Digital Commons Network^™

Reproducing Nicaragua; A Feminist Reading Of Debates Over Motherhood And Abortion Under Sandinista Rule, 1983-1988, Rocio Rayo

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Art As Dissent In The Midst Of Mexico's Drug War, Ana Lorena Marron Nozari

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Responsibility To Protect; A Questionable Norm, Albana Hykaj

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Racial Gap In Income, Wealth And Asset Allocation Between Ethnic Groups In America, Herby Brutus

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Status Of Women Under Neoliberal Reform; A Test Of Two Theories, Donnett Lee

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Impact Of International Human Rights Pressures: The Dominican Republic And China, Limer Batista

Dissertations and Theses

Human rights abuses occur regularly around the world, affecting millions of people each year. In the post-World War II era, a human rights movement helped create regional and international human rights regimes. This thesis tries to assess the impact of international human rights pressure on state compliance with international human rights norms and conventions. In investigating the impact of human rights pressure on states, I hypothesize that certain conditions are helpful. The first condition is the absence of a strong public opinion and/or cultural sentiment against what the pressuring entities are trying to achieve. The second condition is dependency: dependent …

Methodological Advancements For Improving Performance And Generating Ensemble Ecological Niche Models, Robert Boria

Dissertations and Theses

This study employs spatial filtering of occurrence data with the aim of reducing overfitting to sampling bias in ecological niche models (ENMs). Sampling bias in geographic space leads to localities that may also be biased in environmental space. If so, the model can overfit to those biases. As a preliminary test addressing this issue, we used Maxent, bioclimatic variables, and occurrence localities of a broadly distributed Malagasy tenrec, Microgale cowani (Family Tenrecidae: Subfamily Oryzorictinae). We modeled the abiotically suitable area of this species using three distinct datasets: unfiltered, spatially filtered, and rarefied unfiltered localities. To quantify overfitting and model performance, …

Elephant In The Dark, Eli Samuel

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Assessing Satellite Image Data Fusion With Information Theory Metrics, James Cross

Dissertations and Theses

A common problem in remote sensing is estimating an image with high spatial and high spectral resolution given separate sources of measurements from satellite instruments, one having each of these desirable properties. This thesis presents a survey of seven families of algorithms which have been developed to provide this common pattern of satellite image data fusion. They are all tested on artificially degraded sets of satellite data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (“MODIS”) with known ideal results, and evaluated using the commonly accepted data fusion assessment metrics spectral angle mapper (“SAM”) and Erreur Relative Globale Adimensionelle de Synth`ese (“ERGAS”). …

Indicator Analysis For Unpacking Poverty In New York City, Jochen Albrecht, Mimi Abramovitz

Publications and Research

This article presents work that is part of a larger and ongoing research agenda exploring the persistence of health and social problems in some parts of New York City. To this end, the authors have developed a GIS framework that translates a highly diverse set of variables into neighborhood indicators that can help local residents as well as decision makers to understand the relationship between “place” and individual behavior. Using the example of two new indices, Community Loss and Neighborhood Risks, the readers will learn how data can be transformed to emphasize the communal nature of phenomena that is typically …

Analyzing The Influence Of Micro-Level Factors On Cctv Camera Effect., Eric L. Piza, Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy

Publications and Research

Objectives Despite the popularity of closed circuit television (CCTV), evidence of its crime prevention capabilities is inconclusive. Research has largely reported CCTV effect as ‘‘mixed’’ without explaining this variance. The current study contributes to the literature by testing the influence of several micro-level factors on changes in crime levels within CCTV areas of Newark, NJ.

Methods Viewsheds, denoting the line-of-sight of CCTV cameras, were units of analysis (N = 117). Location quotients, controlling for viewshed size and control-area crime incidence, measured changes in the levels of six crime categories, from the pre-installation period to the post-installation period. Ordinary least squares …

A Plague On Both Your Houses? Risks, Repeats, And Reconsiderations Of Urban Residential Burglary, William D. Moreto, Eric L. Piza, Joel M. Caplan

Publications and Research

Research has shown that mapping techniques are useful in forecasting future crime events. However, the majority of prospective mapping techniques has focused on the event-dependent influence of instigator incidents on subsequent incidents and does not explicitly incorporate the risk heterogeneity of the setting. The study here discussed is a modest attempt to address this issue by using a two-step process: first, using risk terrain modeling, we operationalized the “environmental backcloth,” (the risk heterogeneity of an area) to forecast locations of residential burglaries in the urban city of Newark, New Jersey. Second, using the near repeat calculator, we assessed the variability …

Spatial Risk Factors Of Felonious Battery To Police Officers, Joel M. Caplan, Philip L. Marotta, Eric L. Piza, Leslie W. Kennedy

Publications and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the spatial influence of features of the physical environment on the risk of aggression toward law enforcement.

Design/methodology/approach – The spatial analytic technique, risk terrain modeling was performed on felonious battery data provided by the Chicago Police Department.

Findings – Out of the 991 batteries against law enforcement officers (LEOs) in Chicago, 11 features of the physical environment were identified as presenting a statistically significant spatial risk of battery to LEOs. Calls for service within three blocks of foreclosures and/or within a dense area of problem buildings pose as much …

Brooklyn's Thirst, Long Island's Water: Consolidation, Local Control, And The Aquifir, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

The creation of greater New York City in 1898 promised a solution to the problem of supplying Brooklyn and Queens with water. In the 1850s, the City of Brooklyn tapped ponds and streams on the south side of Queens County, and in the 1880s, dug wells for additional supply. This lowered the water table and caused problems for farmers and oystermen, many of whom sued the city for damages. Ultimately, salt water seeped into some wells from over-pumping. By 1896, Brooklyn’s system had reached its limit. Prevented by the state legislature from tapping the aquifer beneath Suffolk’s Pine Barrens, the …

Theorizing More Inclusive Cities: A Relational Model Of Boundary Transformation And Urban Research Agenda, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

To generate more inclusive environments for marginalized urban communities of color demands a strategy that privileges symbolic boundary change and uses it as the inroad towards spatial changes. This paper theorizes a three step relational process of a) communicative democratic activism, b) "multicultural" capital brokers providing access to the policy making process, and c) practices of community building that reflect the role of cities as key sites for sociospatial boundary transformation. An emphasis on discursive and ideational change, relying on communicative democratic processes steeped in historical, comparative analysis opens up our minds towards different classification schemes for stigmatized groups. Participating …

Buenos Aires, Fernando Degiovanni, Fernando Rosenberg

Publications and Research

One of the most important city ports of the Western Hemisphere, Buenos Aires has a history inextricably connected to the fluctuations of the Atlantic economy as well as to its strategic position as a gateway to vast and fertile flatlands that extend far beyond the city limits. Founded and re-founded in the 16th century as a secondary colonial outpost, Buenos Aires was dramatically transformed by the demands of the European markets at the turn of both the 18th and 19th centuries. In this context, two crucial developments are decisive for understanding the physical, social, and cultural fabric of the city: …

Los Efectos De Las Transformaciones Agrícolas En Los Antiguos Países Socialistas: Algunas Consideraciones Para Cuba, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo

Publications and Research

Este estudio ofrece una síntesis de los efectos principales de las transformaciones agrícolas en un grupo selecto de antiguos países socialistas de Asia y Europa, tomando en base la importancia de indicadores como la producción física, la productividad laboral y los rendimientos agrícolas, y evalúa algunas consideraciones relevantes en el caso de Cuba. Por razones de espacio, el estudio no incluye otros indicadores de los efectos de las reformas agrícolas como los ingresos rurales, el impacto ambiental y los costos de oportunidad relacionados con la transición. Los países incluidos en el estudio son: China, Vietnam, Rusia, Ucrania, Estonia, La Republica …

Rebuilding Post War Europe: New York And Digital Archives As Reconstitutive Fabric, Anthony Cocciolo

Urban Library Journal

This project explores four digital initiatives that document and make available to the public information related to American, German, and Jewish relationships before, during, and after World War II. The goal of these projects is to make primary source information available to the public using digital technology, in effect, creating an educational infrastructure for enhancing understanding among these groups. These four projects will be treated as cases, with the guiding question being: what infrastructures are needed to create a contemporary, educational, primary source-based digital platform? The goal of this study is to highlight those infrastructure elements that are instrumental in …

College Senate Minutes December 12, 2013, Bronx Community College Senate

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the College Senate on December 12, 2013.

Gmm Estimation Of Spatial Autoregressive Models With Autoregressive And Heteroskedastic Disturbances, Osman Dogan, Süleyman Taşpınar

Economics Working Papers

We consider a spatial econometric model containing a spatial lag in the dependent variable and the disturbance term with an unknown form of heteroskedasticity in innovations. We first prove that the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for spatial autoregressive models is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not taken into account in the estimation. We show that the necessary condition for the consistency of the ML estimator of spatial autoregressive parameters depends on the structure of the spatial weight matrices. Then, we extend the robust generalized method of moment (GMM) estimation approach in Lin and Lee (2010) for the spatial model allowing …

Estonia's Post-Soviet Agricultural Reforms: Lessons For Cuba, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Classified Information: The Newsletter Of The Lloyd Sealy Library, Lloyd Sealy Library, Cuny John Jay College Of Criminal Justice

Reports and Publications from John Jay College

Classified Information was a publication that informed the College about Library services, personnel, upcoming events, new technologies, and available resources.

Uncreative Influence: Louis Aragon’S Paysan De Paris And Walter Benjamin’S Passagen-Werk, Václav Paris

Publications and Research

This paper looks at the role Louis Aragon’s 1926 novel Paris Peasant played in the composition of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. How we might theorize the literary appeal of the Arcades Project, as evidenced in contemporary poetry and visual art; and, more broadly, what is the relation between the aesthetics and the philosophy or politics in Benjamin’s text? The model I propose is one of a Bloomian “anxiety of influence.” By looking at Benjamin’s earlier writings and his correspondence with Theodor Adorno and Gershom Scholem, we see not only that Benjamin’s work shared much with Aragon’s brand of Surrealism, but …

Le Nature Degli American Studies, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Al “Futures of American Studies Institute” di Dartmouth del 2003 lanciai una provocazione sulle “geografie immaginate” dell’americanistica. Volevo mettere in discussione sia le celebrazioni romantiche del “luogo” in quanto elemento in qualche modo autentico e particolare, minacciato da un mondo sempre più globalizzato e controllato dalle multinazionali, sia l’esaltazione della “delocalizzazione” nelle società in rete, negli “spazi di flusso”, nella mobilità senza attrito. Suggerivo che queste, come altre geografie poco studiate, si sposano troppo facilmente con molte correnti dell’eccezionalismo americano.

Global Trends In Seasonality Of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (Ndvi), 1982–2011, J. Ronald Eastman, Florencia Sangermano, Elia Axinia Machado, John Rogan, Assaf Anyamba

Publications and Research

A 30-year series of global monthly Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) imagery derived from the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) NDVI3g archive was analyzed for the presence of trends in changing seasonality. Using the Seasonal Trend Analysis (STA) procedure, over half (56.30%) of land surfaces were found to exhibit significant trends. Almost half (46.10%) of the significant trends belonged to three classes of seasonal trends (or changes). Class 1 consisted of areas that experienced a uniform increase in NDVI throughout the year, and was primarily associated with forested areas, particularly broadleaf forests. Class 2 consisted of areas experiencing …

Assessing The Burden Of Crime And The Criminal Sanction: A Public Health Perspective On Critical Issues In Criminal Justice, Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Toward A Broader Dialectic: Joining Marxism With Mailer To Forge A Multilectics That Advances Teaching And Learning, Gene Fellner

Publications and Research

I contrast the lenses that Norman Mailer, Herbert Marcuse, and Karl Marx bring to their analyses of social life, exploring the contributions and limits of their respective approaches. I then propose what I call a “multilectical” theoretical lens that encompasses the strengths of all three and leans on the insights of post-Marxist theorists. The multilectical lens is then applied to an event that transpired in a severely underperforming middle school.

Patterns Of Anti-Muslim Violence In Burma: A Call For Accountability And Prevention, Andrea Gittleman, Marissa Brodney, Holly G. Atkinson

Publications and Research

In this report, the authors documents how persecution of and violence against the Rohingya in Burma has spread to other Muslim communities throughout the country. Physicians for Human Rights conducted eight separate investigations in Burma and the surrounding region between 2004 and 2013. PHR’s most recent field research in early 2013 indicates a need for renewed attention to violence against minorities and impunity for such crimes. The findings presented in this report are based on investigations conducted in Burma over two separate visits for a combined 21-day period between March and May 2013.

Transcriptome Deep-Sequencing And Clustering Of Expressed Isoforms From Favia Corals, Shaadi F. Pooyaei Mehr, Rob Desalle, Hung-Teh Kao, Apurva Narechania, Zhou Han, Dan Tchernov, Vincent A. Pieribone, David F. Gruber

Publications and Research

Background: Genomic and transcriptomic sequence data are essential tools for tackling ecological problems. Using an approach that combines next-generation sequencing, de novo transcriptome assembly, gene annotation and synthetic gene construction, we identify and cluster the protein families from Favia corals from the northern Red Sea.

Results: We obtained 80 million 75 bp paired-end cDNA reads from two Favia adult samples collected at 65 m (Fav1, Fav2) on the Illumina GA platform, and generated two de novo assemblies using ABySS and CAP3. After removing redundancy and filtering out low quality reads, our transcriptome datasets contained 58,268 (Fav1) and 62,469 (Fav2) contigs …

Reflections On The 2013 Gsc-Gsa ‘Roof Of The World’ China Meeting And Chengdu, Nazrul I. Khandaker

Publications and Research

The recently concluded First Joint Scientific Meeting of Geological Society of China (GSC) and Geological Society of America (GSA) proceeded efficiently in the modern setting of the Jinjiang Hotel, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. GSA’s International Section played a key role bringing this meeting to the overseas communities. The meeting, titled ‘Roof of the World’, ended on 19^th June, 2013, followed by several field trips that lasted from three to six days. The meeting was designed to promote and bolster the academic communication between the GSC and GSA, and covered a wide range of topics presented through 15 technical sessions …