Digital Commons Network^™

Generating Multi-Sensor Precipitation Estimates Over Radar Gap Areas, Shayesteh E. Mahani, Reza Khanbilvardi

Publications and Research

Generating a multi-sensor precipitation product over radar gap area is the objective of the present study. A merging approach is developed to improve Satellite-based Precipitation Estimates (SPE) by merging with ground-based Radar Rainfall (RR) estimates because remote satellites are the only source that can collect information from areas where are inaccessible by ground-based radar and/or rain gauge networks. The merging algorithm is capable of extending radar information from pixels with available RR to their neighboring pixels with no radar information by merging RR with SPE, which is, usually, available for all pixels. SPE is combined with RR using the weighting-based …

Methodology Appendix: On The Craft Of Sociology In The Digital Era, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

An appendix to the book that explores the methodology of studying the Internet.

Writing Center Annual Report For 2008-2009, John Jay College Writing Center

Reports and Publications from John Jay College

A report on the activities of the John Jay College Writing Center

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 …

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 …

Métodos Qualitativos E Quantitativos Na Pesquisa Sobre Stress Ocupacional, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Edwin Farrell

Publications and Research

O presente artigo examina as formas pelas quais os métodos qualitativos e quantitativos se apóiam mutuamente na pesquisa sobre o stress ocupacional. Os métodos qualitativos incluem (a) obtenção de informações a partir de descrições livres de vivências no trabalho, (b) observações diretas, cuidadosas no local de trabalho e (c) observadores participantes que descrevem uma determinada experiência de trabalho a partir do local onde ela ocorre. Mostra, também, como a pesquisa qualitativa estimula o desenvolvimento de teorias, a geração de hipóteses e a identificação de estressores no trabalho e de respostas de coping. As limitações da pesquisa qualitativa, especialmente na área …

Essays On The Impacts Of The Great Moderation On Business Cycle Modeling, Andre R. Neveu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The research presented here is a comprehensive analysis of research on the "Great Moderation" and its impact on business cycle modeling. In the presence of a less volatile aggregate economy, the methods of modeling business cycles have fundamentally changed along with the ability to detect turning points in the business cycle using standard algorithms. Chapter One lays out the historical case for modeling the business cycle in a manner placing importance on the ability of a model to replicate features observed in actual GDP data, such as the depth and length of recessions, or the average height of expansions. Chapter …

Weaving Color Lines: Race, Ethnicity, And The Work Of Leadership In Social Change Organizations, Sonia Ospina, Celina Su

Publications and Research

For social change organizations working to address intractable social problems throughout the USA, tackling race may not only be unavoidable; it may represent a way to fully engage stakeholders in social change work. We argue that illuminating the relationship between race and leadership can advance our under- standing of how social change leadership happens in practice. We build upon scholarship that emphasizes the ways in which seemingly essentialist, intractable racial categories are actually mutable, and the simultaneous emergence of academic research calling attention to the constructed and collective dimensions of leadership. Using a constructionist lens to analyze narratives from 22 …

Experience And Consciousness: Enhancing The Notion Of Musical Understanding, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Abstract:

Disagreeing with Jerrold Levinson’s claim that being conscious of broad span musical form is not essential to understanding music, I will argue that our awareness of musical architecture is significant to achieve comprehension. I will show that the experiential model is not incompatible with the analytic model. My main goal is to show that these two models can be reconciled through the identification of a broader notion of understanding. After accomplishing this reconciliation by means of my new conception, I will close the paper by discussing some reasons to accept an enhancing notion of musical understanding that includes levels …

Trust In The Balance: Asymmetric Information, Commitment Problems And Balancing Behavior, Zachary Shirkey, Ivan Savic

Publications and Research

Realists argue that balancing occurs in response to changes to the balance of power. Recent informational approaches have focused primarily on informational asymmetries or commitment problems. The paper combines these two approaches and builds on them by incorporating characteristics of the revisionist state and the potential balancer, as well as the specific challenge to the balance of power. The model confirms that informational asymmetries often lead to commitment problems and that they are a necessary condition for balancing. However, whether or not informational asymmetries create commitment problems depends on both the nature of the challenger’s move and the relative power …

Accessri, Sean Almonte, Mark Anders, Kenneth Comia, Matthew Coogan, Jeff Gerlach, Aileen Gorsuch, Michael Porto, Mary Rocco, James Shaw, Michael Wallin, Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Publications and Research

AccessRI, a studio team comprised of ten graduate students in the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, was commissioned by New York State Senator José M. Serrano to identify and provide strategies to address residents’ concerns regarding the quality of life on Roosevelt Island. Roosevelt Island, located between Manhattan and Queens in the East River, is an exceptional place within the varied fabric of New York City. The island provides its residents with an existence apart from the typical hassles associated with urban life, yet its proximity to the rest of the city allows residents to partake …

Specifying Reusable Aspects, Neelam Soundarajan, Raffi Khatchadourian

Publications and Research

Aspect-Oriented Programming enables developers to manage, in a more modular fashion, implementations of crosscutting concerns that might be scattered or tangled if aspect-oriented techniques were not utilized. Our interest in this paper is in considering techniques for specifying precise properties of aspects. In particular, we are interested in specifying reusable aspects; i.e., aspects that correspond to crosscutting concerns that occur in many systems. These abstract aspects can be reused in various systems where a particular concern is applicable. Although there has been work on issues related to reasoning about aspects and the behaviors of aspect-oriented systems, specifying reusable abstract aspects …

Undergraduate Bulletin 2009-2010, John Jay College Of Criminal Justice

College Bulletins

No abstract provided.

Total Spanish: The Politics Of A Pan-Hispanic Grammar, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This article presents an analysis of the 2010 grammar of Spanish jointly published by Spain´s language academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language. It places this grammatical project in the context of Spain´s geopolitical interests in Latin America.

Manufacturing Kleptomania: The Social And Scientific Underpinnings Of A Pathology, Daisy V. Domínguez

Publications and Research

This paper aims to show the ways in which the kleptomania diagnosis expressed displaced societal fears and led to the ostracism and exculpation of groups based on an interesting mix of gender and class biases.

The Orchard Crossing Number Of An Abstract Graph, Elie Feder, David Garber

Publications and Research

.We introduce the Orchard crossing number, which is defined in a similar way to the well-known rectilinear crossing number. We compute the Orchard crossing number for some simple families of graphs. We also prove some properties of this crossing number.

Moreover, we define a variant of this crossing number which is tightly connected to the rectilinear crossing number, and compute it for some simple families of graphs.

Hostos Community College Academic Bulletin 2009-2010, Hostos Community College

College Bulletins

This is the official college catalog for 2009-2010. It contains course descriptions as well as information on degree programs, college resources and services, financial aid, admissions, and the academic calendar.

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 …

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 …

Chowtal Rang Bahar: A Treasury Of Chowtal Songs From India And The Caribbean, Ramnarine Sasenarine, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

It Takes Two: The Interplay Of Individual And Group Theology On Social Embeddedness, Christopher P. Scheitle, Amy Adamczyk

Publications and Research

Prior research argues that religious homophily in social networks is a product of overlapping interests and activities unintentionally leading to relationships or the intentional seeking of relationships with people of similar religious beliefs. This article advances research on religious homophily by including the role that exclusive theological beliefs play in explaining religious homophily among friends. We lay out three propositions for individual-, congregational-, and cross-level effects on the relationship between exclusive theology and embeddedness within one's congregation. Using multilevel models and data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey (USCLS), we find support for our three propositions. We discuss our findings …

Using Blackboard To Create Library Research Skills Assessment, Maura A. Smale, Mariana Regalado

Publications and Research

Like other college and university departments, academic libraries are increasingly expected to assess their services and facilities. This article describes an initial step in the development of a comprehensive assessment program for library instruction in the Brooklyn College Library. A pre- and post-quiz were developed based on the curriculum for a required library session in an introductory English composition course. The quizzes were designed to establish a baseline for student knowledge of information literacy as well as measure the effect of library instruction on student learning. We also sought to evaluate the suitability of the Blackboard learning management system for …

Breach Of Trust: Customary/Commercial Documents And Practices Of Private Law In An Egyptian Port, Christine Hegel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an ethnography of private law in contemporary Port Said, Egypt. Based on extensive fieldwork in 2005 and 2007, it considers how Port Saidians come to possess economic and social entitlements vis-à-vis one another and how concomitant obligations get construed and actualized. As an analysis of quotidian practices of private law and surety, this dissertation is intended to contribute to broader scholarly debates about legal subjectivity and legal consciousness, and to reconsider the intersections between law, custom and morality.

The analysis of contemporary transactional and surety practices is rooted in a discussion of both Egyptian legal reform and …

Structural Studies Of Biopolymers Using Computer Simulations, Optical And Magnetic Spectroscopy, Subhasish Chatterjee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Biopolymers are essential components of numerous natural and synthetic macromolecular assemblies. In the present study, the structural properties of biopolymers ranging from fungal melanins to synthetic nucleic acids were investigated using spectroscopic methods and theoretical modeling. (1) Computational modeling and molecular dynamics simulations were used to study the structural properties of a short single-stranded (ss) DNA. The dependence of the conformational stability and flexibility of the ssDNA on the thermodynamic conditions of the system was demonstrated. (2) Time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy involving an organic donor-quencher pair was utilized to study the conformational properties of Y-shaped DNA. Results highlighted the different distances …

Computer-Aided Reasoning About Knowledge And Justifications, Natalia Novak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first Chapter we compare two well-known type-based computer frameworks for computer aided logical reasoning and verification: MetaPRL and Coq. In particular, we implement in MetaPRL the Calculus of Inductive Constructions which is the theoretical base for Coq. This work has shown the common points of MetaPRL and Coq, and revealed their principal methodological differences. A possible application of this work is a possibility to perform re-validation in MetaPRL of the existing library of Coq proofs which could help to build more trust in the latter.

Chapter 2 is the main contribution of the dissertation. It contains the description …

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 …

"Reconnecting To Resilience" A Historical Study Of Slave Narratives With Implications For Social Work Practice With African American Youth From High Risk Environments, Barbara E. Milton Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The often times high risk environment of African American youth negatively impacts their psychological well being, their family relations and community connections. Many African American youth today are experiencing the vestiges of historical trauma that took root in America in the 17th Century when the first Africans came to America. As a result of generational transmission of historical trauma, many youths today are disproportionately underachieving in education, disproportionately poor, disproportionately monitored by police and incarcerated and disproportionately disrespected by the society at large. In order to reduce the disparity of contemporary problems effecting African American youth, social scientists need to …

Youth In Out-Of-Home Care: The Question Of Psychological Agency, Lauren M. Polvere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the critical perspectives of formerly institutionalized youth with psychiatric disabilities through the lens of psychological agency. Framed in sociohistorical perspective, a theoretical shift is suggested for understanding the development of youth with mental health placement histories. In contrast to clinical approaches, which focus on psychopathology of youth in placement, this study elucidates the agentic meaning making processes employed by youth as they negotiate various treatment contexts and engage in activism. Participants in the study are 12 youth between the ages of 16-23, who are involved in peer-run groups for young people with out-of-home treatment experience, and 4 …

Forsaken Generation: Stress, Social Suffering And Strategies Among Working-Class Pensioners In Post-Socialist Moldova, Romania, Gerard A. Weber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the lives of working-class pensioners in post-socialist, Galati, Romania. Its central thesis is that the transformation of Romania from socialism to capitalism beginning in 1989 has led to an "epidemic of stress" among retired, working-class people in the city. Marginalized by their age, class and location in the relatively economically underdeveloped region of Moldova, they have been among the hardest hit by the changes brought about with the introduction of neoliberal capitalism. Long familiar with life in a relatively stable economy, they have faced dramatic changes in this area since the revolution, including massive price instability and …