Digital Commons Network^™

Research That Matters: Transforming Community Based Education Through Feminist Pedagogy And Public Scholarship, Amber J. Johnson

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This is a qualitative analysis of focus groups conducted with "Community Partners" (mostly Directors of non-profit social service agencies who have previously partnered with Eastern Washington faculty in community-based education efforts) in the Greater Spokane Area. This research is designed to address shortcomings of current forms of community based education, identify strategies for strengthening the partnerships that exist between Eastern Washington University and the surrounding community, and to establish the need for community based research at the graduate level. By conducting focus groups, this study analyzed Community Partner perceptions of community based education and research before and after watching a …

Life Events, Initial Sexual Behaviors, And Teenage Pregnancy Among African American Females, Yonzetta Brook Tillman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Teenage pregnancy is disproportionate between African American and Caucasian females. This disproportion is notable because African American teenagers are 3 times more likely to become pregnant than their Caucasian counterparts are. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a relationship exists among major life events, sexual behaviors, and resultant teenage pregnancy among African American females in the United States. The theoretical framework for this study was social learning theory. Three key research questions focused on relationships among (a) major life events and initial sexual behavior, (b) ethnicity, and (c) teenage pregnancy. Independent variables were life event and ethnicity, …

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Children's Experiences During The Therapeutic Process, Katherine Destefano

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Billions of mental health care dollars for millions of children and adolescents in need has garnered significant attention within the behavioral health industry to reduce costs while improving treatment efficacy through the identification and implementation of evidence based practices with youth populations requiring therapeutic services. This hermeneutic phenomenological qualitative research approach in the field of psychology is a consumer driven one in the world of business. Line by line context and discourse analyses, which included both a prior and inductive coding, of the verbiage and phraseology of 10 boys and 10 girls, aged 8-12, actively engaged in outpatient psychotherapy, formed …

Training And Experiences Of General Educators Who Have Students With Externalizing Behaviors, Sheila Ruann Lachelt

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In California classrooms, general education teachers have experienced stress due to an increasing number of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). This study used a hermeneutical phenomenological inquiry approach to explore teachers' perspectives of their pre-service professional development (PD), in-service PD, and classroom experiences with students who have externalizing EBD. The theoretical framework centered on social constructivism. Research questions addressed the teachers' perceptions of their pre-service and in-service PD on students with EBD and their experiences with students' externalizing behaviors. Twenty California general education teachers, each from a different school district, volunteered to participate in face-to-face interviews. Stratified purposeful …

Comparative Memory/Behavioral Symptoms Of Alzheimer's Disease: Eoad Vs. Load, Marcia Gale Roberson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a fatal disorder with no apparent cure. Early-onset AD (EOAD) occurs in individuals before the age of 65, and late-onset AD (LOAD) occurs in individuals age 65 and older. Past studies have proven that AD is fatal among Americans age 65 and older. The disease is characterized by impairments in memory and executive function as well as other cognitive and behavioral problems. The research questions addressed by this sequential, mixed-method study compared EOAD and LOAD by exploring common behavioral/cognitive symptoms and stage levels of AD. Research participants were recruited from the Alzheimer's Association who were members …

Toward Engagement In Climate Training: Findings From Interviews With Agricultural Extension Professionals, David C. Diehl, Nicole L. Sloan, Sebastian Galindo-Gonzalez, Wendy-Lin Bartels, Daniel R. Dourte, Carrie Furman, Clyde W. Fraisse

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

With scientific consensus regarding the occurrence of climate variability and climate change it is clear that farmers can benefit from science-based adaptation strategies for managing climate-related risk. To this end, cooperative extension professionals must engage in climate training events that are carefully planned and tailored to their specific needs. This study consisted of 50 interviews with extension professionals from four states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina) and collected information about the perceptions of climate variability and change as well as the preferred approaches for climate-related training in extension. Results include the need for accessible, climate-related training that prepares extension …

The Impact Of The Farmers' Market Nutrition Program On Participating Florida Farmers: A Research Note, Nicole Owens, Amy Donley

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) is a federally funded program designed to increase fresh fruit and vegetable consumption among WIC participants. Research to date has examined the effectiveness of this program in reaching that goal. The current study measures the impact this program is having on some farmers that participate in the program. Farmers are an overlooked group that not only must agree to participate for programs like this to be successful but also are often living below the poverty line as are their customers. Using survey data collected by the Florida Department of …

Rapamycin Rescues Vascular, Metabolic And Learning Deficits In Apolipoprotein E4 Transgenic Mice With Pre-Symptomatic Alzheimer’S Disease, Ai-Ling Lin, Jordan B. Jahrling, Wei Zhang, Nicholas Derosa, Vikas Bakshi, Peter Romero, Veronica Galvan, Arlan Richardson

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Apolipoprotein E ɛ4 allele is a common susceptibility gene for late-onset Alzheimer's disease. Brain vascular and metabolic deficits can occur in cognitively normal apolipoprotein E ɛ4 carriers decades before the onset of Alzheimer's disease. The goal of this study was to determine whether early intervention using rapamycin could restore neurovascular and neurometabolic functions, and thus impede pathological progression of Alzheimer's disease-like symptoms in pre-symptomatic Apolipoprotein E ɛ4 transgenic mice. Using in vivo, multimodal neuroimaging, we found that apolipoprotein E ɛ4 mice treated with rapamycin had restored cerebral blood flow, blood–brain barrier integrity and glucose metabolism, compared …

How Can We Build A Moral Robot?, Kristen E. Clark

Capstones

Artificial intelligence is already starting to drive our cars and make choices that affect the world economy. One day soon, we’ll have robots that can take care of our sick and elderly, and even rescue us in rescue us in emergencies. But as robots start to make decisions that matter—it’s raising questions that go far beyond engineering. We’re stating to think about ethics.

Bertram Malle and Matthias Scheutz are part of a team funded by the department of defense. It's their job to answer a question that seems straight out of a sci-fi novel: How can we build a moral …

The Role Of The State, Multinational Oil Companies, International Law & The International Community: Intersection Of Human Rights & Environmental Degradation Climate Change In The 21st Century Caused By Traditional Extractive Practices, The Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous People And Universal Jurisdiction To Resolve The Accountability Issue, Marcela Cabrera Luna

Master's Theses

Local, national and international conventions that protect indigenous sovereignty and their territories, where many of the resources are extracted from by multinational corporations (MNCs) particularly oil, the number one commodity of the world and cause of climate change, continue to be jeopardized because of the lack of a clear international legal framework that can protect them and potentially hold multinationals accountable for their actions. These practices are causing not only environmental issues to the indigenous and surrounding communities, but climate change is in fact, the real human rights issue of the 21^st century and it affects everyone. By using …

"Pitiful Creature Of Darkness": The Subhuman And The Superhuman In The Phantom Of The Opera, Jessica Sternfeld

Music Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter focuses on The Phantom of the Opera, the megamusical that perhaps most boldly faces the idea of disability head-on, as it stars a character whose face, as one journalist described it, looks 'like melted cheese' (Smith, 1995). The musical's approach to the Phantom's disability is remarkably layered and inconsistent; the Phantom is portrayed in numerous ways (monster, criminal, genius, god, ghost) and his physical disability blurs regularly with his 'soul;' which is where numerous characters locate the origin of his problems. His face and its famous mask covering are both feared and thrilled over, but with a reassuring …

Generosity Creates Its Own Ripple Effect, Traci Evison

UCF Forum

Sometimes we see an inspirational snippet of film on YouTube, hear an NPR broadcast or listen to a Ted Talk that materializes into action at what seems to be a random point in the future.

What "Context" Can Justify Walter Rodney's Assassination?, Rohit Kanhai

Groundings

Like water crashing over the seawalls, there has been a rush of explanations, based on “context” to justify the shifting political sands, as it swirls with the waves. The “sands of time” seems to have shifted the “line in the sand” so much so, that all commonsense seems to have deserted the land of Guyana. In the midst of this debate are Walter Rodney and the Working People’s Alliance (WPA). The debaters are WPA members and supporters. The debate itself would make such identities questionable. There are hints of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 in terms of the rewriting …

Beyond The Mato Oput Tradition: Embedded Contestations In Transitional Justice For Post-Massacre Pajong, Northern Uganda, David-Ngendo Tshimba

Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies

Human beings to a great extent are what community stories narrate about them. This paper is informed by an ethnological field research carried in one of the remotest villages of Mucwini Sub-county in Kitgum district, northern Uganda, scrutinizes people’s stories as they echo concerns about justice from different perspectives of victimhood in the aftermath of a Lord’s Resistance Army-commanded massacre which claimed the lives of 56 people in a night, the majority of whom (21) were from the Pajong clan. After a decade, all direct violent confrontations have no doubt ceased, however, the search for peace still is utterly skewed …

Print Is Dead: The Promise And Peril Of Online Media For Subcultural Resistance, Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl

Sociology Faculty Publications

Researchers have maintained a consistent interest in subcultural resistance: marginalized groups challenging their subordinate positions in society through words or deeds. Resisting groups increasingly use online media for resistance, but we know little about the web’s consequences for subcultural challengers. In this article, I explore the promise and peril of digital media for resistance relative to traditional, printed media, from an ethnographic exploration of punk subculture. Rather than finding support for either supporters or critics of online resistance, I find evidence for an alternative, dialectical perspective in which the Internet simultaneously invigorates and problematizes punk resistance. It provides the oppositional …

The Painted Motifs Of Cypriot Ceramic Art: A Study Of Iconography & Identity, Paige Bockman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The aim of this master’s thesis is to explore the iconography of Chalcolithic (c. 3900-2300 cal. BC) Cyprus using ceramic motifs and identify their potential use in revealing differences between the cultural identity present at archaeological sites, as well as the possible causes of such variation. By exploring the existence and origins of subtle differences between the iconographic repertoires of related sites, the study seeks a better understanding of the movement of both ideas and symbols, and how the meaning of symbols developed within the context of a site.

Currently, Cypriot Chalcolithic sites are believed to be largely homogeneous in …

Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture To Culture Industry, Christopher T. Conner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Utilizing a mixed qualitative research methods design, including interviews, ethnographic field work, and analyzing historical documents, I examine the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) subculture, since its inception in the late 80s as a deviant subculture. Previous studies of raves and other music subcultures focus almost exclusively on the role of popularity in transforming the subculture. In this research, I found, in the case of EDM at least, a more complicated process in which structural factors such as mass media, public officials (politicians and law enforcement), and major music corporations played a prominent role in the transformation. Media coverage focused on …

Without Mandate For Conquest: A Transnational Comparison Of Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon And Isabel Allende's Eva Luna, Vivianna Noelle Orsini

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In our current age of globalization, multiculturalism is a key component of human relations. Place, when thought of as a geographic concept is more than just coordinates on a map, it is a concentration of a set of social relations. Geographers use this information to see how places are relational to other places. Morrison and Allende are relational because of their consciousness of place especially exhibited in Song of Solomon and Eva Luna. This project examines the disparate histories, politics, and landscapes that both authors emerged from, and argue the complexity of their work stems from thinking geographically, their conscious …

On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What are the economic, social and political effects when previously isolated villages are opened to the outside world? Scholars from different traditions expect different sorts of positive or negative affects to occur. Rural China presents an ideal environment to study this question empirically. Villages within rural China are in the process of being opened to the outside world in different forms, such as through being connected by road, the investment of agribusiness, or urbanization. Moreover this opening is being driven and shaped by different actors, including local residents, government and businesses. The different ways and actors that this opening occurs …

Paddling A Trail, Erin Jennings Gilleece

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Paddling A Trail documents construction of the first water trail in Arkansas. The 15 minute film is narrated by Arkansas Canoe Club Conservation Chair Debbie Doss. It follows Doss, and other volunteers as they mark the Wattensaw Bayou Trail in Hazen, Arkansas. The film is co-narrated by Kristen Bartlow of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The footage was shot over three days, in two different locations. These were the White River in Northwest Arkansas and Wattensaw Bayou in Hazen, AR. The film illustrates the positive role trails can have on the environment and local economies. More importantly, the film …

Groundings Volume Two, Issue Two

Groundings

This is the full issue of Groundings Vol. 2, Iss. 2. It includes a wrap of both the 12th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium and the 3rd Annual Walter Rodney Speakers Series; a piece by Jesus Chucho Garcia that honors the late Norman Girvan; the official Save the Date for the 13th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium; information on the republication of The Groundings with My Brothers; a photo-narrative by Julian Plowden on the student protests at the Atlanta CNN Center; we then have 3 pieces surrounding the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry by Wazir Mohamed, Anne Braithwaite, and Rohit Kanhai, …

The Mechanisms Of Moral Disengagement In George W. Bush’S “War On Terror” Rhetoric, Stefan Cartledge, Lorraine Bowman-Grieve, Marek Palasinski

The Qualitative Report

Despite considerable literature on the Bush administration’s war on terrorism rhetoric, little attention has been paid to its discourse of moral disengagement, leaving an important and still relevant gap that this paper aims to address. Rather than approaching this gap in terms of an archival historical analysis that is disconnected from the present, it proposes an exploratory revisit of the rhetoric that the benefits of hindsight might enrich and, we argue, aid in understanding connections to the current post-invasion turmoil and the gradual ISIS takeover. Having subjected nineteen presidential speeches to qualitative content analysis, we identified a number of moral …

Personal Responsibility For Systemic Inequality, Martha T. Mccluskey

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 15 in Research Handbook on Political Economy and Law, Ugo Mattei & John D. Haskell, eds.

Equality has faded as a guiding ideal for legal theory and policy. An updated message of personal responsibility has helped rationalize economic policies fostering increased inequality and insecurity. In this revised message, economic “losers” should take personal responsibility not only for the harmful effects of their individual economic decisions, but also for the harmful effects of systemic failures beyond their individual control or action. In response to the 2008 financial crisis, this re-tooled message of personal responsibility promoted mass austerity in …

American Culture’S Impact On Gender And The Perpetuation Of A Gender Binary, Anna Blaho

University Honors Program

This thesis explores the origins of American culture’s fixation on gender being a dichotomous concept. Through the analysis of previous research surrounding the subject of gender roles, expectations, and stereotypes, contributors to this restrictive mind frame as well as reinforcing agents were recognized. Historical trends have demonstrated the assignment of clear and separate tasks to the genders, which in turn created differentiated experiences and opportunities presented to each gender. Facilitated by the historical basis, American culture emulated similar patterns that instilled inflexible conceptions about gender to the point where it has created a discriminate workplace environment. As a consequence of …

Communication And Volunteerism: The Potential Impact Of Role Models, Maggie Briggs, Kristen Cvancara

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

Volunteers are an important subset of society who provide many services to people and organizations in need. Based on Social Learning Theory, a preliminary study was designed to investigate the role communication may play in fostering positive attitudes and behaviors in college students regarding volunteerism. Surveys completed by 321 college students were collected and the relationship between instances of communication with role models (e.g., parents, peers, religious leaders, siblings, coworkers, extended family) and participant attitudes toward and rates of volunteering were examined. Results indicated the more conversations shared between role models and participants the more likely it was that participants …

Space – The Final Frontier, Sandy Fitzgerald

The ITB Journal

This paper ranges over a number of questions to do with the seemingly general sense of anxiety and discontent about life at this time, a time when we should be enjoying the embarrassment of riches heaped upon us in the West. Certainly, here in Ireland, we have experienced unprecedented wealth over the past ten years and yet you would be hard pressed to find a positive voice. Why is this? And how are we to turn this state of affairs around? My own work, over a thirty-year period, has engaged with the social, cultural and arts world and so these …

Art Education In My Backyard: Creative Placemaking On An Urban Farm, Jodi Kushins

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

An art educator describes how she used her knowledge and experience of artistic and educational initiatives that forefront collective activity in real world settings to transform her backyard into an urban farm with the help of friends and neighbors. She combines an autoethnographic account of her experiences, including original photographs, with research on conceptual artists, participatory culture, and creative placemaking to position her work as participatory environmental art education. The paper is organized around the major steps one undertakes in planting a garden – siting, amending, seeding, tending, and harvesting - to draw parallels between the processes of maintaining a …

Fitting In: A Study Of Lesbian Mothers In Rural Southeastern Michigan, Allison Amadea Ranusch

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Lesbian parents residing in rural and small communities have received little scholarly attention. The primary focus of the existing research has highlighted the isolation experienced by lesbian parents within such locations, but little examination has been made of other issues or their coping mechanisms. This study was designed to address these deficits in knowledge and understanding through a series of eleven in-depth, qualitative interviews. Several stigma management strategies were discovered. For example, it was reported that engaging in farming and trade helped lesbian mothers "fit in" enough to gain some level of acceptance from their immediate neighbors. Stigma was also …

Early Shifts Of Brain Metabolism By Caloric Restriction Preserve White Matter Integrity And Long-Term Memory In Aging Mice, Janet Guo, Vikas Bakshi, Ai-Ling Lin

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Preservation of brain integrity with age is highly associated with lifespan determination. Caloric restriction (CR) has been shown to increase longevity and healthspan in various species; however, its effects on preserving living brain functions in aging remain largely unexplored. In the study, we used multimodal, non-invasive neuroimaging (PET/MRI/MRS) to determine in vivo brain glucose metabolism, energy metabolites, and white matter structural integrity in young and old mice fed with either control or 40% CR diet. In addition, we determined the animals’ memory and learning ability with behavioral assessments. Blood glucose, blood ketone bodies, and body weight were also measured. We …

Mice Deficient In Endothelial Α5 Integrin Are Profoundly Resistant To Experimental Ischemic Stroke, Jill Roberts, Leon De Hoog, Gregory J. Bix

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Stroke is a disease in dire need of better therapies. We have previously shown that a fragment of the extracellular matrix proteoglycan, perlecan, has beneficial effects following cerebral ischemia via the α5β1 integrin receptor. We now report that endothelial cell selective α5 integrin deficient mice (α5 KO) are profoundly resistant to ischemic infarct after transient middle cerebral artery occlusion. Specifically, α5 KOs had little to no infarct 2–3 days post-stroke, whereas controls had an increase in mean infarct volume over the same time period as expected. Functional outcome is also improved in the α5 KOs compared with controls. Importantly, no …