Digital Commons Network^™

Surveying Libraries To Identify Best Practices For A Menu Approach For Library Instruction Requests, Candice Benjes-Small, Jennifer L. Dorner, Robert Schroeder

Communications in Information Literacy

A challenging situation has developed in regards to library instruction. With increases in both the quantity of information and the variety of information technologies being made available to researchers, the information literacy landscape is getting more complex. Simultaneously, the time allotted for library instruction is remaining essentially the same. In order to market the breadth of content available for library instruction sessions and to promote collaboration between librarians and teaching faculty in order to create optimal instruction sessions an 'a la carte menu' approach to library instruction requests was adopted by Radford University in 2004. Since the late 1990s a …

Conference Report: 5th Annual Georgia Conference On Information Literacy, Rebecca Ziegler, Mark Lewis Richardson

Communications in Information Literacy

The 5th annual Georgia Conference on Information Literacy took place in Savannah, Georgia on October 3-4, 2008. Since its inception, this conference has drawn participants from across the United States and even a few from abroad. Jointly sponsored by the Zach S. Henderson Library, the Department of Writing and Linguistics, the College of Education, and the Center for Continuing Education at Georgia Southern University, the conference offers both theoretical and practical discussions of the complex issues involved in teaching students how to find, interpret and use information in emerging electronic technologies against the backdrop of one of America's loveliest cities.

Interview With David Mcmahon, Cloudburst Recycling, 2009 (Audio), David Mcmahon

All Sustainability History Project Oral Histories

Interview of David McMahan by Allison Dowd at Portland State University on November 19th, 2009.

The interview index is available for download.

Generalists, Specialists, And The Best Experts: Where Do Systems Thinkers Fit In?, Joshua Hughes

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

GENERALIST / SPECIALIST: A generalist is someone who has studied a little bit of everything, and in the end knows nothing well in particular. By contrast, a specialist is someone who has studied a single subject, and as a consequence does not even know his own subject, because every item of knowledge is related to other components of the whole system. The good scholar or scientist--like the good chef, manager, clinician, or orchestra conductor--is an expert in one field or craft, and knowledgeable in many. Like a mouse, he can explore the details of a terrain; and, like an owl, …

Raps Sheet, November 2009, Retirement Association Of Portland State

RAPS Sheet: Monthly Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Mutual Existence Of Nascent And Senescent World Orders, Burak Akcaper

Center for Turkish Studies Occasional Paper Series

In this essay I will address the issue of change in the international system which the scholars of International Relations have grappled with however inadequately. Accordingly, I will argue that this deficiency stems in no small part from the frequent mutual distance between scholars and practitioners of international affairs. I will, therefore, try to bridge this gap. Ultimately this essay will:

a) Suggest a model (mutual existence of nascent and senescent orders) equipped with a number of hypotheses (laws) of systemic change in the international ―order;

b) Provide a baseline for bringing scholarly and practitioners‘ perspectives closer together, including by …

Center For Academic Excellence: Annual Report 2008-2009, Patrice Hudson, Leslie G. Mcbride, Kevin Kecskes, Amy Spring, Janelle De Carrico Voegele, Michael Chamberlain, Vincent Schreck

Community Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since its inception in 1994, the Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) has provided a comprehensive array of cross-disciplinary and discipline-specific development activities in support of the educational function of the university. The Center has a dual mission of faculty development in teaching, learning, and assessment and in the development of community-university partnerships. Th e Center is a place of innovation, a gathering place for idea generation and testing, and a place where faculty may turn for individual consultation and professional advice. Increasingly, CAE supports faculty interested in community-engaged research.

We are proud to present the 2008-2009 Annual Report of the …

State Experiences With Affordable Housing Plus Services: Report To Seniors And Persons With Disabilities, On The Move, Paula C. Carder, Erika Zoller

Institute on Aging Publications

Housing developers, providers, policy makers, and advocates, increasingly recognize that for some groups of individuals, access to affordable housing alone is "not enough." That is, some individuals require more than shelter. Examples include individuals who have chronic health conditions (e.g., HIV/AIDS), those with physical or cognitive limitations (e.g., persons with developmental disabilities, adults with physical disabilities), and those who have a combination of health conditions or who cannot thrive in traditional housing (e.g., persons who have been homeless, individuals with chronic mental illness). Increasingly, housing providers, social service agencies, advocates, states, and federal agencies have recognized the need to combine …

City Management Theory And Practice: A Foundation For Educating The Next Generation Of Local Government Administrators, Scott Douglas Lazenby

Dissertations and Theses

Due to the retirement of the baby boom generation, many individuals, in a relatively short period of time, will need to be trained and educated to step into local government senior leadership positions. Ideally, the education and training of this new leadership cadre should be guided by a well known and proven body of theory that helps us understand the competencies the next generation of public service need to possess in order to be effective in their work. The purpose of this research is to assess whether such a body of work exists and, if so, whether it is successfully …

Hardiness, Well-Being, And Health: A Meta-Analytic Summary Of Three Decades Of Research, Celina Marie Oliver

Dissertations and Theses

In recent decades, as scientific understanding regarding the effects of stress on health and well-being has grown, researchers have shown increasing interest in personal factors such as hardiness that may enhance one's ability to remain resilient under stressful conditions. Hardiness is a complex trait composed of three components (commitment, control, and challenge) that combine synergistically to increase stress tolerance. Over time, a large and complex body of research has accumulated, and while many qualitative reviews have been conducted, quantitative summaries remain rare. This study provides an empirical synthesis of research findings examining the relationships between hardiness and correlates related to …

Sociology Of Islam & Muslim Societies, Newsletter No. 4, Tugrul Keskin

Sociology of Islam & Muslim Societies Newsletter

Table of Content:

• Introduction, Charles Kurzman
• An Interview with Dr. Y. Tzvi Langermann on Islamic Studies and Islam in Israel by Tugrul Keskin and Najm al-Din Yousefi
• The Islamicity of Different Interpretations of ḤIJĀB by Rachel Woodlock
• Representation of Islam and Muslims by the British Government Between 2001 and 2007 by Leon Moosavi
• Scholarly Research in the Madrassa: A Brief Overview by Maulana Waris Mazhari (Translated by Yoginder Sikand)
• Shah Mahmoud Hanifi’s lecture on the US Foreign Policy and Afghanistan: The Colonial Market for Afghan Languages by Lindsay N. Meath
• A New Book: The Clash of Modernities: The Islamist Challenge …

Holism And Human History, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper uses a systems-theoretic model to structure an account of human history. According to the model, a process, after its beginning and early development, often reaches a critical stage where it encounters some limitation. If the limitation is overcome, development does not face a comparable challenge until a second critical juncture is reached, where obstacles to further advance are more severe. At the first juncture, continued development requires some complexity-managing innovation; at the second, it needs some event of systemic integration in which the old organizing principle of the process is replaced by a new principle. Overcoming the first …

The Importance Of Interpersonal Discussion And Self-Efficacy In Knowledge, Attitude, And Practice Models, Joyee S. Chatterjee, Anurudra Bhanot, Lauren B. Frank, Sheila T. Murphy, Gerry Power

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study contributes to the theoretical discussions about the influence of education-entertainment programming on consumers of the genre. Data from the end-line evaluation of an EE program produced by the BBC World Service Trust in India, Jasoos (Detective) Vijay, is used. The analysis focused on 834 sexually active young men, the key demographic target audience for the program. Using structural equation modeling techniques, an initial knowledge, attitudes, and practices model is examined. Adding self-efficacy and interpersonal discussion improve this model. Not only is interpersonal discussion important, but the target others with whom that discussion occurs are also important for predicting …

Cultural Responses To Climate Change In The Holocene, Richard Prentice

Anthós

Variable Holocene climate conditions have caused cultures to thrive, adapt or fail. The invention of agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals allowed sedentary societies to develop and are the result of the climate becoming warmer after the last glaciation. The subsequent cooling of the Younger Dryas forced humans to concentrate into geographic areas that had an abundant water supply and ultimately favorable conditions for the use of agriculture and widespread domestication of plants and animals. Population densities would have reached a threshold and forced a return to foraging, however the end of the Younger Dryas at 10,000 BP …

The Effects Of Participation In Portland State University’S Mcnair Scholars Program On Undergraduates, Tyanne R. Conner

Dissertations and Theses

Compared with their multi-generation counterparts, first-generation college students face many challenges in the field of higher education. These students experience relatively lower levels of access to college, demonstrate lower rates of persistence through college, and exhibit lower bachelor's degree completion rates than multi-generation students. The results of these cumulative disadvantages are that, compared to multigeneration students, first-generation students do not complete Ph.D.'s at the same rates, have lower subsequent earnings, and are underrepresented as faculty at colleges and universities.

A review of the literature reveals that most studies on McNair programs focus on the instrumental effects of participation, such as …

Congress And The Era, Emily Yoder

Anthós

The Equal Rights Amendment was a constitutional amendment that guaranteed that the "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." In this paper I will analyze the policy process in the critical years from the ERA's discharge from committee in 1970 to its passage through Congress in 1972 through both primary documents and scholarly opinion. By thoroughly examining the controversy over the ERA through the views and strategies of those advocating and opposing it, I will show how the momentum for social change characterized …

Primary Care, Males, Masculinity, And Suicide : A Grounded Theory Study, John Thomas Casey

Dissertations and Theses

Suicide completion in the United States is a public health problem that claims over 30,000 lives annually. Most of these suicide victims are white males who die by firearm, and who typically are not taking antidepressant medication and are not involved in mental health treatment at the time of death. Depression is closely linked to suicide death, and treatment for depression is provided mainly within primary health care settings where most suicide decedents have been seen at some point in the year prior to their death. The rate of male depression is likely under-reported, partly due to gender-bias within primary …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet May 2009, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The May 2009 Monthly packet includes the May agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held May 2009.

Exploring The Sensitivity Of Horn's Parallel Analysis To The Distributional Form Of Random Data, Alexis Dinno

Community Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Horn's parallel analysis (PA) is the method of consensus in the literature on empirical methods for deciding how many components/factors to retain. Different authors have proposed various implementations of PA. Horn's seminal 1965 article, a 1996 article by Thompson and Daniel, and a 2004 article by Hayton et al., all make assertions about the requisite distributional forms of the random data generated for use in PA. Readily available software is used to test whether the results of PA are sensitive to several distributional prescriptions in the literature regarding the rank, normality, mean, variance, and range of simulated data on a …

Land Use And Crime Patterns In Coquitlam Detachment, Kathryn Wuschke, Patricia Brantingham, Jordan Ginther

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Poster presented to the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies in 2009. Examines land use and crime patterns in Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam. Data shows that commercial and civic, institutional, and recreational land uses display the highest rates of all crime types under investigation in both Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam.

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: A Professor’s pollution research places him in an elite academy; a new grant allows students and faculty to champion sustainable solutions; through willpower and scholarships, Caressa Sims is the first in her family to earn a university degree; for 20 years, alumnus Steve Amen has shown Oregonians Oregon; and more.

Modeling Subprime Mortgage Delinquency, Default, Prepayment And Loss, Olgay Cangur

Dissertations and Theses

The current financial environment presents significant challenges for the mortgage industry. Declining house prices have surfaced the importance of delinquency, loan default and loss predictions. Simple models of prepayment behavior are no longer applicable. Investors, originators, servicers and regulators are in need of more accurate predictions for their portfolios of interest.

This dissertation focuses on two topics relevant to modeling residential mortgages. The first topic provides a framework for modeling delinquencies, prepayments, defaults and losses that represents an enhancement over previous studies. A total of nine loan payment statuses are used (current, thirty-days delinquent, sixty-days delinquent, ninety-days delinquent, early foreclosure, …

Quaternions, Octonions, And The Quantization Of Games, Aden Omar Ahmed

Dissertations and Theses

We present an effect on classical games that is obtained by replacing the notion of probability distribution with the notions of quantum superposition and measurement. Our particular focus will be on two and three player games where each player has precisely two pure strategic choices. Games in normal form are represented as "payoff" functions.

Game quantization requires the extension of these functions to much larger domains. The main result of this work is the co-ordinatization of these extended functions by either the quaternions or octonions in order to obtain computationally friendly versions of these functions. This computational capability is then …

Ethnic Place Making: Thirty Years Of Brazilian Immigration To South Framingham, Massachusetts, Laura Aldea Skorczeski

Dissertations and Theses

Over the past thirty years, Massachusetts has become a hub of Brazilian immigration. Within Massachusetts, the town of Framingham has the highest concentration of Brazilian residents; one census tract in the southern part of this Boston suburb is an astounding 57.4 percent Brazilian. The presence of the Brazilian population in downtown Framingham, also referred to as South Framingham, has transformed the area into a landscape of Brazilian ethnicity.

When Brazilians began arriving in South Framingham in the early 1980s, the downtown Central Business District was a blighted landscape. This thesis analyzes how Brazilian identities have become imprinted on the landscape …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet April 2009, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The April 2009 Monthly packet includes the April agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held March 2009

Inflammatory Biomarkers And Subclinical Atherosclerosis In African-American Women With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (Sle), Edith M. Williams, Carlos J. Crespo, Joan Dorn

Community Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Women with lupus are at increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Previous studies of atherosclerosis in SLE have not been representative of the minority groups most affected by lupus and its complications. Therefore, a study of 41 lupus cases and 83 controls was conducted to investigate the relationship between carotid atherosclerosis and inflammation in African-American women. Participation consisted of a questionnaire, physical examination, fasting blood draw, and ultrasound of the carotid arteries. There were observed differences between cases and controls with regard to carotid intima media thickness (IMT) and traditional cardiovascular risk factors, although few reached statistical significance. Tumor …

Raps Sheet, April 2009, Retirement Association Of Portland State

RAPS Sheet: Monthly Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Research Choice And Finance In University Bioscience, David E. Ervin, Steven T. Buccola, Hui Yang

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Academic bioscience's rising importance for downstream technology and growing private sector relationships have evoked substantial policy attention. We contribute to the scrutiny by asking how university bioscientists design and finance their research, with particular attention to the mutuality of research portfolio choice and funding success. The analysis requires consideration of other major influences on academic science, including scientific norms, human capital, and institutional environment. Drawing on a national survey of university bioscientists, we find that public financial support encourages more basic investigation and private support encourages more applied investigation. Yet downstream research is only moderately more excludable than upstream. Once …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet March 2009, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

Faculty Senate minutes from meeting held March 2, 2009. This item contains the agenda, minutes, and attachments for the Faculty Senate meeting on this date. Some issues accompanied by reports from officers of administration and faculty committees.

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet February 2009, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The February 2009 Monthly packet includes the February agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held February 2009.