Digital Commons Network^™

Human Rights And Arctic Resources, Rebecca Bratspies

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Course Catalog 2009-2010, Laguardia Community College

Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Biotechnology, Sustainability And Trust, Rebecca Bratspies

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Manhattan Beach Cleaners: A Teacher’S Misreading, Cheryl Hogue Smith

Publications and Research

This article explores the value of understanding student misreadings.

Transnational Chowtal: Bhojpuri Folksong From North India To The Caribbean, Fiji, And Beyond, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

In mid-February of 2007, I attended some lively sessions of chowtal (Hindi, cautāl), a boisterous Bhojpuri folk song genre, in a Hindu temple in a small town a few hours from Banaras (Varanasi), North India. The following weekend I was singing chowtal, in an identical style, with an Indo-Guyanese ensemble in Queens, New York City. In the subsequent season of the vernal Holi (Hindi, holī) festival, in March 2008, I found myself singing along with a group of Indo-Fijians in Sacramento, California, as they performed a similar version of one of the same chowtal songs. Despite the nearly identical styles …

Cuba: From Contradanza To Danzon, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

If in the last century Cuban music has been known primarily for the mambo, the chachacha and the son that generated salsa, in the nineteenth century by far the most predominant and distinctively national music was the contradanza, in the diverse forms it took over the course of its extended heyday. The contradanza (or "danza," as it was later called) was also the era's most seminal genre, parenting the habanera that graced European opera and music theater, the elegant figures of the tumba francesa's mason dance, and, albeit ultimately, the mambo and the chachacha themselves, which evolved from the danza's …

Making Up The Difference: Ecuadorian Women Engaged In Direct Selling, Erynn Masi Casanova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As economic globalization progresses, employment is becoming more flexible and informalized in many parts of the world. In some developing countries, direct sales (selling branded products from person to person) is an increasingly attractive type of work, especially for women. Direct sales organizations benefit from cultural norms and structural forces that steer women away from full-time jobs in the formal economy, and also from the material conditions that lead to women's need to earn an income. This study examines the work experiences and social worlds of women affiliated with Ecuador's most successful direct sales company, Yanbal, with a focus on …

Volunteers: Beyond Government Partners, Maria J. D'Agostino

Publications and Research

Over the past several years, practitioners and academics have expressed concern about the deteriorating morale and effectiveness of the federal civil service, given its aging workforce and the competition with the private sector for human capital. Recruiting qualified public servants is complicated by the negative perception of government. Attacks by politicians of all sides have contributed to a negative stereotype of the American civil service. Therefore, finding new ways to recruit and retain the best-qualified young graduates has become critical. This paper reports on an untapped resource – volunteers, explores the youth volunteer activity that occurs in the federal government, …

From Contradanza To Son: New Perspectives On The Prehistory Of Cuban Popular Music, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

While it is often claimed that the Cuban son emerged from rural Oriente and “invaded” Havana in the early 20th century, serious Cuban musicologists have clarifi ed that the true consolidation of the genre took place in Havana after around 1910–1920. Examination of 19th-century sources can help us trace with greater specifi city the origins of the particular musical features that distinguished the traditional son. Editions and descriptions of 1850s–1860s Havana contradanzas illuminate much about urban popular dance music of that milieu. In par-ticular, they reveal the presence of features typically associated with the son, such as melodies in duet …

Navigating The Gaze: Young People's Intimate Knowledge With Surveilled Spaces At School, Patricia Krueger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 1980s introduced numerous state and federal policies that created a similar ideology of discipline and punishment in the educational system and the criminal justice system, a phenomenon known today as the school-to-prison pipeline. Several critical elements are involved in the production and maintenance of the school-to-prison pipeline, such as zero tolerance regulations, surveillance technologies, and strengthened in-school discipline practices. In this dissertation I argue that these elements of the pipeline maintain a strong presence and occupy the physical spaces of public schools. Moreover, surveillance cameras and police officers are most often installed in the cities' most under-resourced public schools, …

Beyond Observation: Literature And Science In Kafka, Rilke, Mann And Musil, Katya Ilina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The relationship between science and literature is an expanding area of scholarly interest which remains underrepresented within the field of Germanistik. This dissertation will attempt to close the gap by focusing on the interactions between the selected works of Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, and Robert Musil, and the scientific outlooks which began to emerge in the nineteenth century primarily by focusing on the concept of observation. Observation is a concept important for the period of my investigation because it signified a major shift in consciousness. The prior facile division into impartial experimenter and observed phenomenon, so characteristic …

Anger Et Cetera: Understanding The Emotions In Ethics, Damien Dupont

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues in part that because the ethical theory of sentimentalism is based on the mistaken belief that emotions are non-cognitive, sentimentalism cannot account for the fact of the influence of cognition in morality and moral action. Therefore sentimentalism is of little use in ethics.

This work is done by going back to examine Western thinking on the emotions from its dawn in Homer's writing through to contemporary philosophy and neurophysiology on the emotions. Following the development of the way emotions were thought of and how they related to ethics allows the identification of an intellectual forked path brought …

Memorial Laws: Social And Media Construction Of Personalized Legislation, 1994-2005, Faith H. Leibman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the possibility that certain social, demographic, and political factors have led to the recent adoption by American state legislatures of what are known as Memorial Laws. First enacted in 1994, these laws have become increasingly common. However, there has been little or no formal academic research into them. This investigation aims to provide a preliminary analysis of Memorial Laws and to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics affecting their passage. Specifically, this study examines a variety of demographic traits of victims and the characteristics of the crimes committed against them in an attempt to determine …

Marine Mammals Laboratory Manual, Aldemaro Romero Jr., Kristen Irwin

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Teaching A Foreign Language With Video Podcast Assignments: Examples From An American Sign Language Course, Shiao-Chuan Kung, Elaine Gale

Publications and Research

This article describes how one American Sign Language (ASL) class employed video podcasting (vodcasting) assignments to improve students’ receptive and expressive skills. Vodcasts are downloadable video files distributed through the Internet on a subscription basis. The procedures used can be applied to other learning, including foreign languages, to achieve similar outcomes.

The Fourth Level Of Social Structure In A Multi-Level Society: Ecological & Social Functions Of Clans In Hamadryas Baboons, Amy Schreier, Larissa Swedell

Publications and Research

Hamadryas baboons are known for their complex, multi-level social structure consisting of troops, bands, and one-male units (OMUs) [Kummer, 1968]. Abegglen [1984] observed a 4^th level of social structure comprising several OMUs that rested near one another on sleeping cliffs, traveled most closely together during daily foraging, and sometimes traveled as subgroups independently from the rest of the band. Abegglen called these associations “clans” and suggested that they consisted of related males. Here we confirm the existence of clans in a second wild hamadryas population, a band of about 200 baboons at the Filoha site in lowland Ethiopia. During …

Dystopian Surface, Utopian Dream: Wittman Ah Sing Foresees Postethnic Humanity, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

"Dystopian Surface, Utopian Dream" examines the postethnic and the posthuman in fiction by Maxine Hong Kingston, Octavia Butler, and Isaac Asimov.

Contradance And Quadrille Culture In The Caribbean, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Alexander In The Himalayas: Competing Imperial Legacies In Medieval Islamic History And Literature, Anna Akasoy

Publications and Research

In 1888, Rudyard Kipling published a collection of stories in a volume with the title The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales. The collection includes the short story The Man Who Would be King, in which Kipling's alter ego, a British journalist in India, makes the acquaintance of a pair of adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, who demand his help as a fellow Mason. The two shady characters have set out to take advantage of divisions among the natives and are determined to install themselves as kings in Kafiristan, a remote region inhabited by pagans in the north of the …

Biocaster: Detecting Public Health Rumors With A Web-Based Text Mining System, Nigel Collier, Son Doan, Ai Kawazoe, Reiko Matsuda Goodwin, Mike Conway, Yoshio Tateno, Quoc-Hung Ngo, Dinh Dien, Asanee Kawtrakul, Koichi Takeuchi, Mika Shigematsu, Kiyosu Taniguchi

Publications and Research

Summary: BioCaster is an ontology-based text mining system for detecting and tracking the distribution of infectious disease outbreaks from linguistic signals on the Web. The system continuously analyzes documents reported from over 1700 RSS feeds, classifies them for topical relevance and plots them onto a Google map using geocoded information. The background knowledge for bridging the gap between Layman's terms and formal-coding systems is contained in the freely available BioCaster ontology which includes information in eight languages focused on the epidemiological role of pathogens as well as geographical locations with their latitudes/longitudes. The system consists of four main stages: topic …

The Communicator, December 10, 2008, Bronx Community College

The Communicator

The Communicator newspaper published on December 8, 2010.

Neural Substrates Of Sound–Touch Synesthesia After A Thalamic Lesion, Michael S. Beauchamp, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Neural plasticity induced by stroke can mediate positive outcomes, such as recovery of function, but can also result in the formation of abnormal connections with negative consequences for perception and cognition. In three experiments using blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined the neural substrates of acquired auditory-tactile synesthesia, in which certain sounds can produce an intense somatosensory tingling sensation in a patient with a thalamic lesion. Compared with nine normal controls, the first experiment showed that the patient had a threefold greater BOLD response to sounds in the parietal operculum, the location of secondary somatosensory cortex. …

Curriculum Committee Minutes December 2, 2008, Bronx Community College Curriculum Committee

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the Curriculum Committee on December 2, 2008.

Meta-Analysis: Prophylactic Drainage And Bleeding Complications In Thyroid Surgery, Steven A. Kennedy, Robert A. Irvine, Brian D. Westerberg, Hongbin Zhang

Publications and Research

Objective: To conduct a comprehensive systematic review and high-quality meta-analysis to determine whether prophylactic drain placement reduces adverse bleeding events in thyroid surgery.

Data Sources: MEDLINE (OVID and PubMed), CENTRAL, CDSR, ACP Journal Club, DARE, EMBASE, PREMEDUNE, OLDMEDLINE, CINAHL, BIOSIS Previews, LILACS, KOREAMED, SAMED, IndMED, SIGLE, ScienceDirect, and INGENTACONNECT.

Review Methods: Studies for evaluation included all prospective trials assessing the use of drainage in thyroid surgery. We excluded case studies, retrospective studies, reviews, and studies that had a "selective" method of postoperative drainage that was not defined or was based on surgeon preference. Search strategies were broad and …

College Senate Minutes November 6, 2008, Bronx Community College Senate

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the College Senate on November 6, 2008.

Advocate, November 2008, Vol. [20], No. [3], Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

From the Editor's Desk: The Road Ahead (p. 2)

Political Analysis: The Other November Election, Michael Busch (p. 3)

CUNY News in Brief (p. 3)

Adjuncting: Adjunct Project Wants You to Have More Money!, Renee McGarry and Jesse Goldstein (p. 5)

Grad Life: The Long View from the Ivory Tower, Alison Powell (p. 6)

What’s So Democratic about American Democracy?, Advocate Staff (p. 7)

Forgetting Iraq and the Discourse of Responsibility, Steven Pludwin (p. 9)

What’s Happening to America?, Chalmers Johnson, Bill Ayers, and Amiri Baraka (p. 11)

Book Review: Democracy’s Demons: Inside the Mind of the …

The Alien As Other: Spiritual, Political, And Cultural Representations Of The Alien In Late 20 Th Century Cinema, Benjamin Franz

Publications and Research

Storytellers frame their morals and fables of us through the lens of the 'Others'. When the popular form of storytelling evolved into film, the Other naturally became that which was most fascinating and curious, the Intergalactic Entity, or Alien.

In the film Contact(1997), Dr. Ellie Arroway struggles with a disbelief in things greater than herself, and the desire to see what is out there in the cosmos. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), strangers are brought together by the vision of harmony set forth by cosmic visitors. The theme of belief in something greater than oneself echoes …

The Communicator, October 21, 2008, Bronx Community College

The Communicator

The Communicator newspaper published on October 21, 2008.

Experiencing Visuo-Motor Plasticity By Prism Adaptation In A Classroom Setting, Andrea Li

Publications and Research

Neural plasticity is a key topic in the study of behavioral neuroscience, yet it can be a difficult concept to demonstrate in a classroom setting. In this report, we describe an interactive technique that can be used to demonstrate and quantify in a laboratory setting the plasticity of motor coordination to altered visual input, i.e. visuo-motor plasticity. Visual input can be easily altered by horizontally-displacing prism goggles. Open-loop motor coordination immediately after putting on these goggles is inaccurate. However, after performing a number of visuo-motor tasks wearing these goggles, coordination adapts and improves. Immediately after removing the goggles, a robust …

Blood Collection From The American Horseshoe Crab, Limulus Polyphemus, Peter Armstrong, Mara Conrad

Publications and Research

The horseshoe crab has the best-characterized immune system of any long-lived invertebrate. The study of immunity in horseshoe crabs has been facilitated by the ease in collecting large volumes of blood and from the simplicity of the blood. Horseshoe crabs show only a single cell type in the general circulation, the granular amebocyte. The plasma has the salt content of sea water and only three abundant proteins, hemocyanin, the respiratory protein, the C-reactive proteins, which function in the cytolytic destruction of foreign cells, including bacterial cells, and α2-macroglobulin, which inhibits the proteases of invading pathogens. Blood is collected by direct …