Digital Commons Network^™

The Three Dimensionality Model Of State Security And Armed Conflict: Internal And External Dimensions And Lessons From The Middle East, Juri Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The primary objective of this research is to explore the dynamics in the development of civil conflict. Specifically, I attempt to explain the reasons for the occurrence of full-scale internal armed conflicts and the variation in intensity of those conflicts. Given that a substantial portion of previous studies in the field have taken rebel-centric and aggregate cross-country approaches, this research focuses on the state side and how the internal-external environments within which the ruling regime is situated affect its security decisions on rebellion.

The main argument is that internal armed conflict is a serious security problem of incumbent governments in …

Sounding Appalachian: /Ai/ Monophthongization, Rising Pitch Accents, And Rootedness, Paul E. Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Appalachia, the mountainous region that stretches from northern Georgia to Pennsylvania (ARC, 2015), is a region that has been considered culturally and linguistically unique in the United States. There is a small but growing body of literature that has demonstrated that the language varieties of this region, collapsed under the broad heading of Appalachian English (AE), diverge from Mainstream American English and other Southern American English varieties (Wolfram & Christian, 1976, Montgomery & Hall, 2004, Labov et al., 2006, among others). Much of this literature has focused on vowels and morpho-syntax, but other linguistic aspects have not received much attention, …

An Exploration Of Transition Experiences Shaping Student Veteran Life Flow, Brian T. Gregg

Theses and Dissertations--Rehabilitation Sciences

Educational institutions offer transformative opportunities for veterans transitioning from military service. Veteran-specific cultural supports in educational environments offer participation in occupations and development of skills needed to complete educational goals. However, veterans experience complex life circumstances atypical from traditional student culture which influences use of available environmental supports. Currently, the student veteran population is growing following fifteen years of combat and with systematic downsizing of the military. Therefore, rehabilitation professionals and educators must understand the unique experiences which shape veteran life flow during the transition process.

This dissertation contains three studies investigating veteran experiences transitioning to postsecondary education. The first …

U.S. Energy Sector Cybersecurity: Hands-Off Approach Or Effective Partnership?, T. M. Ballou, Joseph A. Allen, Kyle Francis

Psychology Faculty Publications

Recent reporting has identified significant threats to the U.S. energy’s critical infrastructure from nation states and other groups through cyberspace. Efforts to improve the security and resilience of U.S. energy infrastructure relies upon voluntary partnerships between the U.S. Government and public and private energy infrastructure owners. This paper examines ideal Public-Private Partnership (PPP) characteristics and compares them to an actual PPP in the U.S. The results identify strengths of and challenges to efforts to secure U.S. energy infrastructure. The research was conducted through a combination of literature reviews and interviews with a sample of U.S-government and private-energy infrastructure representatives.

Examining The Legality Of The Guantánamo Bay Detention Center According To International Humanitarian Law And International Human Rights Law, Sydney T. Winchester

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this research paper is to examine how international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) are applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention center. This paper was completed through the research of international treaties, court cases, and secondary sources that thoroughly discussed issues pertaining to Guantánamo and international law.

This paper first examines the differences between the two laws by looking at the particular roles each is meant to play in the subject of international law, as well as how the two have been applied thus far to the situation at Guantánamo. Second, the paper discusses …

The Crossed Bands Motif: What Does It Mean?, Brittany Luther

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The crossed bands motif is an iconographic symbol that appears among many Mesoamerican cultures' art including Olmec, Izapan and Maya spanning from the Early Pre-Classic to the Classic periods in Mesoamerica. Pierce explains in his theory on signs that icons, symbols and indices all contain meaning. This meaning was given to the signs by the one who commissioned the medium on which the sign is placed; therefore it is important to understand the meaning of these signs to learn more about the person or people who built them. The crossed bands motif has previously been studied based on individual pieces …

Ideas, Beliefs, Strategic Culture, And Foreign Policy: Understanding Brazil's Geopolitical Thought, Marcos Rosas Degaut Pontes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Brazil is an important player both at regional and global levels, figuring prominently in almost all lists of emerging states and regional powers. It is one of the world's largest democracies, the fifth most populous country in the world, the world's seventh-largest economy, and Latin America's largest economy, accounting for approximately 60% of South America's GDP, 47% of South America's territory and 49% of South American population, a G20 member, and an active contributor to United Nations peacekeeping operations. However, despite being usually depicted as a "monster country" which would help shape global affairs, Brazil has never been able to …

Sleuthing Scientific Evidence Information On The Internet, Carol Henderson, Diana Botluk

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Is Social Media A Threat Or Can It Be A Trusted Agent?, William Ward, Katherine Cole-Miller, Ann Fruhling, Kathryn M. Cooper

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

There is a prevailing belief within the United States Department of Defense (DOD) that social media is a threat to national security, leading to restrictions in workplace use of social-media applications. However, instead of dismissing social media as a threat, leaders should be asking whether or not the information received via social media can be trusted, thus leveraging the information-sharing capabilities of social media. This article presents a theoretical case for quantifying social media trustworthiness by exploring the factors that influence trust in social media and proposing a trust framework to be used to quantify trustworthiness.

Gender Matters: Masculinities Among African American Men Farming In North Carolina, Marcus K. Bernard

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

The residue of racism, institutional discrimination, and class warfare continue to displace constructions of masculinity for African-American men in farming by shifting the drive for success onto the sidewalk of survival. The shifting focus migrates from goals of economic and political gain to simply shielding masculinity through acts of providing for and protecting the family. African-American men’s failure to acknowledge these quandaries in Western society’s social structure entraps their masculine identity by keeping their focus on issues of race and social class which overshadow the broad gender transformations. The deceptive social forces underlying this social structure hurl African conditions are …

Attachment Quality And Sexual Satisfaction And Sexual Functioning In Romantic Relationships For Combat Veterans, Ilana S. Pinsky

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

Previous literature has shown that combat veteran posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects attachment quality, as well as sexual satisfaction and functioning. This study used internet survey methods from 253 male combat veterans in committed relationships to analyze the correlations between PTSD symptoms, attachment quality, sexual satisfaction, and sexual functioning in romantic relationships. The results indicate that PTSD symptoms from combat veterans are correlated with attachment quality, sexual satisfaction, and sexual functioning in romantic relationships. Implications for professionals and future research are explored.

A Kantian Revision Of The Doctrine Of Double Effect, Andrew H. Chung

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I will present a Kantian revision of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). In order to do so, I will explain the concept of jus in bello – focusing in particular on the distinction between intent and foresight. I will then argue that we ought to take an agency-inspired look at the DDE. Finally, I will conclude by arguing for my thesis that Boyle’s theory of agency, while good, needs to be revised in order to accommodate concerns stemming from Kant’s Formula of Humanity… namely consent.

An Analysis Of Education Reform In Sub-Saharan Africa, Katharine Eger

CMC Senior Theses

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to fall behind other developing regions regarding educational attainment, despite recent progress in enrollment. This thesis examines a variety of external conditional factors that could contribute to a country’s relative success, in terms of years spent in school using a prediction model that compares years enrolled in secondary education as a foundation to determine over- and under-performing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

By exploring various educational policies, historical patterns, and projects executed in Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, and Botswana, this thesis sheds light on four main challenges that can impact educational attainment: ethnic and racial tensions, an acute …

The International Community's Response To The Hypothetical Emergence Of Superheroes, Brittany Nicole Woods

CMC Senior Theses

In a golden era for comic based media, this paper uses the hypothetical emergence of superheroes to analyze the assumptions and predictions of three international relations theories: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Comics consistently reflect the real world, paralleling events and concepts discussed in foreign affairs dialogues. The thought experiment, and the comic genre itself, provides a vehicle for thinking broadly about the political and social ramifications of successful or failed problem solving, state interaction, and scientific advances.

Humbug: Toward A Legal History, Susanna Blumenthal

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Designing Better Symbols: An Attentional Approach To Match Symbols To Performance Goals, Hannah North

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Effective displays require symbol sets that are customized to specific tasks and performance goals. In order to create such sets, designers must account for the effects of top-down and bottom-up attention. The current work presents a pair of experiments that examined the effects of salience and cueing in a change detection tasks within the flicker paradigm (Rensink, O’Regan and Clark, 1997). Each trial, participants either received no cue or a cue indicating which symbol would be the target. This cueing manipulation isolated top-down effects to the cued condition. Consistent with previous studies (Orchard, 2012; Steelman, Orchard, Fletcher, Cockshell, Williamson & …

The Aesthetics Of Propaganda: Modern Design At The 1959 American National Exhibition In Moscow, Charlotte Hecht

American Studies Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Effects Of The Illinois Budget Crisis On Home-Based Childcare Businesses, Okeycha Pettigrew

All Capstone Projects

There are over 800,000 children in Illinois that need to be placed in early learning programs. Many programs are closing due to the lack of financial support from government programs that provide financial assistance to parents who cannot afford to pay for childcare. The budget crisis that Illinois is currently experiencing has caused a decrease in funding early childhood education, and has cut many programs that are beneficial to home-based childcare businesses. What is happening to the children and the families that depend on childcare assistance? How does that affect the economy? What will happen to the communities that need …

Japan: Nuclearizing The Reclining Dragon?, Michael Ladon Cribb Jr.

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Japan may be about to cross the threshold of a slow march toward nuclearization. This thesis will highlight signals that Japan not only has the means to develop nuclear weapons but maybe approaching a culmination point where Japan will cross the nuclear threshold. This thesis relies on a range of open-source documents and previously classified documents of the United States and Japan in order to reveal some of these subtle indications. Japan relies on four main factors to maintain its non–nuclear status: its alliance with the United States, nuclear deterrence underwritten by the United States, regional stability, and the nuclear …

The Impact Of Clinical Social Workers' Conceptualizations Of Moral Injury On Their Treatment Actions In Work With Veterans, Zachary P. Wigham

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This exploratory study was designed to determine how clinical social workers’ conceptualizations of Moral Injury impacted their treatment actions in work with veterans. Additionally, this study allowed insights into the clinical social workers’ education and practice on Moral Injury.

Using semi-structured interviews with licensed clinical social workers who each held a Master of Social Work degree and held at least two years of experience working with veterans, this study gathered data from 7 participants. This study gathered data categorized under five major areas: demographics, conceptualizations and related data, sources of learning and frequency of contact, treatment actions, and perceived skill …

Presenting Image/Presenting Symptoms : Clinicians' Diagnoses Of Black Women In The Therapeutic Space, Kim Teresa Dubose

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This was a mixed methods study that used both random and non-random purposive snowball convenience sampling. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether clinicians issue more severe psychotic DSM diagnoses (schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders) to Black female clients than to White female clients when implicitly primed with cultural archetypes unique to Black women. The research questions were, “Do clinicians issue more severe and stereotype-consistent diagnoses to Black female clients than they do to White female clients;” and “Is there a difference in reaction time in clinician diagnosis of severe psychotic disorders between a clinically-identical Black female vignette and …

Qasef: Escaping The Bombing, Hi

Global CWD Repository

This study confirms that the use of explosive weapons in populated areas in Syria is at times nearly continuous, with indiscriminate bombing that lasts for days. The attacks are sometimes seemingly random, until there is complete destruction of an area. All Syrians interviewed said they fled because of the various effects of the conflict, and most of them stressed that the main reason for leaving their homes was the use of explosive weapons in their villages, towns, and cities. In our interviews, explosive weapons were mentioned as the overriding factor forcing Syrians out as they fled from their homes.

Analysis …

Preserving Fields Of Conflict: Papers From The 2014 Fields Of Conflict Conference And Preservation Workshop, Steven D. Smith

Faculty Publications

From 12 through 15 March 2014 conflict archaeologists and preservationists met in Columbia, South Carolina, to present 54 papers and 14 posters at the 8^th Biennial Fields of Conflict Conference. In conjunction with the conference, a workshop was held on the preservation of battlefields across the globe entitled “Call to Action: National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program Battlefield Preservation Workshop.” The 33 papers in this volume are extended abstracts of those papers presented in a popular format. The goal of this volume is to make conflict archaeology assessable to the public and raise the awareness of the critical …

Maritime Alpine Cairns In Southeast Alaska: A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study, William J. Hunt Jr., Ralph J. Hartley, Bruce Mccune, Nijmah Ali, Thomas F. Thornton

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This report describes the goals, data recovery methods, data analysis, and conclusions of a pilot project “A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study of Alpine Cairns, Baranof Island, Southeast Alaska,” funded by the National Science Foundation under Project No. 1230132. The project brought together experts in the disciplines of archaeology (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), lichenology (Oregon State University), and Tlingit oral history (Oxford University) to address questions regarding artificial prehistoric, high altitude cairns. Data were collected in 2013 and 2014. Pedestrian archaeological inventory recorded 50 cairns at 5 sites. Archaeological data includes cairn dimensions, GPS positions, still photographic images, and video documentation. Four cairns …

Relational Red Flags: Detecting Undesirable Qualities In Initial Romantic Encounters, Richard C. White

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation extends the work of Signal Detection Theory (SDT) (Green & Swets, 1966; Swets, 1964) in the social sciences by applying it to romantic relationships, specifically initial romantic encounters (i.e. formal or informal first few dates, or random, chance encounters). The term relational red flag is put forth to describe the detection of signals in initial romantic encounters that may be perceived as any undesirable quality, which can be a characteristic, behavior, state, or trait that a person would not want in a potential romantic partner. These undesirable qualities can be costly to a healthy, stable relationship because they …

Reconfiguring Democracy And The Purpose Of Higher Education In China, Honglian Yang

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reconfigures Chinese democracy and the purpose of higher education through a conversation of its tradition, culture, and modern challenges in the context of civic studies, a new academic discipline focusing on civic renewal and citizens’ role as co-creators for a better society. Through analyzing the affinities between the Confucian tradition, Dewey’s communitarian form of democracy, the Chinese socialist tradition and public work, this dissertation explores the civic foundation for constructing Chinese democracy as collective agency. Recasting the "China Dream” as a collective work, it highlights important possibilities of developing civic professionals as the transformative force in modern China …

Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory, Rock Lamanna

Departmental Honors Projects

While postmodern theory and literature is typically viewed as either “anti-humanist” or a rejection of Humanism, this essay reconsiders these assumptions by exploring ethical questions in early postmodern novels and theory, referred to as “proto-postmodernism.” For proto-postmodernists such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, Humanism—the ethical framework that asserts a centered “self” and a collective “metanarrative” of human progress—causes and legitimates violence, yet in their theories and literature, they promote the humanist value of dignity in their critiques of modern ethics and politics. To examine this hybrid stance toward Humanism, the first section situates …

The Political Imagination Of Cormac Mccarthy, Drew Kennedy Thompson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a study in literature and politics and proceeds by tracing out the major political themes of McCarthy’s body of fiction and analyzing them toward their logical conclusions. The critical approach in this narrative-based anthropology looks at man first in profound isolation and then progresses through his novels in sequence, in an increasingly social context. McCarthy’s later fiction displays an increasingly affirmative view of the sacredness of human life and of the basic impulse toward community in even the most unreflective of characters; an essential characteristic of humans. To call any of McCarthy’s works a “political novel” would …

Waging Wars In Cyberspace: How International Law On Aggression And Self-Defense Falls Short Of Addressing Cyber Warfare. Could Iran Legally Retaliate For The Stuxnet Attack?, Willa Rubin

Honors Papers

The technical capabilities of the Stuxnet worms-launched by the US and Israel against Iran's nuclear facility-prove that the operation could be considered an act of aggression, as defined in the Rome Statute. Further, this paper asserts that Article 51 of the UN Charter is insufficient to addressing malignant cyber operations.

The paper is organized as following: 1) Introduction, 2) Research Limitations, 3) Context: International Relations Theory and Types of International Law, 4) Understanding “Cyber” Within The Scope Of This Paper, 5) The Stuxnet Operation, 6) Historical and Legal Roots of “Aggression” and “Self-Defense”, 7) Stuxnet as an act of aggression, …

Alternatives To Charcoal For Improving Chronometric Dating Of Puget Sound Archaeological Sites, James W. Brown

All Master's Theses

Radiocarbon dating of archaeological sites in the Puget Lowlands can be problematic. Dating specific cultural events associated with features and sites is difficult due to the ubiquity of charcoal in forest soils and poor preservation of bone in acidic soils. These conditions have impeded the development of regional cultural chronologies. The lack of dates for critical time periods also inhibits testing processual models of cultural change. Evidence for the timing and rate of ecological, economic, and political change is critical for testing evolutionary models in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Radiocarbon dating highly burned bone (calcined bone) and luminescence dating fire-modified …