Digital Commons Network^™

College Of Engineering And Computing Graduate Catalog, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Item Difficulty And Other Psychometric Properties Of The Core Perceptual, Verbal, And Working Memory Subtests Of The Wais-Iv Using Item Response Theory, Sara Ann Schleicher-Dilks

Theses and Dissertations

The ceiling and basal rules of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV; Wechsler, 2008) only function as intended if subtest items proceed in order of difficulty. While many aspects of the WAIS-IV have been researched, there is no literature about subtest item difficulty and precise item difficulty values are not available. The WAIS-IV was developed within the framework of Classical Test Theory (CTT) and item difficulty was most often determined using p-values. One limitation of this method is that item difficulty values are sample dependent. Both standard error of measurement, an important indicator of reliability, and p-values …

Full Issue, Digressions

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Stuck In Freedom, Maheen Dhanani

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Stakeholder Perceptions Of Sustainable Value And Water Conservation: A Case Study Of Social, Environmental, And Economic Concerns In The Rookery Bay Estuary, Bruce Victor Lilyea

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Stakeholders’ perceptions of social, environmental, and economic concerns in the Rookery Bay Estuary were examined through this research. The purpose of this study was to discover the shared value and common resolution responses for the people of the Rookery Bay area that can extend to other local environmental management scenarios. Using Stakeholder Theory, Rational Choice Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, and Systems Theory as theoretical foundation, the following research questions were considered: RQ1) What are the points of shared value of community stakeholders facing environmental management issues? RQ2) How do the perspectives of the community stakeholders toward the social, environmental, and economic …

Operationalizing Resilience For Adaptive Coral Reef Management Under Global Environmental Change, Kenneth R. N. Anthony, Paul A. Marshall, Ameer Abdulla, Roger Beeden, Christopher Bergh, Ryan Black, C. Mark Eakin, Edward T. Game, Margaret Gooch, Nicholas A. J. Graham, Alison Green, Scott F. Heron, Ruben Van Hooidonk, Cheryl Knowland, Sangeeta Mangubhai, Nadine Marshall, Jeffrey A. Maynard, Peter Mcginnity, Elizabeth Mcleod, Peter J. Mumby, Magnus Nystrom, David Obura, Jamie Oliver, Hugh P. Possingham, Robert L. Pressey, Gwilym Rowlands, Jerker Tamelander, David Wachenfeld, Stephanie Wear

HCAS Student Articles

Cumulative pressures from global climate and ocean change combined with multiple regional and local-scale stressors pose fundamental challenges to coral reef managers worldwide. Understanding how cumulative stressors affect coral reef vulnerability is critical for successful reef conservation now and in the future. In this review, we present the case that strategically managing for increased ecological resilience (capacity for stress resistance and recovery) can reduce coral reef vulnerability (risk of net decline) up to a point. Specifically, we propose an operational framework for identifying effective management levers to enhance resilience and support management decisions that reduce reef vulnerability. Building on a …

B.A In Theatre 2015-2016 Curriculum, Nova Southeastern University

Undergraduate Programs Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

B.S. In Mathematics 2015 Curriculum, Nova Southeastern University

Undergraduate Programs Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

B.S. In Human Development And Family Studies Curriculum 2015-2016, Nova Southeastern University

Undergraduate Programs Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Bs In Athletic Training Curriculum 2015, Nova Southeastern University

Undergraduate Programs Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Undergraduate Student Catalog 2015-2016, Nova Southeastern University

Undergraduate Programs Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of Recipients Of A Florida High School Dropout Prevention Program’S Scholarship About The Influence Of Mentoring And Student Advocacy On Success And Persistence In Higher Education, Tracy Lyn Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to help a specific Florida high school dropout prevention program better understand the factors that influence the postsecondary persistence rates of their scholarship recipients. The program administrators want to explore the scholarship recipients’ perceptions regarding the role of mentoring and student advocacy in his/her academic success or college persistence. To understand the scholarship recipients experience better, a mixed methods study was conducted with current program scholarship recipients to gain insight into the individual student’s perception of factors including mentoring and student advocacy that influenced student success and completion in college.

Information gained from the student …

Analysis Of Attitudes, Gender, And Beliefs Of Adolescent Students Concerning Interactive Technology, Courtney L. Teague

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to provide insight about the perceptions of middle school students attending a Title I school about technology use and careers. Using a mixed methods approach, the researcher explored the beliefs and circumstances that affect attitudes and behaviors in technology usage by eighth-grade boys and girls. The research questions for this study included: 1) female Title I middle school students' perceptions of interactive technology, 2) male Title I middle school students' perceptions of interactive technology, and 3) gender differences towards interactive technology. Data were collected from six focus group participants and 226 students who completed a …

Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Explained Through Student’S Narratives, Brian Louis Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Explained Through Student’s Narratives. Brian Wright 2015: Applied Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Abraham S. Fischler School of Education. ERIC Descriptors: Learning Disabilities, Perception, Senior High School Students, Self-Efficacy, and Qualitative.

This applied dissertation will provide a deeper understanding of how high school students with nonverbal learning disabilities perceive themselves. Persons with nonverbal learning disabilities are defined primarily through performance measures with less qualitative information available. In this study, high school students identified with nonverbal learning disabilities will have the opportunity to voice their feelings about their disability.

The researcher developed open-ended questions about nonverbal learning disabilities and …

Adoption Factors Impacting Human Resource Analytics Among Human Resource Professionals, Roslyn Vargas

HCBE Theses and Dissertations

In today’s fast paced, ever-changing world, one cannot help hearing the terms Big Data and analytics. The Internet holds vast amounts of data and this data, for example in retail, is being used to predict shopping habits, current needs, trends, and more. Why should this be limited to the retail side of an organization? Today, there is a more significant push for Human Resource (HR) professionals to be strategic business partners, and, therefore, HR professionals need to work on leading, not lagging, in the area of measurements and analytics. Some organizations that have adopted the use of analytics in their …

Characterization Of Prose By Rhetorical Structure For Machine Learning Classification, James Java

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Measures of classical rhetorical structure in text can improve accuracy in certain types of stylistic classification tasks such as authorship attribution. This research augments the relatively scarce work in the automated identification of rhetorical figures and uses the resulting statistics to characterize an author's rhetorical style. These characterizations of style can then become part of the feature set of various classification models.

Our Rhetorica software identifies 14 classical rhetorical figures in free English text, with generally good precision and recall, and provides summary measures to use in descriptive or classification tasks. Classification models trained on Rhetorica's rhetorical measures paired with …

Examining The Security Awareness, Information Privacy, And The Security Behaviors Of Home Computer Users, Keith Edwards

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Attacks on computer systems continue to be a problem. The majority of the attacks target home computer users. To help mitigate the attacks some companies provide security awareness training to their employees. However, not all people work for a company that provides security awareness training and typically, home computer users do not have the incentive to take security awareness training on their own. Research in security awareness and security behavior has produced conflicting results. Therefore, it is not clear, how security aware home computer users are or to what extent security awareness affects the security behavior of home computer users. …

The State Of Mobile Learning Implementation In Government Cabinet-Level Agencies And Departments, Algernon B. Corbett

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

As mobile technologies have increasingly become a part of personal and work environments, mobile learning is emerging as a viable alternative for training and education needs. Faced with the need for innovative and cost-efficient ways for training government employees, agencies and departments are considering the use of mobile learning. The availability of a wide range of mobile technology provides many options. Other than the Department of Defense, little is known about implementing mobile learning in United States government cabinet level agencies and departments. A concurrent, mixed methods case study was used to examine how organizations decide to use, implement and …

Virtue Ethics: Examining Influences On The Ethical Commitment Of Information System Workers In Trusted Positions, John Max Gray

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Despite an abundance of research on the problem of insider threats, only limited success has been achieved in preventing trusted insiders from committing security violations. Virtue ethics may be an approach that can be utilized to address this issue. Human factors such as moral considerations impact Information System (IS) design, use, and security; consequently they affect the security posture and culture of an organization. Virtue ethics based concepts have the potential to influence and align the moral values and behavior of information systems workers with those of an organization in order to provide increased protection of IS assets. An individual’s …

Use Of Entropy For Feature Selection With Intrusion Detection System Parameters, Frank Acker

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The metric of entropy provides a measure about the randomness of data and a measure of information gained by comparing different attributes. Intrusion detection systems can collect very large amounts of data, which are not necessarily manageable by manual means. Collected intrusion detection data often contains redundant, duplicate, and irrelevant entries, which makes analysis computationally intensive likely leading to unreliable results. Reducing the data to what is relevant and pertinent to the analysis requires the use of data mining techniques and statistics. Identifying patterns in the data is part of analysis for intrusion detections in which the patterns are categorized …

Improvement Of Ifng Elispot Performance Following Overnight Resting Of Frozen Pbmc Samples Confirmed Through Rigorous Statistical Analysis, Radleigh Santos, Alcinette Bunying, Nazila Sabri, John Yu, Anthony Gringeri, James Bender, Sylvia Janetzki, Clemencia Pinilla, Valeria A. Judkowski

Mathematics Faculty Articles

Immune monitoring of functional responses is a fundamental parameter to establish correlates of protection in clinical trials evaluating vaccines and therapies to boost antigen-specific responses. The IFNg ELISPOT assay is a well-standardized and validated method for the determination of functional IFNg-producing T-cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC); however, its performance greatly depends on the quality and integrity of the cryopreserved PBMC. Here, we investigate the effect of overnight (ON) resting of the PBMC on the detection of CD8-restricted peptide-specific responses by IFNg ELISPOT. The study used PBMC from healthy donors to evaluate the CD8 T-cell response to five pooled …

Comparative Population Genetics And Evolutionary History Of Two Commonly Misidentified Billfishes Of Management And Conservation Concern, Andrea M. Bernard, Mahmood S. Shivji, Eric Prince, Fabio H.V. Hazin, Freddy Arocha, Andres Domingo, Kevin A. Feldheim

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Background:  Misidentifications between exploited species may lead to inaccuracies in population assessments, with potentially irreversible conservation ramifications if overexploitation of either species is occurring. A notable showcase is provided by the realization that the roundscale spearfish (Tetrapturus georgii), a recently validated species, has been historically misidentified as the morphologically very similar and severely overfished white marlin (Kajikia albida) (IUCN listing: Vulnerable). In effect, no information exists on the population status and evolutionary history of the enigmatic roundscale spearfish, a large, highly vagile and broadly distributed pelagic species. We provide the first population genetic evaluation of the …

Reproductive Parameters Of Two Coastal Pelagic Fishes Off Southeast Florida: Blackfin Tuna Thunnus Atlanticus And Little Tunny Euthynnus Alletteratus, Sonia Ahrabi-Nejad

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

The ability to manage a fish stock relies on an understanding of life history characteristics and basic biology of the species. Numerous age-growth studies are facilitated by the relative ease of ageing fishes through hard-part analyses. Determining reproductive parameters for fish populations is equally important for stock assessments and management, and histological examination of gonads provides the most accurate determination of fecundity and spawning periods. Coastal pelagic fishes are often targeted commercially and recreationally due to their easy access by private vessels. However, there are few studies researching the biology and reproduction of recreational fishes in the waters of Southeastern …

Changes In Coral Community Composition At Devil's Crown, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador: A 7,700 Year Perspective, Katharine Jane Hendrickson

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Coral mortality caused by El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activity and its related disturbances has been researched throughout the Eastern Pacific. In the past three decades, disturbances related to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) have been shown to influence coral growth in the Eastern Pacific. In the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, more than 97% of corals experienced mortality after the severe 1982-1983 ENSO episode. However, two of the most dominant coral species found in a coral community adjacent to Devil’s Crown; Psammocora stellata and Diaseris distorta survived this severe ENSO event. By reconstructing sediment cores of the coral community, this study assessed …

Distribution, Growth, And Impact Of The Coral-Excavating Sponge, Cliona Delitrix, On The Stony Coral Communities Offshore Southeast Florida, Ari Halperin

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Bioerosion is a major process that affects the carbonate balance on coral reefs, and excavating sponges from the genus Cliona are some of the most important bioeroders on Caribbean reefs. The orange boring sponge, Cliona delitrix, is an abundant excavating sponge offshore southeast Florida that frequently colonizes dead portions of live stony corals, killing live coral tissue as it grows. With the recent decline in coral cover attributed to combined environmental and anthropogenic stressors, the increasing abundance of excavating sponges poses yet another threat to the persistence of Caribbean coral reefs.

In the first part of this study, I …

Assessment Of Macroinvertebrate Communities And Heavy Metal Contamination Along The Intracoastal Waterway In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Robert Bernhard

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Sediments from four areas adjacent to marinas and a background site in the Intracoastal Waterway were assessed for macroinvertebrate composition and heavy metal contamination. Sediment core samples were collected in 2004 and 2005 for analyses of macroinvertebrate composition and sediment grain size. Additional sediment samples were collected in 2005 for chemical analyses of metals (Al, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Pb, Hg, Ni and Zn). MANOVA and dendograms using Bray-Curtis similarity matrices grouped the sites into two clusters: the 3 sites closest to the New River formed one group, and the two end sites formed the other. The sites nearest …

Collaborative Course Design And Inquiry-Based Approaches In Geoscience Education, Paul E. Baldauf, Robert Hill

Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review - Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship And Mating Tell Us About Human Relationships, J. Matthew Hoch

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Alternative Approaches To Correction Of Malapropisms In Aiml Based Conversational Agents, Walter A. Brock

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The use of Conversational Agents (CAs) utilizing Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) has been studied in a number of disciplines. Previous research has shown a great deal of promise. It has also documented significant limitations in the abilities of these CAs. Many of these limitations are related specifically to the method employed by AIML to resolve ambiguities in the meaning and context of words. While methods exist to detect and correct common errors in spelling and grammar of sentences and queries submitted by a user, one class of input error that is particularly difficult to detect and correct is the …

Factors Impacting Information Security Noncompliance When Completing Job Tasks, Martha Nanette Harrell

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Work systems are comprised of the technical and social systems that should harmoniously work together to ensure a successful attainment of organizational goals and objectives. Information security controls are often designed to protect the information system and seldom consider the work system design. Using a positivist case study, this research examines the user's perception of having to choose between completing job tasks or remaining compliant with information security controls. An understanding of this phenomenon can help mitigate the risk associated with an information system security user's choice. Most previous research fails to consider the work system perspective on this issue. …