Digital Commons Network^™

Working Paper No. 43, Towards A Veblenian Theory Of Instincts, Duane Murray

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that in his writings, Thorstein Veblen offers a comprehensive and insightful contribution towards an understanding of instincts. Instincts can be viewed self-regarding and thought to promote the survival of the individual. Other instincts can be classified as group-regarding and contribute towards the continuation of society. Instincts can lead to the formation of habits and to combine to create societal institutions that govern human behavior. With the passage of time, instincts, habits, and institutions are thought to contribute to economic and societal evolution.

Modeling And Visualizing Power Amplification In Fiber Optic Cables, Gil Parnon

University Honors Theses

Transverse mode instability in fiber optic cables causes power amplification to exhibit chaotic behavior. Due to this, numerical modeling of fiber optic power amplification is extremely computationally expensive. In this paper I work through modeling similar behavior in a simpler system. I also visualize the three-dimensional phase portrait of the system in order to better understand the behavior and hopefully relate it to more well-understood problems.

Untangling The Factors That Affect Student Retention: A Quantitative Study Of The Relationships Among First-Year Seminar Program Characteristics And Instructor Type (Full-Time And Part-Time), Christina Marie Shafer

Dissertations and Theses

Each fall first-year college students have met and overcome many challenges and transitions. However, one-third of first-year students who enter college in the U.S. do not return for their second-year. Making the first-year a critical juncture for students, administrators, and institutions. First-Year Seminars were created to help assist students with their transition to college and have been identified as an effective initiative to aid in first-year retention.

What role do institutions play in addressing the issue of retention? Some say that those who teach the Seminars matter. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among Seminar characteristics …

Peers' Academic Coping As A Resource For Academic Engagement And Motivational Resilience In The First Year Of Middle School, Daniel Lee Grimes

Dissertations and Theses

Beginning middle school is a difficult transition for many young adolescents. Academic coping skills and the ability to exhibit motivational resilience in the face of potential academic adversity can contribute to the success with which students navigate this transition. Students' peer group affiliations are known to have the ability to contribute positively to students' academic engagement, motivation, and achievement at this time. The current study explores the potential of a student's peer group members' use of eleven ways of academic coping to affect the change in student academic engagement over the course of the first year of middle school. Data …

Absorptive Reflectionless Filters, Guy Barry Lemire

Dissertations and Theses

For many applications requiring some sort of signal filtering or signal conditioning, the filter requirements are usually approached with a single purpose in mind, which is to maximize both passband signal amplitude and stop band signal attenuation to the load with little to no thought given to what happens to the stop band signal energy. Many conventional filters have very poor impedance matching in the stopband resulting in reflected energy or large return loss (S₁₁). This reflected energy can then cause interactions with adjoining system components which do not in general respond well to spurious reflected energy and …

An Analysis Of The Competitive Advantages And Threats For Micro, Small & Medium-Sized Businesses (Msmes) In Mexico, Jose Luis Pool Sierra

University Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the Micro, Small & Medium-sized (MSMEs) businesses in Mexico, their current threats and competitive advantages. The research explores the major issues business owners face and potential strategies they could implement in order to thrive and promote growth for their organizations, using strategies in Supply Chain Management and Good Managerial planning practices, such as the application of the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR). The thesis also analyzes a medium-sized business in Mexico and recommends strategies based on the SCOR framework that such an organization could apply to their business operations in order to avoid obstacles and potential …

Detecting Geomorphic Change And Stream Channel Evolution On The Sandy River, Oregon, Using Lidar Following Dam Removal In 2007, Lowell Henry Anthony

Dissertations and Theses

Following the removal of Marmot Dam on the Sandy River, Oregon, several Lidar flights were flown over the area of the former reservoir. The resultant sequential DEMs permitted calculation of reach-scale volumetric erosion and aggradation following dam removal. This allows for change detection across the entire affected reach of the former impoundment rather than just at several cross sections. In the first year there was a net loss of blank sediment in the dewatered reach. Subsequent flights show continued degradation of 145,649 m³ as well as aggradation of 6,232 m³. Sediment transport reached quasi-equilibrium in 2012 with …

Life Satisfaction In Division Iaa And Division Iii Football Players, Krista Haunani Francisco

Dissertations and Theses

Level of life satisfaction is not something of which many sit down and take appraisal. However, levels of life satisfaction, especially low levels of life satisfaction, can have a direct effect on health. Low levels of life satisfaction cause an increase in self-reported stress. Inversely, high levels of stress cause a decrease in life satisfaction. This decrease in life satisfaction is associated with poor mental and physical health outcomes. A majority of student-athlete healthcare is centered around the physical aspects of health, with mental health just recently becoming a concern. It was apparent through the research for this study that …

Pro-Life Ends At Birth: Race As A Primary Driver Of State Abortion And Concurrent Natalist Policy, Tasha Danner

University Honors Theses

The year 2019 saw the most restrictive state abortion policies introduced and passed since Roe v Wade. The same states passing this legislation are often states also cutting funding for policies that improve the health and socio-economic mobility of mothers and children, which disproportionately affects African-American residents of those states. Outside of reproductive justice advocacy, there is not much research on the role that race plays in the introduction and passing of state abortion policy. I examine and analyze the role of racial prejudice in passing restrictive abortion policy in southern states. Using historical context in southern states, a survey …

Impact Of The Urban Heat Mosaic On The Leaf Senescence In Two Acer Species, Jeffrey D. Smith

University Honors Theses

Due to the heterogeneity of the urban heat island, we can think of the variable influence of urbanization on air temperature as more of an urban heat mosaic. Climate change has caused a resurgence of interest in the way temperature affects how organisms, such as street trees, undergo cyclic changes in their life cycle. Such changes include budburst or, less commonly, timing of senescence. Little is known about how the urban heat mosaic could be affecting the phenology of different urban trees. Because street trees are one of the more prominent ecosystem engineers of the urban landscape, variable influences of …

Balancing Security, Performance And Deployability In Encrypted Search, David Joel Pouliot

Dissertations and Theses

Encryption is an important tool for protecting data, especially data stored in the cloud. However, standard encryption techniques prevent efficient search. Searchable encryption attempts to solve this issue, protecting the data while still providing search functionality. Retaining the ability to search comes at a cost of security, performance and/or utility.

An important practical aspect of utility is compatibility with legacy systems. Unfortunately, the efficient searchable encryption constructions that are compatible with these systems have been proven vulnerable to attack, even against weaker adversary models.

The goal of this work is to address this security problem inherent with efficient, legacy compatible …

Interactions Between The Azoarcus Ribozyme And Manganese (Ii) Divalent Cations, Joshua Martwick

University Honors Theses

The RNA world hypothesis suggests that RNA systems were the first form of life on the planet, beginning to appear approximately 4 billion years ago. Group I introns are self-splicing RNA elements in extant organisms and use Mg²⁺ as the principle divalent cation to promote catalysis. The group I intron ribozyme from Azoarcus is frequently used in origin of life studies, partially due to its autocatalytic abilities - the Azoarcus ribozyme is able to be broken into fragments and reassemble itself into its fully functional ribozyme. Previous work identified metal binding sites on the Azoarcus ribozyme which use both …

Minimum Complexity Echo State Networks For Genome And Sequence Analysis, Christopher John Neighbor

Dissertations and Theses

Increasing viral illnesses threatens global human health and welfare. Due to the distribution of disease and the expense of diagnosis, it is of value to develop portable assays that can detect viral infections early. DNA molecular logic technology offers a portable detection method due to the versatility and stability of DNA and the potential of in situ computation.

Top-down engineering of these chemical logic networks can be difficult due to the difficulties of their implementation using DNA as a substrate. In this work echo state networks, a form of recurrent neural networks, were explored with the motivation that their implementation …

Power Efficiency Enhancement And Linearization Techniques For Power Amplifiers In Wireless Communications, Haider Al-Kanan

Dissertations and Theses

Wireless communication systems require Power Amplifiers (PAs) for signal transmissions. The trade-off between power efficiency and nonlinear distortion in PAs degrades the communication performance. Thus, power efficiency and nonlinearity are two main concerns of operating PAs in communication systems. Nonlinear behavioral models are typically used to quantify and mitigate the distortion effects of PAs on communication systems. This dissertation presents an estimation approach for modeling and linearizing the PA Amplitude-to-Amplitude (AM/AM) nonlinearity using the design specifications of PAs, such as gain, the third-order intercept point, and 1dB compression point. Furthermore, an enhanced approach for modeling solid-state power amplifiers is developed …

Exploring Consumer Psychographics Of Ethnic Representation Within The Cosmetic Industry, Johnny A. Hickman

University Honors Theses

Consumers are more sensitive than ever to a brand that has contrived messaging. Despite brands like Maybeline and Covergirl featuring famous women of color in their ads, there has never been a reaction to their brand like there has been for Fenty Beauty. This is because of Fenty Beauty's authentic mission to fulfill a need for consumers. This is a level of authenticity that cannot be matched by simply show-casing women of various skin tones and proceeding to provide a limited amount of products. Is brand authenticity the key to winning over consumers and significant enough for consumers' ability to …

Legal Geographies And Political Ecologies Of Water Allocation In Maui, Hawai'i, Alida Cantor, Kelly Kay, Chris Knudson

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Throughout the Hawaiian Islands, sugar plantations have controlled a large proportion of water resources for over a century, often leaving little water in streams to support ecosystems or Native Hawaiian cultural and agricultural practices. Recently, in Maui, Hawai‘i, community activists and lawyers representing Native Hawaiian and environmental interests have successfully reclaimed water resources for instream flow utilizing legal processes and tools such as Hawai‘i’s public trust doctrine, which has plural roots in both Hawaiian and Western legal traditions. In this paper, we use qualitative fieldwork, including interviews, participant observation, and archival data collection, to explore two recent and ongoing legal …

“Le Soleil De France”: Warm Translations Of Guy De Maupassant In Works By Isaak Babel’ And Ivan Bunin, Cassio De Oliveira

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the wake of Lev Tolstoi’s appraisals of his work, Guy de Maupassant was embraced by Russian twentieth-century authors who admired his mastery of the short story. The Soviet writer Isaak Babel’ and the émigré writer Ivan Bunin reference stories and other texts by Maupassant in their stories ‘Guy de Maupassant’ and ‘Bernard’. To these authors, Maupassant constitutes a means of expressing their own outlook on the craft of literature. Mediated by the act of translation from French into Russian, Maupassant’s writing enables the Russian authors to articulate distinct identities regarding their national literature: as Soviet and émigré.

La Cultura Cura: An Exploration Of Enculturation In A Community-Based Culture-Centered Hiv Prevention Curriculum For Indigenous Youth, Ramona Beltrán, Antonia R.G. Alvarez, Lisa Colon, Xochilt Alamillo, Annie Zean Dunbar

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Community based participatory research and attention to cultural resilience is recommended in HIV prevention research with Indigenous communities. This paper presents qualitative findings from evaluation of a culture-centered HIV prevention curriculum for Indigenous youth that was developed using a community based participatory research approach. Specifically, the authors focus on youth descriptions of cultural resilience and enculturation factors after participating in the curriculum. Thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with 23 youth participants yields three salient themes associated with cultural resilience and enculturation factors including: Development of cultural pride, honoring ancestors through traditional cultural practices, and acknowledging resilience and resistance within Indigenous …

Creating An Ethics Of Love: Encountering Nonduality Through Buddhism And Phenomenology, Dakota Parmley

University Honors Theses

Sustained ethical action is needed now more than ever, and the attitude that Western phenomenology and Buddhist meditation practices employ in investigating experience is important for creating such action. Through investigation, one can experience a nondual Reality, which in turn can lead to embodied ethical action in light of that experience. By focusing on how there is an “arc of practice” through which one encounters Reality and transforms their action, the importance of investigating experience can be seen. The two investigative practices used in this thesis are helpful for reconnecting the practitioner to their true-nature, which is loving and virtuous, …

Asian American Women In Leadership And Abusive Supervision, Mari A. Wu

University Honors Theses

Drawing on the shifting standards theory, intersectionality theory, double jeopardy theory, the lack of fit model and role congruity theory, I investigate whether there are differences in perceptions of abuse as a function of leader race (i.e., Asian and White) among women. Participants completed a Qualtrics survey in which they evaluated photos of Asian and White women supervisors and indicated the extent to which they believed the person in the photo would be abusive. Results did not reveal a significant difference in perceptions of abuse, but did reveal a significant difference in favor of Asian leaders in perceptions of friendliness …

Dynamic Assessment For Evaluating Bilingual Children's Potential For Language Development Over Time: A Pilot Study, Camryn R. Perez

University Honors Theses

Dynamic assessment for children of diverse cultural or linguistic backgrounds has been developed within multiple language domains and found as a valid measure for diagnosing a developmental language disorder. However, there remains a need to research its efficacy and stability over time. This study examined the predictive validity of dynamic assessment through a comparison of changes in performance over time as well as the relationship between dynamic assessment scores with grammaticality and mean length of utterance. Using pilot data from a larger project, seven Spanish-English bilingual children’s performance on dynamic assessment tasks of word and rule learning was examined over …

Trauma-Informed Care As A Service Approach For Youth Experiencing Houselessness: A Scoping Review Of The Literature, Crystal Wink

University Honors Theses

The purpose of this systematic scoping review was to find what the current literature includes regarding the topic of Trauma-informed Care (TIC) as a service approach to serve youth who are experiencing houselessness. The review was guided by the research question, ‘How might Trauma-informed Care be practiced within houseless youth organizations?’ A comprehensive search of the databases PsycINFO and Academic Search Premier, as well as the grey literature database, Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) were performed to locate articles and readings relevant to the topic. To further increase the breadth of the scope, publications were located and selected from a …

Dictionary Learning For Image Reconstruction Via Numerical Non-Convex Optimization Methods, Lewis M. Hicks

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores image dictionary learning via non-convex (difference of convex, DC) programming and its applications to image reconstruction. First, the image reconstruction problem is detailed and solutions are presented. Each such solution requires an image dictionary to be specified directly or to be learned via non-convex programming. The solutions explored are the DCA (DC algorithm) and the boosted DCA. These various forms of dictionary learning are then compared on the basis of both image reconstruction accuracy and number of iterations required to converge.

Maus, Masks, And The Performance Of Identity, Amie Zimmerman

University Honors Theses

Beginning with Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus, this essay discusses how masks are used as signs or symbols for projecting cultural and ethnic identity. Spiegelman uses masks to illustrate the properties of Jewish identity as both fixed and fluid, revealing the function of masks to be culturally relative. Cultural frameworks, called indices by anthropologist Donald Pollock, contain each culture’s rules for what comprises meaningful and believable identity. As collections of identity markers, masks have the power to represent as well as erase the wearer when societies demand the performance of identity. In her book Citizen, poet-critic Claudia Rankine …

Unipolarity And Foreign Policy: An Examination Of The Unipolar U.S And Its Subsequent Foreign Policy Constraints, Madeleine Smith

University Honors Theses

The current unipolar system is undeniable, but also undeniably going to shift in the future. Yet as unipolarity has persisted, the U.S has made many foreign policy and grand strategy decisions based on the structural constraints and flexibilities of being the unipole. This trend may not be an advisable one should a shift in power occur. My question is, should the system return to bi or multipolarity, how will U.S foreign policy be able to accommodate these changes peacefully after it has so long been centered around maintaining the unipolar system and its current status? Additionally how will the U.S …

Best Practices For A Translingual Pedagogy: An Undergraduate Perspective, Jacob S. Wilson

University Honors Theses

This thesis traces the last nine years of translingual scholarship in the hopes of theorizing best practices to enact a translingual pedagogy in first year composition (FYC) contexts. Despite translingual theory’s high profile in the field, scholars like Ligia Mihut (2019) have brought attention to the fact that little has been done to bring translingual theory into classrooms. After reviewing relevant literature in Composition Studies, the author explores how translingual tenets can be implemented within current university curricula. Through three well-established pedagogical approaches, the author suggests, instructors can adopt translingual practices that support students’ linguistic agency and challenge monolingual ideologies. …

The Development Of An Art Practice: Reflecting On My Experiences In The Undergraduate Art Programs At Clackamas Community College And Portland State University, Justin M. Taylor

University Honors Theses

In this essay, I will be discussing the content and overall experience of my thesis exhibition, The Development of an Art Practice, on display at the Alexander Gallery, Oregon City, Oregon, from November 6^th through December 6^th 2019. The exhibition showcased my development in the undergraduate art practice programs at Clackamas Community College, and Portland State University. Featured in the exhibition was a selection of two-dimensional visual works, which I produced in the programs.

My work was process driven with an emphasis on experimentation. While the selection of work revealed reoccurring themes, both in process and content, …

The Rise And Infiltration Of Pac-Man And Street Fighter, Angelic Phan

University Honors Theses

With the social, cultural, and economic influence of video games, it is important to examine why they have become such popular forms of entertainment. Particularly, why certain franchises have continued to persist among the growing industry. Two notable franchises are Pac-Man and Street Fighter, which are also most frequently discussed in scholarly texts. I supplement a literature review with an analysis of marketing texts to illuminate a series of shared factors that help explain both games' popularity despite the apparent dissimilarities of their content. First, my work helps us look across multiple scholarly papers to create a bigger picture …

A Literature Review On Police Encounters With Women, Cecilia I. Hinsley

University Honors Theses

This study is a literature review on current research surrounding police officers and their encounters with women. This paper explores research and work that speaks to how police officers might support women and/or work with women in various communities towards a common goal such as crime prevention. Twenty articles considering police encounters with women were gathered and reviewed to identify the implications of future contact and police behaviors with women in society. Based on the articles reviewed, they suggest that current policing styles such as, community-oriented policing and problem-oriented policing, have a positive impact on women in society and their …

Migrant Health Policies In The European Union: A Comparative Policy Analysis, Jessica Joanne Currier

Dissertations and Theses

There is an undeniable relationship between migration and health. Despite the fact that the concept of health as a fundamental human right has been enshrined in numerous international and supranational policy instruments, health disparities between migrants and host nation populations persist. Inequities in health are perpetuated by several factors that include, but are not limited to, immigration status, lack of knowledge of health system access points, appropriateness of health care services, language barriers, and unique health profiles of migrants. The literature firmly positions migrants as a vulnerable population due to their collective risk of poor health outcomes in multiple areas. …