Digital Commons Network^™

Role Of The Warrant In Presidential Debates : 1960, 1976, & 1996, Aaron Nicole Kaio

Dissertations and Theses

Every four years in America we make a decision about which candidate is best suited to be our next president. Over the past twenty years a standard component of the presidential campaign has been televised debates. These debates are supposed to help the public get a better understanding of the candidates' ideas about government, our future, and to demonstrate analytical skills and their ability to think on their feet.

This study set out to see how the candidates' arguments measured up to some basic argumentation standards. According to several scholars, none of the televised presidential debates qualify as 'true debates', …

Technology-Enhanced Presentations In Large Classrooms : Effects On Adult Academic Achievement And Computer Attitudes, Pamela Rae Hilberg

Dissertations and Theses

Rising enrollments and budget restrictions are resulting in larger class sizes which can lead to difficulties with learning. Computer technology has been suggested as a tool that may help overcome some of these difficulties. Research on outcomes is important to find ways that technology may be used by instructors to help students with information processing (Gagne & Driscoll, 1988), and to see if the financial commitment required for integrating educational technology is warranted.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the academic achievement and computer attitudes of students in courses taught with traditional presentations and technology-enhanced presentations taught …

The Stigma Of Obesity : Beliefs About And Attitudes Toward Fat/Obese Persons, Sally Jean Clute

Dissertations and Theses

This research explores the relationship between beliefs about and attitudes toward fat/obese persons, specifically in regard to issues of attribution and perceived responsibility for the physical condition. The purpose of the research is to assess the extent to which fat/obese persons are derogated, given whether or not they are perceived to be held responsible for their fatness/obesity. It utilizes attribution theory (Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967; Weiner, 1986), in particular, internal locus of control and issues of consensus and distinctiveness (Kelley, 1967) and controllability (Weiner, 1986). The main hypothesis is that fat/obese people will be viewed more …

It’S More Exciting Than Your Life, Jennifer L. Foster

Dissertations and Theses

Crux Expanse is a virtual reality game produced by Phantazmode Corporation, the largest entertainment corporation in the international gaming world. In Matrixgate, Orange County, California, the center of the world's entertainment industry, the year is 2026. Ella Menopey, the protagonist, is a fifteen year-old game designer and tester for a small entertainment corporation, Arcadia. Though Ella is only fifteen years of age, she's a tough girl. If not physically capable to take care of herself, Ella's technologically capable through Nicolai, her Netherworld Netweave computer system and through the pistol she carries with her at all times. Her father left when …

Using A Realistic Job Preview To Communicate Organizational Culture, Johanna Glode

Dissertations and Theses

The present study sought to determine how organizational culture information could best be presented to job applicants for the purpose of attracting employees who will fit into an organization's culture. Attraction to the organization's culture was hypothesized to influence applicant self-selection into the company. Two different types of Realistic Job Previews (RJPs), semantic and episodic, were compared in their ability to convey information accurately about a hypothetical organizational culture. Participant knowledge of the culture was hypothesized to align objective, or actual, fit with subjective perceptions of fit.

Knowledge of the organization's culture, objective fit, subjective fit, attractiveness of the culture, …

“Just A Drop In The Bucket” : An Analysis Of Child Rescue Efforts On Behalf Of Korean Children, 1951 To 1964, Sydne J. Didier

Dissertations and Theses

From 1951 to 1964, American sponsored relief and adoption agencies evacuated more than two thousand children from the nation of South Korea, adopting these children into American families and inspiring some of the most intensive discussions about international adoption yet to occur in the United States.

Intervention on behalf of Korean children began in the 19.SOs when American Gis sought to aid child victims of war, a relief effort that was carefully documented by American media outlets seeking some means of understanding the U.S. intervention in Korea. When the Korean War ended in stalemate in 1954, many were inspired by …

The Green Dyadic Formulation For Radiation Problems With Arbitrary Sources Embedded In Stratified Multi-Layer Structures : Application To Molecular Fluorescence Problems, Robert Lyle Hartman

Dissertations and Theses

The Green Dyadic method for computing fields due to current sources between parallel interfaces of dielectric materials is studied. Computer implementation of the method as presented in a well-known article leads to the conclusion that significant errors are present. Two dissimilar methods of solution lead to corrected formulations which are shown to be equivalent. The same correction is found in the research literature. For confirmation, computations are performed in examples involving an emitting dipole by both the Green dyadic method and Sommerfeld' s Hertz vector method. Finally, the computational examples are used to compute fluorescence decay rates for emitting dipoles …

Gender Socialization Of Preschoolers : The Influence Of Parental Orientation And Preschool Environment, Alice Blackwell Passannante

Dissertations and Theses

Because there are different sets of attitudes and standards that are applied to girls and boys, and because society is permeated with messages delineating the differences between females and males, there is a rapid accumulation of knowledge by children about those differences. There is a need for further examination of the overall impact of different facets of gender socialization.

The purpose of the present study was to clarify the ways in which parental beliefs and practices as well as daycare environment affect the gender-typing of preschoolers. Seventy-nine children from three different preschools were interviewed using Likert, forced-choice, and open-ended items. …

Gravity Drainage Prior To Cake Filtration, Scott A. Wells, Gregory K. Savage

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

During the initial stages of a Buchner funnel or specific resistance test, gravity drainage occurs prior to application of the pressure differential. Some allow time for a small cake to form by gravity drainage. Filtrate data from the gravity drainage period can be used to determine constitutive properties of the cake under a hydrostatic pressure gradient. The constitutive properties that define the structure of the cake include the permeability and porosity as functions of the applied stress. Equations governing the drainage rate during a gravity filtration experiment assuming a constant and a non-constant average cake permeability and cake porosity were …

Reporting The Counterrevolution : The Sed Perception Of “Prague Spring” As Reported In Neues Deutschland January 1-August 21, 1968, Lee Allen Evans

Dissertations and Theses

In 1968, Czechoslovakia attempted to sweep the ashes of Stalinism from its path to socialism. The reform-movement "Prague Spring" united the nation with a goal to achieve a more just form of socialist society. When the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968, they destroyed this dream.

The purpose of this thesis is to show how the SED interpreted events in Prague and presented their analysis to the East German public. Although imbedded in events in Czechoslovakia, this is an essay on German history.

The SED presented a public image of complete unity. The …

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: The six galleries on campus display local and national art—they also do great First Thursdays; help your child become a good speller. Plus, take a test to determine your own spelling aptitude; the food industry is finding new ways of doing business with the help of a PSU management program; when a company needs turning around, Renee Fellman is the specialist a history journal of the Pacific Rim is right at home in Cramer Hall; and more.

Adaptive Prefetching For Device-Independent File I/O, Dan Revel, Dylan Mcnamee, David Steere, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Device independent I/O has been a holy grail to operating system designers since the early days of UNIX. Unfortunately, existing operating systems fall short of this goal for multimedia applications. Techniques such as caching and sequential read-ahead can help mask I/O latency in some cases, but in others they increase latency and add substantial jitter. Multimedia applications, such as video players, are sensitive to vagaries in performance since I/O latency and jitter affect the quality of presentation. Our solution uses adaptive prefetching to reduce both latency and jitter. Applications submit file access plans to the prefetcher, which then generates I/O …

Meeting Notes 1997-12-11 , Joint Policy Advisory Committee On Transportation

Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation

No abstract provided.

The First Publicly Funded, Government Sponsored Natural Medicine Clinic: A Descriptive Case Study, Jennifer Lynne Schneider

Dissertations and Theses

The Natural Medicine Clinic (NMC) is the first publicly funded, government sponsored clinic of its kind in the United States to integrate natural medicine and conventional medicine at the public health level. The purpose of this thesis was to provide a holistic, contextually-based, in-depth, and meaningful description of the emergence and development of the NMC.

For the purposes of illuminating and understanding the formation of the NMC, a descriptive case study was chosen. The case study approach is considered an excellent strategy for describing in-depth a unique, real-life phenomenon such as the NMC, and when posing how or why research …

Flow And Congestion Control For Internet Streaming Applications, Shanwei Cen, Calton Pu, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The emergence of streaming multimedia players provides users with low latency audio and video content over the Internet. Providing high-quality, best-effort, real-time multimedia content requires adaptive delivery schemes that fairly share the available network bandwidth with reliable data protocols such as TCP. This paper proposes a new flow and congestion control scheme, SCP (Streaming Control Protocol) , for real-time streaming of continuous multimedia data across the Internet. The design of SCP arose from several years of experience in building and using adaptive real-time streaming video players. SCP addresses two issues associated with real-time streaming. First, it uses a congestion control …

Sinusoidal-Gaussian Beams In Complex Optical Systems, Lee W. Casperson, Dennis G. Hall, Anthony A. Tovar

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sinusoidal-Gaussian beam solutions are derived for the propagation of electromagnetic waves in free space and in media having at most quadratic transverse variations of the index of refraction and the gain or loss. The resulting expressions are also valid for propagation through other real and complex lens elements and systems that can be represented in terms of complex beam matrices. The solutions are in the form of sinusoidal functions of complex argument times a conventional Gaussian beam factor. In the limit of large Gaussian beam size, the sine and cosine factors of the beams are dominant and reduce to the …

Meeting Notes 1997-11-13 [Part A] , Joint Policy Advisory Committee On Transportation

Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation

No abstract provided.

Waterfall Lasers, Lee W. Casperson

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Laser concepts can be applied to a broad range of physical phenomena. One of the closest parallels occurs with the fluttering oscillations that are sometimes observed in the falling sheets of water associated with fountains, dams, and natural waterfalls. In many respects these fluid feedback oscillations are similar to the electromagnetic modes of typical lasers, and recognition of this similarity led to the interpretation of the waterfall behavior. Gain profiles for the waterfall oscillations are developed, and the relationship of experimental waterfall data to the laser-like models is considered in detail.

Meeting Notes 1997-10-09 [Part A] , Joint Policy Advisory Committee On Transportation

Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation

No abstract provided.

A Player For Adaptive Mpeg Video Streaming Over The Internet, Jonathan Walpole, Rainer Koster, Shanwei Cen, Crispin Cowan, David Maier, Dylan Mcnamee, Calton Pu, David Steere, Liujin Yu

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes the design and implementation of a real-time, streaming, Internet video and audio player. The player has a number of advanced features including dynamic adaptation to changes in available bandwidth, latency and latency variation; a multi-dimensional media scaling capability driven by user-specified quality of service (QoS) requirements; and support for complex content comprising multiple synchronized video and audio streams. The player was developed as part of the QUASAR t project at Oregon Graduate Institute, is freely available, and serves as a testbed for research in adaptive resource management and QoS control.

Meeting Notes 1997-08-14 , Joint Policy Advisory Committee On Transportation

Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation

No abstract provided.

City Club Of Portland Report: Domestic Violence -- Everybody's Business, City Club Of Portland (Portland, Or.)

City Club of Portland

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Lymph Sac Pressure On Lymph Heart Pressure Development In The Toad Bufo Marinus, Michael Georgitsis

Dissertations and Theses

Lymph hearts play an important role in blood volume regulation in anurans by controlling the movement of fluid from the lymphatic spaces to the vasculature. The anatomical continuity between lymph sacs and lymph hearts predicts a coupling of pressure between the two structures which may represent a physical basis for lymph heart regulation. The precise relationship between lymph heart pressure and lymph heart output was not examined so that conclusions regarding changes in work performed by the hearts as a result of changing lymph sac pressure could not be made. However, increases in lymph sac pressure led to increases in …

Meeting Notes 1997-07-10 [Part A] , Joint Policy Advisory Committee On Transportation

Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation

No abstract provided.

Meeting Notes 1997-06-12 , Joint Policy Advisory Committee On Transportation

Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation

No abstract provided.

Esl Cd-Rom Principles And Their Application: A Software Evaluation, Stephanie Burgi Lamonica

Dissertations and Theses

CD-ROM applications within the past 5 years have aided the availability of Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) on a mass consumer level. This study assesses how the instructional design of commercial CALL English as a Second Language (ESL) CD-ROM materials make up for the lack of a human instructional component. The framework within which the evaluation takes place is communicatively based. Using a tool developed specifically for the study, 8 software from 6 companies were systematically evaluated. The 3-step process followed in the evaluation makes concessions for student, instructional designer, and instructor needs. Research questions address how the areas of …

El Impacto Social Del Alcoholismo En Chin Chin El Teporocho (The Social Impact Of Alcoholism In Chin Chin El Teporocho), Juan Carlos Hernández

Dissertations and Theses

La idea central de esta investigación es analizar el impacto social del alcoholismo en la novela urbana Chin Chin el teporocho de Armando Ramírez, cuya narración se ubica en el barrio de Tepito, en Mexico, Distrito Federal.

El autor, a través de un panorama histórico y ágil, informa al lector del consumo de bebidas embriagantes en la ciudad de México y su respectivo impacto en la sociedad tepiteña, así como la aparición social y psicológica del personaje identificado por Ramírez como el Teporocho.

En este estudio, Hernández nos confronta con la violencia verbal y física que existe en Chin Chin …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet June 1997, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The June 1997 Monthly packet includes the June agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held May 1997.

Opening Doors: Culture Learning And Conversational Narratives With First Generation Hmong Refugee Women, Lucy Vincent Kimbro

Dissertations and Theses

The life experiences of two first generation Hmong refugee women form the basis of this study. Through loosely structured but guided interviews, memories of their lives in Laos and in refugee camps in Thailand, as well as their perspectives, feelings, and opinions about current aspects of their lives, the effects of American culture on their family; and their engagement in the language and culture learning process are explored.

An examination of the involvement of Hmong women in research and ethnographic accounts concerning Hmong culture, history, and experience, show that Hmong women's perspectives have often been overlooked or disregarded. One purpose …

Combining The Historical And The Personal In Painting, Christopher A. Shotola-Hardt

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis project consists of five large scale, abstract paintings executed on Masonite panels. A major component of these paintings is the heavily built-up surface texture. In order to achieve this heavy, sculptural surface, plaster and acrylic media have been applied in an aggressive, spontaneous manner using variously-sized masonry knives. The paintings are largely action-oriented. They are non-neutral, and they bespeak a great deal of intensity on the part of the artist.

The five paintings contain emotional content based upon personal experiences and family history. In some cases, I began a painting with the subject matter clearly in mind. In …