Digital Commons Network^™

Oregon's Marines: A Regional History Of The United States Marine Corps, Michael Coleman Howard

Dissertations and Theses

The history of the United States Marine Corps in Oregon, and of the many Oregonians who have served as Marines, is a unique story which has never been told. This thesis examines United States Marines from the state of Oregon and activities by Marines in the state. It covers the Oregon Marine experience from its start in 1841 through the Gulf War conflict of 1991 to the present. From 1838 to 1842, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, United States Navy, led a remarkable exploration and scientific expedition around the world. In 1841, Wilkes visited the Pacific Northwest, and accompanying him aboard his …

Familiality Of Early Expressive Language Delay: A Sibling Study, Carol Lynn Unkefer

Dissertations and Theses

Researchers are seeking more information on how and why language disorders tend to run in families, particularly siblings of language disordered children.

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of language and related disorders in the siblings of two groups of children: those with slow expressive language development (SELD) and those with a normal language history. This study sought to answer the following questions: 1) Is there a significant difference in prevalence of language problems in two groups of children: those with SELD and those with a normal language history?, and 2) Is there a greater probability …

The Relationship Between Intelligibility And Length And Complexity Of Language In A Group Of 4- And 5-Year-Old Children, Susan Fodell

Dissertations and Theses

Previous research has indicated that speech and linguistic variables develop concurrently. When one aspect of speech and linguistic development is delayed, there are typically associated delays in another area as well. This interactive relationship has been studied extensively in the context of phonological and syntactical development, as well as fluency and syntactical development. The relationship between intelligibility and linguistic proficiency has not been studied as extensively. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between varying levels of intelligibility and length and complexity of language in preschool-aged children. Mean length of utterance was correlated with the mean percentage …

Nonlinguistic Cognitive Performance And Expressive And Receptive Language Scores In Children With Expressive Language Delay, Deborah Kay Warren

Dissertations and Theses

This study was part of the Portland Language Development Project. The purpose was to establish reliability for the Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test. Additionally, nonlinguistic cognitive performance scores were correlated with soores from expressive and receptive language test soores. Finally, scores of overall cognitive function and of nonlinguistic cognitive function in children with normally developing language (NL) and with expressive language delay (ELD) were compared. The original group size was 60 children, 30 with ELD at the age of 20 months, and 30 who were a matched control group. These subjects were reevaluated during Kindergarten. The Draw-A-Man Test was administered to assess …

The Decision And Rationale Which Led To Construction On High-Risk Land After The 1964 Alaska Earthquake: Analysis Of Risk-Based Cultural Dissociation, Sheila Ann Selkregg

Dissertations and Theses

Many lives and much property are lost in disasters when individuals and communities choose to ignore information which could mitigate the potential disaster. This case study examines community and individual decision processes and rationale which led to construction of a high-occupancy high-rise courthouse on land designated as high risk after the 1964 Alaska earthquake. The study reviews policy and decision making, psychology, and risk management literature to explore the psychological mechanisms and processes of hazard mitigation decisions.

It questions why individuals and communities choose not to mitigate when they have the information which makes risk mitigation possible. The hypothesis theorizes …

Comparison Of Training Methods In A Branch Environment, Lisa Peterson Davidson

Dissertations and Theses

This study addressed a need to identify the effectiveness of in-branch, employee administered training programs. A comparison of various training methods and a ranking of the effectiveness of those methodologies would enable managers to make informed training design and purchase decisions.

The purpose of this study was to determine the differences between four training methods as evaluated by post-training assessment scores. This study also sought to determine the following: 1) did all four methods significantly impact short term material recall?, and 2) did gender impact training effectiveness? The training methods studied were: video; study guide; video plus study guide; video …

The Tumult Of Amboise And The Importance Of Historical Memory In Sixteenth-Century France, Trevor Charles Schmitz-Thursam

Dissertations and Theses

Humanist legal scholarship was the catalyst to historical revolution that took place in sixteenth-century France. French philologists succeeded in demonstrating the cultural distinctiveness of France from a heretofore assumed classical heritage shared with ancient Rome. As a result, scholars sought to retrace the historical origins of France in the non-Roman Gauls and Franks. Their intensive study of the laws, customs and institutions that developed in France, as distinct from ancient Rome, transformed the understanding of the national past. Following the introduction of the principles of historical anachronism and cultural relativism, the sixteenth century witnessed a transformation of traditional perceptions of …

British Aristocratic Women And Their Role In Politics, 1760-1860, Nancy Ann Henderson

Dissertations and Theses

British aristocratic women exerted political influence and power during the century beginning with the accession of George III. They expressed their political power through the four roles of social patron, patronage distributor, political advisor, and political patron/electioneer. British aristocratic women were able, trained, and expected to play these roles. Politics could not have existed without these women. The source of their political influence was the close interconnection of politics and society. In this small, inter-connected society, women could and did influence politics. Political decisions, especially for the Whigs, were not made in the halls of government with which we are …

Second Grade Academic Performance In Normal Children, Children With A History Of, And Children With Expressive Language Delay, Kathleen Ann Clancy

Dissertations and Theses

Interest in children who are diagnosed with expressive language delay has increased over the years. This has resulted in follow-up studies which have suggested that these children would have difficulties in academics during their elementary school years (Hall & Tomblin, 1978; Weiner, 1974) The current study sought to determine if children with a history of and children with continued expressive language delay would have problems with academics once they reached the second grade. The Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) was used to measure academic performance. It was chosen for it's reliable standardization and use of five different subtest areas to …

Gender Differences In Slow Expressive Language Development, Cynthia Lee Hare-Blye

Dissertations and Theses

The contemporary research suggests that some children who present with early language delays as toddlers outgrow their delays while others continue to develop long-term language difficulties. Several studies over the years have focused on factors that might aid in predicting the outcome of late talkers. This current study emphasized exploring gender as a possible predictive factor.

The purpose of this study was to determine if significant differences exist in the rate of growth in language skills, as indexed by scores on the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) procedure of boys versus girls who are late to start talking as toddlers. The …

Spectrographic Analysis Of Second Language Speech: Investigating The Effects Of L1, Troy D. Bailey

Dissertations and Theses

Technological advances in Digital Signal Processing over the last decade have provided applied linguists with a number of computerized applications for speech analysis which can be of benefit to both the researcher and the instructor. This research project explores the techniques of speech spectrography and implements methods of acoustic phonetics to current issues in Second Language Acquisition theory. Specifically, the effects of vowel production in one's native language on the targets in a second language are investigated. Acoustic measurements of English vowels spoken by Japanese students were compared with measurements of native Japanese vowels and American English vowels. In addition, …

High Level Preprocessor Of A Vhdl-Based Design System, Karthikeyan Palanisamy

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis presents the work done on a design automation system in which high-level synthesis is integrated with logic synthesis. DIADES, a design automation system developed at PSU, starts the synthesis process from a language called ADL. The major part of this thesis deals with transforming the ADL -based DIADES system into a VHDL -based DIADES system. In this thesis I have upgraded and modified the existing DIADES system so that it becomes a preprocessor to a comprehensive VHDL -based design system from Mentor Graphics.

The high-level synthesis in the DIADES system includes two stages: data path synthesis and control …

An Analysis Of Approaches To Efficient Hardware Realization Of Image Compression Algorithms, Kamran Iravani

Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis an attempt has been made to develop a fast algorithm to compress images. The Reed-Muller compression algorithm which was introduced by Reddy & Pai [3] is fast, but the compression factor is too low when compared to the other methods. In this thesis first research has been done to improve this method by generalizing the Reed-Muller transform to the fixed polarity Reed-Muller form. This thesis shows that the Fixed Polarity Reed-Muller transform does not improve the compression factor enough to warrant its use as an image compression method. The paper, by Reddy & Pai [3], on Reed-Muller …

Fort Clatsop National Memorial: A Study In Historic Preservation, Kelly June Cannon

Dissertations and Theses

Fort Clatsop National Memorial is a unit of the National Park Service in Clatsop County, Oregon. The memorial was established by an Act of Congress in 1958 to commemorate the culmination and 1805-1806 winter encampment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The memorial centers around a replicated fort structure.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the process of preserving historic sites under the National Park Service (NPS) by examining the history of Fort Clatsop National Memorial. Through this examination it is possible to understand the realities of the national preservation system and the ideals fostered by those involved …

Logging Subsystem Performance: Model And Evaluation, Thomas K. Clark

Dissertations and Theses

Transaction logging is an integral part of ensuring proper transformation of data from one state to another in modern data management. Because of this, the throughput of the logging subsystem can be critical to the throughput of an application. The purpose of this research is to break the log bottleneck at minimum cost.

We first present a model for evaluating a logging subsystem, where a logging subsystem is made up of a log device, a log backup device, and the interconnect algorithm between the two, which we term the log backup method. Included in the logging model is a set …

The Effects Of Phonological Processes On The Speech Intelligibility Of Young Children, Susanne Shotola-Hardt

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between occurrence of 10 phonological processes, singly and in groups, with mean percentage of intelligibility of connected speech samples. Participants in the study included 4 adult listeners (3 females, one male) and 46 speakers aged 48 to 66 months (16 females, 30 males). Percentage of occurrence scores for phonological processes (independent variables) were obtained by the administration of The Assessment of Phonological Processes - Revised (Hodson, 1986). Percentage of intelligibility for 100-word connected speech samples (dependent variables) were obtained by orthographic transcription (words understood divided by 100).

The single processes …

Minimization Of Generalized Reed-Muller Expansion And Its Sub-Class, Xiaoqiang Zeng

Dissertations and Theses

Several classes of AND-EXOR circuit expressions have been defined and their relationship have been shown. A new class of AND-EXOR circuit, the Partially Mixed Polarity Reed-Muller Expression(PMPRM), which is a subclass of the Generalized Reed-Muller expression, is created, along with an efficient minimization algorithm. This new AND/EXOR circuit form has the following features: • Since this sub-family of ESOP (with a total of n2n-I22n-i - (n-1)2n forms which includes the 2n Fixed-Polarity Reed-Muller forms) is much larger than the Kronecker Reed-Muller(KRM) expansion(with 3n forms), generally the minimal form of this expansion will be much closer to the minimal ESOP than …

Landslide Inventory And Susceptibility Mapping Of The Upper Canyon Creek Basin, Cascade Range, Skamania County, Washington, Lawrence P. Growney

Dissertations and Theses

Contact relations, and bedrock and overburden characteristics for approximately 8100 ha of the upper Canyon Creek basin, Skamania County, Washington, have been assessed in order to determine the causes and extent of failures and to assign slope failure susceptibilities to the area. The study area is located in the western Cascade Range on land administered by the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Clear-cutting over the past 30 years has impacted between 50% to 80% of the study area.

The total surface area occupied by failure deposits (198.6 ha) is less than 2.5% of the study area. Failures occur by one of …

Temporal Characteristics Of Words Surrounding A Moment Of Stuttering, Janice Kaye Young

Dissertations and Theses

Past theories have shown that stuttering results from a breakdown in the speaker's accurate timing of movement from one sound to the next. The efficacy of timing therapies is based on the proposal that stuttering diminishes as the amount of planning time for the phonetic voice-onset coordinations increases (Perkins, Bell, Johnson & Stocks, 1979). Acoustic information as to the parameters of the timing breakdown is critical to designing fluency facilitation and stuttering treatment programs. The present research investigated differences in word durations in the vicinity of the stuttered moment. Durations of words inunediately preceding and following the stutter were examined …

Reflection And Refraction Of Light From Nonlinear Boundaries, Mohammad Azadeh

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis deals with the topic of reflection and refraction of light from the boundary of nonlinear materials in general, and saturating amplifiers in particular. We first study some of the basic properties of the light waves in nonlinear materials. We then develop a general formalism to model the reflection and refraction of light with an arbitrary angle of incidence from the boundary of a nonlinear medium. This general formalism is then applied to the case of reflection and refraction from the boundary of linear dielectrics. It will be shown that in this limit, it reduces to the well known …

An Examination Of The Occurrences Of Metaphor In Introductory Engineering Textbooks, Hartwell S. Francis

Dissertations and Theses

The aim of this study is to identify the use of metaphor in university-level introductory engineering textbooks. Engineering is an important field of study for foreign students in the United States. In order to determine the linguistic and cultural problems foreign students of this field may have, two introductory engineering textbooks are examined for occurrences of metaphors.

Two corpora of 20,000 words each drawn from introductory textbooks used at two four-year, public universities are examined for occurrences of metaphor. A combined semantic and pragmatic test for metaphor is applied to each word used in the corpora to determine if the …

Peer Correction By Non-Native Speakers Of English In Oral Group Work, Bill Stevenson

Dissertations and Theses

This research is observational and descriptive. Its primary purpose is to provide data on the extent to which, and how, Non-Native Speakers (NNSs) of English engage in error correction of their peers when participating in classroom oral group work. In addition, it shows to what extent these learners self-correct their own errors in the same situation. The over-arching focus of the study is to examine the role of second language learners to determine whether they possess the potential to play a more active and productive part in their own language learning. Nine beginning level adult university ESL students are the …

The Geology Of Parrett Mountain, Oregon, And Its Influences On The Local Groundwater Systems, Brett Todd Brodersen

Dissertations and Theses

A geologic study of the Parrett Mountain area, located twenty miles (32 kms) south-southwest of Portland, Oregon, was initiated by the Oregon Water Resources Department. The main goal was to create a stratigraphic and structural model of Parrett Mountain in order to better understand the local basalt aquifers present there.

Previous geologic studies of the area revealed the mountain to be composed of Columbia River basalt. Field mapping and hand lithologic and geochemical analyses allowed the basalt to be subdivided into eleven basalt flows. These flows are as follows: (from oldest to youngest) the Wapshilla Ridge (WpR), the Ortley-Grouse Creek …

The Concepts Of Mother In Children's Stories In Translation From Print To Visual Media: A Content Analysis, Karen Martin Tanski

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this research was two-fold. First, this thesis sought to uncover the implicit concepts associated with mothers in children's stories. Second, this thesis attempted to chart changes in portrayals of mother when translated from print to a visual medium. This research maintains that the concepts of mother in children's stories contain cultural ideals that are related to society's evolving perceptions of mother.

Eighteen mother/surrogate mother portrayals were analyzed in 15 novels and 15 videotapes. Each portrayal was coded according to marital status, range of behaviors, 41 individual behaviors within five categories, and the amount of storytime.

The results …

Sediment Yield Analysis Of Reservoir #1, Bull Run Watershed, West Cascade Mountains, Oregon, Doann M. Hamilton

Dissertations and Theses

Bull Run Watershed was set aside in late the 1800s as the water supply source for the City of Portland. Other than two dams being constructed, Reservoir #1 (1929) and Reservoir #2 (1962), development of the land had been minimal as public access was restricted. In the early 1960s, land management changed with increased road building and timber removal raising concerns about increased sediment discharge into the reservoirs. The objective of this study is to evaluate how much and how fast the sediment has accumulated in Reservoir #1, and to determine if the rate of sediment accumulation has changed over …

Computer Grammar Checkers And Esl Writers, Robert Lee Gaynor

Dissertations and Theses

The use of word processors has become common in writing instruction for students of English as a second language (ESL). Recent developments in microcomputer technology have increased the number of "tools" or writing aids that are incorporated into word processing programs. Among these are computer style and grammar checkers, programs that attempt to identify and diagnose stylistic, grammatical, and mechanical problems in writing.

This study examines the suitability of commercial grammar checking programs for use by ESL writers through descriptive analysis of program features and evaluation of accuracy. The programs evaluated are Grammatik 5, Microsoft Word 6.0 and Correct Grammar …

Circuit Modeling Of Switched Linear Networks, Fardin Ansari

Dissertations and Theses

The use of switched linear networks is prevalent in power processing systems such as dc-to-dc power converters. These converters provide regulated dc output power and are widely used in the power supplies for computers and peripherals. As with most systems where high performance is a criterion, the power converter is usually enclosed in a feedback loop. Feedback design usually entails the use of small signal (linear) models with linear feedback design techniques. There exists a large number of small signal models, but most of them are ad hoc. A describing function approach has previously been presented which determines the exact …

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: Jack Dunn has been a while of motion, a non-stop talker and a winning baseball coach for the past 20 years; science, social science and liberal arts general requirements are gone and all eyes are on Portland State; what happens to the children when there is no home to go home to?; Oregonians thought they were safe from radon, but a new study has uncovered local hot spots; and more.

China's Policies Toward The Soviet Union And The United States Before And In The Korean War, Ji Bao Yan

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis deals with China's policy making toward both the Soviet Union and the United States in late 1949 and early 1950 and how they made the decision to enter the conflict, by making use of recently declassified Chinese sources and available American sources.

A Study Of Japan's Foreign Policy Behavior: The Discrepancy Between Japan's Foreign Policy And Its Voting Behavior In The United Nations General Assembly, Atsuko Sato

Dissertations and Theses

Japan has maintained a low profile in its diplomacy since the end of World War II, relying heavily on the United States for its security and prosperity. The cold war structure allowed Japan to maintain its passive foreign policy behavior. By the end of 1980s, West-East confrontations largely ended and global issues such as arms control, environmental problem, human rights, economic development, and ethnic conflicts became the main international concerns. It was expected that in this changed world environment, Japan as an economic power, would take on a more active international role. Yet Japan has not shown any significant political …