Digital Commons Network^™

Sharing Identity: Indexing Cultural Perspectives Through Writing Responses To Graphic Novels, Alex Romagnoli

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Indexing identity through writing responses among ELL students in response to a graphic novel helps provide insight into how writing responses represent people and how graphic novels can aid in that process of self-discovery through their inherent multimodalities. This study takes looks at four students in an ELL class at an urban high school in southern Pennsylvania as they responded in writing to a portion of Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City (2006). All of the participants took events from the portion of the graphic novel provided to them and indexed their urban, cultural perspectives through their …

Data Mining Ancient Script Image Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shruti Daggumati, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

The recent surge in ancient scripts has resulted in huge image libraries of ancient texts. Data mining of the collected images enables the study of the evolution of these ancient scripts. In particular, the origin of the Indus Valley script is highly debated. We use convolutional neural networks to test which Phoenician alphabet letters and Brahmi symbols are closest to the Indus Valley script symbols. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that overall the Phoenician alphabet is much closer than the Brahmi script to the Indus Valley script symbols.

Supporting English Language Learners Inside The Mathematics Classroom: One Teacher’S Unique Perspective Working With Students During Their First Years In America, Amy Marie Fendrick

Research and Evaluation in Education, Technology, Art, and Design

Reflecting upon my personal experiences teaching mathematics to English Language Learners (ELL) in a public high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, this essay largely focuses on the time I spent as the only Accelerated Math teacher in my school building. From 2012 – 2017, I taught three different subjects at this high school: Advanced Algebra, Algebra, and Accelerated Math. This essay highlights why I chose to become a math and ELL teacher, as well as the challenges, issues, struggles, and successes I experienced during my time teaching. I focus on the challenges I faced teaching students who did not share my …

Conceal And Carry: Communicating About Trauma, Triggers, And Second Assaults In The Classroom, Amy Arellano

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Challenging the predominance of rape culture within academia, this dissertation focuses on the intersection of academic conversations regarding the inclusion of trigger warnings. This project examines the academic trigger warning debate from its inception in January 2014 through its peak in May 2015. I argue that the implementation of trigger warnings serves as a visible adaptation within pedagogy to respond to the role trauma from sexual assaults may influence the classroom. To achieve this, I offer a careful examination of the trigger warning debate informed by an approach that puts Kenneth Burke’s indexing in conversation with Michael McGee’s ideographic analysis. …

Language Use By Spanish Heritage Speakers In The Classroom And The World And The Implications For Educators, Amanda Deras

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Looking at the patterns of language use, language attitudes, and language ideologies, this literature review investigates how Spanish heritage speakers’ use of Spanish and their views on using Spanish translate into the classroom. This paper looks at Spanish heritage language use in both official and unofficial spaces, putting emphasis on use in the classroom. Additionally, it looks at the language attitudes and ideologies Spanish heritage language speakers have toward the use of Spanish, English, and “Spanglish” in different contexts. Heritage language speakers, particularly Spanish heritage language speakers, are growing in number in the United States and in American schools. In …

Patterns, Collaboration, Practice: Algorithms As Editing For Historic Periodicals, Elizabeth Lorang

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

This presentation positions my recent work on the algorithmic “discovery” of poetic material in historic newspapers within the contexts of my various roles as an editor of periodical literature and also consider how duplicative processes and algorithms encode principles and values and function as editorial acts. Ultimately, I hope to pose a range of questions to prompt discussion around the place (or not) of machine learning in identifying and selecting texts and bodies of work; what ideas we’re actually exploring/are able to explore when we enlist technology in stages of this work; and the stakes of these activities, whether human …

"Maybe He's The Green Lantern": Low Socioeconomic Status In The University Writing Center, Wyn Richards

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

University students with low socioeconomic status face a variety of unique challenges. With income inequality rising amongst the general population in the US, the gap between students with high socioeconomic status university students identifying as having low socioeconomic status is also increasing. This master’s thesis examines scholarship regarding students with low socioeconomic status at the higher education level, through the lens of composition studies, turning the spotlight on writing center studies. Through an Institutional Review Board approved, qualitative research study, the gap in scholarship on the role socioeconomic status plays in the university writing center is examined. This qualitative study, …

Downscaling Africa’S Drought Forecasts Through Integration Of Indigenous And Scientific Drought Forecasts Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, Muthoni Masinde, Mwanjele Mwagha, Tsegaye Tadesse

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

In the wake of increased drought occurrences being witnessed in Sub-Saharan Africa, more localized and contextualized drought mitigation strategies are on the agendas of many researchers and policy makers in the region. The integration of indigenous knowledge on droughts with seasonal climate forecasts is one such strategy. The main challenge facing this integration, however, is the formal representation of highly-structured and holistic indigenous knowledge. In this paper, we demonstrate how the use of fuzzy cognitive mapping can address this challenge. Indigenous knowledge on droughts from five communities was modeled and represented using fuzzy cognitive maps. Maps from one of these …

Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Primes, Universals, And Syntax With Data From The Semantic Field Grace In The Old Testaments Of The King James Bible And Martin Luther’S German Bible, Mary K. Bolin

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

This paper examines the use of "Semantic Primes" or "Natural Semantic Metalanguage" (NSM) as developed by Wierzbicka and Goddard, comparing it with other techniques of semantic analysis and applying to the semantic field "Grace" as defined by Bolin (1999) in the King James English Bible and Luther's German Bible.

Women's And Gender Studies Spring 2018

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Information and Materials

On Friday, March 9, the Women’s & Gender Studies Program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha hosted the annual No Limits Student Research Conference. This year’s conference featured Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall (pictured below), founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center and the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College. Dr. Guy-Sheftall’s talk was “Gender and Activism in These Times.”

In all, 40 students presented their work at the conference. In addition to UNO, UNL, and UNK, students and faculty came from Hastings College, the University of Denver, Kansas State University, the University of Oklahoma, …

Lumos Literacy: Utilizing Harry Potter As A Guide For English Language Learners, Kayla Punt

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This research paper and project looks at teaching literacy in a 9^th grade Standard English classroom with accommodations for high-level English Language Learners through JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It explores three schools of thought surrounding ESL education: transitional bilingual education, developmental bilingual education, and two-way immersion, and then uses this information to guide a full unit plan, complete with assessments, a lesson map for 20 days, and two appendixes of lesson plans. Drawing inspiration from Parker Palmer (1997), Lourdes Ortega (2013), and Kylene Beers (2003), the unit focuses on the engaging elements of Harry Potter …

Speech Emotion Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Somayeh Shahsavarani

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Automatic speech recognition is an active field of study in artificial intelligence and machine learning whose aim is to generate machines that communicate with people via speech. Speech is an information-rich signal that contains paralinguistic information as well as linguistic information. Emotion is one key instance of paralinguistic information that is, in part, conveyed by speech. Developing machines that understand paralinguistic information, such as emotion, facilitates the human-machine communication as it makes the communication more clear and natural. In the current study, the efficacy of convolutional neural networks in recognition of speech emotions has been investigated. Wide-band spectrograms of the …

The Victorian Body, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The nineteenth century is extremely important for the study of embodiment because it is the period in which the modern body, as we currently understand it, was most thoroughly explored. This was the era when modern medical models of the body were developed and disseminated, when modern political relations to the body were instantiated, and when modern identities in relation to class, race, and gender were inscribed. While questions about the distinctions between personhood and the body were studied by the ancients, nineteenth-century developments in technology, economics, medicine, and science rendered such categories newly important for Britons who were the …

Czech Immigrants In Nebraska: A Question Of Identity And Assimilation, Katharine Meegan

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis examines the dynamics of cultural and social assimilation through the experiences of Czech immigrants into Nebraska. The Czechs' long struggle to maintain their ethnic identity has shaped their experiences with assimilation. After a review of assimilation theory, I conclude that the Czech experience with assimilation follows a “straight-line” assimilation model, a progression of assimilation that is complete by the third generation. Their relatively small size, settlement in rural areas, and a strong desire to maintain ethnic identity, as reflected in the formation of Czech language benevolent associations, gymnastic societies, and Czech language newspapers, led to “social” and “structural” …

Brain–Computer Interfaces For Augmentative And Alternative Communication: A Tutorial, Jonathan S. Brumberg, Kevin M. Pitt, Alana Mantie-Kozlowski, Jeremy D. Burnison

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose--Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to improve communication for people who require but are unable to use traditional augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices. As BCIs move toward clinical practice, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) will need to consider their appropriateness for AAC intervention.

Method--This tutorial provides a background on BCI approaches to provide AAC specialists foundational knowledge necessary for clinical application of BCI. Tutorial descriptions were generated based on a literature review of BCIs for restoring communication.

Results--The tutorial responses directly address 4 major areas of interest for SLPs who specialize in AAC: (a) the current state …

Increasing Our Vision For 21st-Century Digital Libraries, Elizabeth M. Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

This presentation

1. Reads digital library interfaces—or their "main door" interfaces—as glimpses into what we have thus far valued in the development of digital libraries
2. Frames a visual way of thinking about textual materials
3. Introduces the work of our research team—where we are now, and where we're headed
4. Draws some connections between the parts

This presentation is very much a look into thinking in process and work in progress and proposes the following ideas:

1. As a community, we can do much more with the digital images we're creating of textual materials than we've heretofore done.
2. We aspire to have additional layers …

Into The Void, Or The Musings And Confessions Of A Redheaded Stepchild Lost In Western Legal History And Found In The Legal Borderlands Of The North American West, Katrina Jagodinsky

Department of History: Faculty Publications

At my first American Society for Legal History conference in 2014, I listened with rapt attention as keynote speaker Patty Limerick asked: "Is western history legal history ?" Limerick answered in the affirmative, citing the many ways in which law had defined the North American West. Those of us who teach Western history courses can count the legal acts Limerick recited on our fingers and toes: the 1784 Land Ordinance, the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, the 1790 Trade & Intercourse Act, the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and every treaty between American Indians and the federal government on one hand; the Missouri Compromises …

Mexican-Origin Parents’ Stress And Satisfaction: The Role Of Emotional Support, Tierney K. Popp, Melissa Y. Delgado, Lorey Wheeler

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Guided by a process model of parenting and the integrative model, this study examined sources of emotional support (i.e., partner, maternal, paternal) as related to stress and satisfaction resulting from the parenting role in a sample of Mexican-origin young adult parents who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) during Wave IV. Participants were male and female parents (26–35 years of age; 59% female; N = 737) who had children and a partner. Results from structural equation modeling revealed support from mothers as salient; high levels of maternal support were associated with high levels …

Rural Sense: Value, Heritage, And Sensory Landscapes: Developing A Design-Oriented Approach To Mapping For Healthier Landscapes, Judith Van Der Elst, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lily Díaz-Kommonen

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Landscape design needs a novel value system centred on human experience of the landscape rather than simply on economic value. Design-oriented research allows us to shift the focus from mechanistic paradigms towards new sense-making approaches that value both the sensual and the cognitive in human experience. To move in this direction, we investigate cultural and natural aspects of sensory experience in rural landscapes, arguing that: (1) rural (non-urban) regions offer diverse sensory experiences for optimising human health; and (2) spatial interconnectedness between rural and urban areas means that healthy rural regions are critical for urban development. Our key argument is …

Application Of Transfer Learning For Cancer Drug Sensitivity Prediction, Saugato Rahman Dhruba, Raziur Rahman, Kevin Matlock, Souparno Ghosh, Ranadip Pal

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Background: In precision medicine, scarcity of suitable biological data often hinders the design of an appropriate predictive model. In this regard, large scale pharmacogenomics studies, like CCLE and GDSC hold the promise to mitigate the issue. However, one cannot directly employ data from multiple sources together due to the existing distribution shift in data. One way to solve this problem is to utilize the transfer learning methodologies tailored to fit in this specific context.

Results: In this paper, we present two novel approaches for incorporating information from a secondary database for improving the prediction in a target database. The first …

The Role Of Sex-Related Alcohol Expectancies In Alcohol-Involved Consensual And Nonconsensual Sex Among Women Of Asian/ Pacific Islander And Women Of European Race/Ethnicity, Allyson L. Dir, Arthur R. Andrews, Sarah M. Wilson, Tatiana M. Davidson, Amanda K. Gilmore

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Alcohol-involved sexual experiences, including incapacitated sexual assault and alcoholinvolved sex, are major public health concerns among college women. Further, racial/ethnic diversity among college students is increasing, particularly with regard to increases in college students of Asian/Pacific Islander (API) race/ethnicity. Of relevance, evidence suggests differences in sexual assault rates across ethnicities and cultures; however, no known study to date has examined differences by ethnicity and first language in expectancies and experiences specifically surrounding alcohol and sex. The current study sought to examine differences in incapacitated sexual assault, alcohol-involved sex, and heavy episodic drinking, as well as differences in sex-related alcohol expectancies …

Historical Observations And Identifications Of Plants And Animals In The Vicinity Of Engineer Cantonment In 1819-1820, Hugh H. Genoways, Brett C. Ratcliffe, Carl R. Falk, John R. Bozell

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

Historical observations and identifications of plants and animals in the vicinity of Engineer Cantonment in 1819–1820 (James 1822) are shown below in Roman and Roman italic print. Specimens identified through phytoarcheological and zooarcheological analysis of materials and believed to be reasonably associated or contemporaneous with the Long Expedition use of the site (AU4) are shown in boldface. Species present in both the historical and archeological data are marked by an asterisk (*). References used in this compilation include Benedict (1996), Brewer (1970 [1840]), Conant and Collins (1991), Ducey (2000), Evans (1997), Falk et al. (this volume), Genoways et al. (2008), …

Computational Linguistics Techniques For The Study Of Ancient Languages, Peter Z. Revesz

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

This paper presents a grammatical comparison of the Minoan language with the proto-Ugric and proto- Hungarian languages. Recent research showed that these languages are closely related, but this paper presents a novel grammatical comparison. The grammatical comparison shows the Minoan language to have an agglutinative type of grammar, with a CVCV type root word structure. The Minoan language also features assimilation between the word roots and the suffixes and a possessive phrase structure that is similar to that in Hungarian.

Information Theory And Cognition: A Review, Khalid Sayood

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

We examine how information theory has been used to study cognition over the last seven decades. After an initial burst of activity in the 1950s, the backlash that followed stopped most work in this area. The last couple of decades has seen both a revival of interest, and a more firmly grounded, experimentally justified use of information theory. We can view cognition as the process of transforming perceptions into information—where we use information in the colloquial sense of the word. This last clarification is one of the problems we run into when trying to use information theoretic principles to understand …

Schoolgirl Embroideries: Integrating Indigenous Motifs, Materials, And Text, Lynne Anderson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Hand embroidery was an integral part of female education in Europe, America, and their colonized territories until the late 19^th century. All girls embroidered at least one sampler and many stitched more than one. Because needlework was part of the school’s curriculum; a sampler’s composition, technique, and text communicate a great deal about the teacher’s goals, as well as community and family expectations, including those of indigenous students. This presentation explores ways in which indigenous motifs, materials, and text were integrated into schoolgirl samplers and other girlhood embroideries, leaving visible evidence of cross-cultural accommodations. Motifs are recurring patterns or …

Copd National Action Plan

United States Natonal Institutes of Health: Materials

The COPD National Action Plan is the first-ever blueprint for a multi-faceted, unified fight against the disease. Developed at the request of Congress.

European Spaces And The Roma: Denaturalizing The Naturalized In Online Reader Comments, Theresa Catalano, Grace E. Fielder

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

With the entry of several Eastern European nations into the European Union (EU), a “third” space has developed in the discourse for nations perceived as not fully integrated “inside” the EU system. This article investigates the construction of this “third space” in the resultant “moral panic” about undesired immigration from other EU countries and its potential drain on the social services of the United Kingdom and links it to Euroskeptic discourse in British media. The article uses construal operations from cognitive linguistics combined with critical discourse studies as a way of denaturalizing the discourse in online comments that focus on …

Within And Beyond A Grow-Your-Own-Teacher Program: Documenting The Contextualized Preparation And Professional Development Experiences Of Critically Conscious Latina Teachers, Amanda Morales

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study provides an account of seven Latina teachers’ select educational, professional, and personal experiences over the past 10 years as they completed a grow-your-own-teacher program, became licensed teachers, and established themselves in Latinx minority–majority public schools within their rural, mid-western community. More specifically, as a Latina researcher and participant observer, I sought to better understand the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) Latina teachers’ process-oriented engagement and conscientization over time. Far from being ‘ready-made’ conscientized teachers, in this work I discuss the ways CLD Latina teachers’ multiple and developing identities as bilingual learners, mothers, racialized minorities in schools, and educated …

What Does An Anthropologist Of Educational Policy Do? Methodological Considerations, Edmund T. Hamann, Thirusellvan Vandeyar

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Although Margaret Mead (Hughes, 1952; Mead, 1961), Manuel Gamio (1916), and other leaders of 20th-century anthropology often made pronouncements regarding what schooling should and shouldn't do-in essence proposing to be educational policymakers of a sort-the turn of anthropology to the study of policy and particularly education policy is relatively new (Shore & Wright, 1997). It follows that what an anthropologist of educational policy implementation should do is therefore not yet depicted all that clearly or in detail. The groundbreaking work of Sutton and Levinson (2001) and their contributing authors in some senses stands out as an important exception to that …

Navigating Authoritative Discourses In A Multilingual Classroom: Conversations With Policy And Practice, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba, Violet J. Harris

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Using Bakhtinian concepts of persuasive and authoritative discourse, this study reports on science and English language arts instructional practices in a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya. Situated in English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and through the use of case study, the study explores classroom discourse data to illustrate how teachers use instructional practices to reproduce, contest, or navigate prevailing institutional monolingual policies when mediating students’ access to literacy and content. By analyzing classroom discourse, the authors argue that restrictive language policies that aspire for fixity disconnect multilingual learners from their daily realities. In contrast, they call for …