Of Journalism In International Human Rights Law, Edward L. Carter, Rosalie Westenskow

Faculty Publications

Contemporary attacks of various types have prompted calls for stronger public support and legal protections for journalism. Around the world, journalism faces not only government regulation that affects editorial content but also economic and corporate pressures as well as lack of public understanding of its societal functions. In the United States, courts and even journalism organizations have been reluctant to define journalism or single it out for special protection. But international human rights law presents a possible solution. This article discusses the international human rights law provisions that protect individuals engaged in journalism. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has …

Contre-/Counter-, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Examines the “counter-” move in Balibar’s thought, analysing it not in the Kantian or Hegelian sense of a synthesis that resolves an antinomic opposition (not the least of which, because the particle “contre-” functions differently than the particle “anti-”), but rather as an original counterpoint that itself becomes so powerful as to liberate itself from the oppositional relationship and transform itself into a free-standing concept, intervention, or even mode of governmentality. It is not an opposition that leads to a synthesis, but instead to a stage of “perfection” that (1) merely indexes its former counter-partner, and (2) becomes a fully …

Transportation, Terrorism And Crime: Deterrence, Disruption And Resilience, Daniel C. Goodrich, Frances L. Edwards

Mineta Transportation Institute

Abstract: Terrorists likely have adopted vehicle ramming as a tactic because it can be carried out by an individual (or “lone wolf terrorist”), and because the skills required are minimal (e.g. the ability to drive a car and determine locations for creating maximum carnage). Studies of terrorist activities against transportation assets have been conducted to help law enforcement agencies prepare their communities, create mitigation measures, conduct effective surveillance and respond quickly to attacks.

This study reviews current research on terrorist tactics against transportation assets, with an emphasis on vehicle ramming attacks. It evaluates some of the current attack strategies, and …

The Dark Tetrad, Social Dominance Orientation, And Online Political Discussion, Cory D. Taylor

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Previous literature into online trolling behavior has focused upon the role of the Dark Tetrad and political measures separately. This study extended the existing body of research by examining the relationship between the Dark Tetrad personality traits, social dominance orientation (SDO) and online political trolling in the United States of America. The data was collected using an online questionnaire from American users of Facebook and Reddit in the summer of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter movement, and in the runup to a hotly contested national election. Positive correlations were found between all of the Dark Tetrad traits, …

Three Essays In Public Economics, Perry Ferrell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation investigates policy-relevant topics in public economics and law and economics. The first chapter applies the transitional gains trap to legal land title enfranchisement in developing countries. The second chapter examines the role of US Forest Service avalanche forecasting operations in preventing human-involved backcountry avalanche accidents. The final chapter explores what extent local newspaper coverage has on traffic stop behavior by local law enforcement. In the first chapter “Titles For Me But Not For Thee: Transitional Gains Trap of Property Rights Extension in Colombia” I apply Tullock’s “transitional gains trap” to the formalization of property titles in Latin America …

Were The French Government’S Brexit-Related Worries Prior To The 2016 Referendum Overstated?, Claudia Michelle Chandra

CMC Senior Theses

The prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum was deeply troubling to French officials. As a historic leader of the European integration project, the French government and media worried that Brexit would embolden Eurosceptics in France. This threatened to undermine France’s identity as a pro-European nation. Also, due to France’s position as one of the UK’s main trading partners, French citizens and businesses feared that the end of freedom of movement between these countries would create burdensome legal and economic consequences. Nevertheless, more than three years have passed since the Brexit referendum and …

Reflections On Critical Pedagogy In America Latina: La Lucha Continua, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"When I speak in Mexico, I support efforts there to create a revolutionary critical pedagogy—one that has not been domesticated and depotentiated by neoliberal dogma. This means the inclusion of a decolonial pedagogy which challenges the “coloniality of power” (patron de poder colonial) that still resides at the heart of post-colonial societies. I would advise as a central, overarching goal of critical pedagogy the struggle for a socialist alternative to the “value form of labor” that exists in capitalist societies throughout North and South America, and that such efforts must be transnational in scope since capitalism is now transnational in …

Towards Perpetual Peace: The Dynamics Of Us And Vietnam Relations Since The Settlement Of Agent Orange Case In 2000, Bhakti Putra Utama, Shary Charlotte Pattipeilhy, Reni Windiani

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

Agent Orange is a toxic chemical liquid used by the United States military during the Vietnam War in 1955-1975. The use of chemical weapons is classified as a form of crime due to violations of international agreements. This research tries to explain how Agent Orange has become a significant factor in the dynamics of relations between the US and Vietnam. The dynamics will be analyzed using the concept by Immanuel Kant. There are 6 articles that must be done to achieve lasting peace, but this article only discusses articles 1, 5, and 6 which are the basis for the establishment …

Escalation Of Military Conflict Between India And Pakistan In The Post Lahore Declaration (1999 – 2019): Security Dilemma Perspective, Dwi Impiani

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

This paper describes the military conflict escalation between India and Pakistan in the period after 1999 Lahore Declaration. After several major wars, military conflicts between the two countries continued to this day. Previous studies on the India-Pakistan conflict only discussed the causes of this conflict and efforts to resolve conflicts. The studies are divided into three major perspectives, namely; security, domestic politics, and political economy, but none has explained how this military conflict is relatively lasting. Using security dilemma as an analytical framework, this paper will explain the variables of the security dilemma that have contributed to the escalating tensions …

Critical Engagement On Digital Sovereignty In International Relations: Actor Transformation And Global Hierarchy, Abid A. Adonis

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

The idea of digital sovereignty in the last twenty years increasingly reifies into chiefly policy making debates as the reaction of China’s determined activism on internet governance, Snowden’s case, and increasingly big internet corporations’ unchecked endeavors. International actors’ growing concerns on security, economy, data protection, and socio-political issues invoke new discourses on digital sovereignty since it bears global political consequences by nature. This stimulates recent intellectual debate in academic literature on how digital sovereignty affects (or be affected by) international politics. This article critically examines the development of digital sovereignty literatures. This article classifies literature taxonomically on four major themes: …

Frankenstein In Baghdad: A Novel Way Of Understanding The Iraq War And Its Aftermath, Hope Teggart

International ResearchScape Journal

No abstract provided.

There Must Be Something In The Water: Understanding Pfas Contamination Of Groundwater As A National Security Issue, Kylie N. Ford

Student Theses 2015-Present

This report addresses the widespread pollution of domestic groundwater resources with Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) caused by firefighting activities performed at military installations across the United States. Two former military bases in Southeastern Pennsylvania are used as a single case study: the Naval Air Development Center (NADC) in Warminster and the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base (NASJRB) in Horsham. Chapter 1 gives a history of domestic military bases from the perspective of the infrastructure buildup and downsizing that occurred over the 20th Century, along with the environmental degradation revealed during brownfield redevelopment. The chapter then gives specifics about …

The Art Of Subtitling: A Case Study Of A Chinese Online Fansub Group, Xianwei Wu

Theses - ALL

Online fan subtitling (hereafter fansub) groups are a recent phenomenon that have quickly gained global popularity. They are groups of volunteers who produce and distribute subtitles of English televisions shows and films for free. However, to date not much academic attention has been paid to this phenomenon in a critical capacity, with the exception of anime fansubbing. This study closely examines one fansub group in China using a single-case design case study. The methods of data collection include: in-depth interviews with the translators; participant observation as a subtitle translator; and textual/discourse analysis of the subtitles. This study will use the …

The Ethical Justification Of Increasing Awareness Of Preventive Medicine Among Healthcare Professionals, Patients And The General Public In The United States, Karishma Ether Moazzam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While practiced for centuries, preventive medicine has received increased attention during the recent times. Preventive medicine has a distinct mission to protect, promote, and maintain health as well as to prevent diseases, disabilities, and premature deaths. It aims to fulfill its mission through the combined form of clinical intervention and health promotion. In the recent years, preventive medicine has begun to lean more towards the clinical interventions, taking away from the health promotion. This imbalance has caused preventive medicine to lose its effectiveness in fulfilling its mission. One of the leading causes for such imbalance is the lack of proper …

Moving Beyond The State: An Imperative For Genocide Prediction, Hollie Nyseth Brehm

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Studies of the onset of genocide and accompanying early warning and forecasting efforts have focused almost exclusively on states. This article suggests that genocide prediction must move beyond a purely state-centric approach. Specifically, I suggest three major avenues that will refine and complement existing research and related prediction efforts. These include 1) theorizing and analyzing non-state actors who commit genocide, 2) engaging in conflict-centered approaches, and 3) addressing the onset and triggers of genocide within subnational spaces. I conclude with a discussion of how these three avenues can be pursued simultaneously to inform more robust genocide prevention endeavors.

Human Rights? What A Good Idea! From Universal Jurisdiction To Crime Prevention, Daniel Feierstein

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Over the last decades, Genocide Studies has entered in a “comfort zone.” With fellowships and support from governments or NGOs, we have developed a very comfortable environment in which the knowledge we produce about genocide prevention is neither critical nor useful. We have become trapped by assumptions we have never checked against reality and many of us have chosen to work inside the circle of those assumptions: genocide and mass violence are horrible acts committed by horrible people; we cannot stand by and do nothing; we have the responsibility to protect civilian populations and that responsibility takes the form, as …

Imitation Game: Military Institutions And Westernization In Indonesia And Japan, Evan Abelard Laksmana

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation explains why and how some militaries are better than others at emulating the organization and doctrine of foreign armed forces. I define military emulation as the changes to a pre-existing military organization resulting from an imitation of another military's structure or doctrine. The changes stem from the diffusion of military ideas from one polity to another. I call those ideas `theory of victory' and `theory of corporatism'. The former explains the next mission a military needs to fight and how to win, while the latter details how intra-military institutions and their raison d'etres are designed, maintained, and defended …

Usage Statistics: Project Counter R4 Book Report 1 (Br1) By Title 2018-2019, Andree Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Project COUNTER R4 Book Report 1 (BR1) for the University of Rhode Island for the period from July 1, 2018 - June 30, 2019. Book Report 1 is defined as "Number of Successful Title Requests by Month and Title." This report presents an annual total only.

File for download is Excel spreadsheet generated by Alma Analytics.

Results: 506 title requests from 454 titles.

Usage Statistics: Project Counter R4 Book Report 2 (Br2) By Title 2018-2019, Andree Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Project COUNTER R4 Book Report 2 (BR2) for the University of Rhode Island for the period from July 1, 2018 - June 30, 2019. Book Report 2 is defined as "Number of Successful Section Requests by Month and Title." This report presents an annual total only.

File for download is Excel spreadsheet generated by Alma Analytics.

Results: 119,275 successful section requests for 9,528 reported titles.

A Woman Surrounded: Exploring The Reintegration Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Survivors In Nigeria, Nicole Junker

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

There has been a “rapid expansion of publications” on Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) in the past five years (Campbell 2018:469). However, the more recent focus in this field of knowledge has shifted from qualitative feminist analysis to the use of quantitative and comparative methodology (Houge 2015:83, Bijleveld et al 2009, Boesten 2017:5). This shift has limited the amount of data focusing on individual or small groups of CRSV survivors. In order to examine the reintegration of CRSV survivors, this dissertation returns to the use of qualitative feminist methodology to examine the experiences of reintegration of CRSV survivors in Nigeria. …

Ethnonational Identity And Detached Lives In A Serbian Province: A Study Of Parallelism Among Vojvodina's Hungarian Community, Uros Prokic

Dissertations and Theses

Current theories of interethnic relations generally posit assimilation, integration and marginalization as possible outcomes between minority and dominant groups in Eastern Europe. However, there may be cases that are not adequately described by any of these existing interethnic relations paradigms. This dissertation explores one alternative, dubbed parallelism, which can be described as institutionally-driven self-isolation and detachment leading to communities living side by side on parallel trajectories and not interacting. Using the Hungarian ethnonational minority community in Serbia's autonomous northern province of Vojvodina as a case study, the author examines the institutional factors that have led to parallelism. Primary data from …

Good Reasons Or Bad Conscience? Or Why Some Indian Peoples Of Amazonia Are Ambivalent About Eating Meat, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Originally written for a conference on meat attended by farmers, anthropologists, people involved in cultural affairs, and other members of the public, and seeking to avoid emphasis on cultural difference, this paper explores common ground between Euro-American and Amerindian ambivalence about meat consumption. Meat-eating raises two shared concerns: an intuitive recognition of the resemblances between humans and animals and an uncomfortable awareness that human life often depends on the death and destruction of other living beings. I suggest that, behind some obvious cultural differences, Amazonian shamanic and ritual procedures aimed at the de-subjectification of meat share points in common with …

Christianity + Schooling On Nature Versus Culture In Amazonia, Aparecida M. N. Vilaça

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Based on the analysis of Evangelical Biblical translations, as well as on the school writing of Wari' (Southwestern Amazonia) students, produced in indigenous secondary school classrooms and at the intercultural university, this article aims to show how, in both church and school, a nature separate from humans is invented with which they should relate in a utilitarian and also contemplative way. Simultaneously nature’s opposite is invented–a culture that excludes animals and subjects them.

Engendering Houses: The Topological Conception Of Gender Pioneered By Stephen And Christine Hugh-Jones, Klaus Hamberger

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Stephen and Christine Hugh-Jones were the first anthropologists not only to demonstrate that the gender value of places and directions depends on the frame of reference and the point of view but to turn this insight into a fruitful principle on which to base transformational analysis. By analyzing the metamorphoses of gender brought about by changes of perspective or scale, they have brought to light the spatial character of the gender concept. As their examinations of Barasana architecture, ritual performance, and domestic work have shown, the relativity of gender is at its core an aspect of the relativity of space. …

Cosmology And Practice In Amazonia: The Inspiring Career Of Stephen Hugh-Jones, Chloe Nahum-Claudel, Olivier Allard

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Stephen Hugh-Jones’s ethnographic and collaborative engagement with the peoples of the Pirá-Paraná and, more widely, the Vaupés and Upper Rio Negro today spans 50 years. In this Introduction we chart the evolution of Hugh-Jones’s hybrid identity as iconoclast scholar, knowledgeable elder, and long-term collaborator. A biographical sketch identifies phases in this anthropological life: that of the ethnographer and initiate, steeped in the intellectual world of Barasana shaman-priests; that of lecturer and theorist in anthropology; and that of areal specialist, developing a synthesis of the ethnography of North West Amazonia through an engagement with Brazilian and indigenous intellectuals. We characterize the …