Digital Commons Network^™

Getting Honest With Oil, Bruce B. Johnson

Cornhusker Economics

In this year of the monumental oil spill off our shores, Americans are being brought face-to-face with some stark realities of our time. First, we are seeing that current technology and human processes can’t insure the prevention of environmental disasters, creating havoc to large economic regions as well as to fragile ecosystems. In fact, if a single 21-inch pipe spewing millions of barrels of oil from the floor of the Gulf can continue for months on end, without effective correction, just how ingenious are we as humans?

The People's Hour And The Social Gospel: George Howard Gibson's Gilded Age Search For An Organization Of The Kingdom Of God, Michelle D. Tiedje

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Previous studies of the Social Gospel movement have acknowledged the fact that Social Gospelers were involved in multiple social reform movements during the Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era. However, most of these studies have failed to explain how the reform experiences of the Social Gospelers contributed to the development of the Social Gospel. The Social Gospelers’ ideas regarding the need to transform society and their strategies for doing so were largely a result of their personal experiences as reformers and their collaboration with other reformers. The knowledge and insight gained from interaction with a variety of reform methods …

A Ditch By Any Other Name Is Still A Ditch: An Archaeological Assessment Of Ditch Earthworks On The Middle Missouri In The Dakotas, Albert M. Lebeau

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

A Ditch by any other Names is Still a Ditch: An Archaeological Assessment of Ditch Earthworks on the Middle Missouri of South Dakota Albert M. LeBeau III, M.A. University of Nebraska , 2010 Advisor: Peter Bleed Abstract: This thesis is an archaeological assessment of ditch earth works on the Middle Missouri sub-area in North and South Dakota. This master’s thesis considers previously publically published materials from fifteen archaeological sites along the northern tier of Missouri River in the Dakotas. The paper questions the use of the terms “fortified” and “fortification” when describing ditch earthworks that surround some Plains Village archaeological …

Memento, Sarah Rollman

Interior Design Program: Terminal Projects

Executive Statement

The focus of this project will be the tattoo parlor and bringing a new identity to the industry. The business is an artistic and creative one that will work well in the historic district among architecture and design firms, graphic design and branding firms, art galleries, and advertising firms.

Tattooing was widely practiced by many cultures in the ancient world, and was associated with a high level of artistic endeavor. The imagery of ancient tattooing is very similar to that of modern tattooing, and throughout history tattooing, like other forms of body decoration, has been related to the …

Inhabiting Modernism: Pernes, Portals, And Yeats’S Transitive Force, Daniel Gomes

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

W.B. Yeats’s tentative entry into modernist poetics is often ascribed to his residence with Pound, to the dynamism of Vorticism, and to the turbulent social upheaval in Ireland and abroad during the early decades of the twentieth century. Without denying that such events contributed to Yeats’s marked stylistic shift in Responsibilities (1914), this thesis examines how Yeats’s antithetical impulse is heavily informed by Blake and Nietzsche and has direct bearing for how we read Yeats’s poetics through change and “transition.” Concurrent with his passive adjustment to, and resistance against, external forces and change, Yeats’s affirmation of pre-subjective forces, apocalyptic …

The Use Of Factor Analysis In The Development Of Hand Sizes For Glove Design, Trevor M. Mclain

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Factor analysis was used to develop a more detailed description of the human hand to be used in the creation of glove sizes; currently gloves sizes are small, medium, and large. The created glove sizes provide glove designers with the ability to create a glove design that can provide fit to the majority of hand variations in both the male and female populations. The research used the American National Survey (ANSUR) data that was collected in 1988. This data contains eighty-six length, width, height, and circumference measurements of the human hand for one thousand male subjects and thirteen hundred female …

Asia, Faraway Or Next Door?, Samuel Y. Liang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On my way from England to AAS 2010, I stopped in New York for two nights and visited the Chinatown in Manhattan. This prosperous area sprawls beyond the boundary shown in the tourist map towards the shoreline of the East River; it also encroaches on neighboring Little Italy, which is increasingly like an island in a sea of Chinese shops and restaurants. The density of the shops and their gaudy commercialism, it seems to me, exceed those in Chinese cities and are quite similar to those in Won Kok, Hong Kong.

In a buffet-style restaurant, I got to know two …

Cinema In An Age Of Terror, Michael F. O'Riley

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Cinema in an Age of Terror looks at how cinematic representations of colonial-era victimization inform our understanding of the contemporary age of terror. By examining works representing colonial history and the dynamics of spectatorship emerging from them, Michael F. O’Riley reveals how the centrality of victimization in certain cinematic representations of colonial history can help us understand how the desire to occupy the victim’s position is a dangerous and blinding drive that frequently plays into the vision of terrorism. Films such as The Battle of Algiers, Days of Glory, Caché, and recent works by Maghrebien filmmakers all …

Swords From The Sea, Harold Lamb

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Vikings, pirates, heroes, rogues, and explorers . . . all have heard the siren call of the sea, and master storyteller Harold Lamb chronicled some of their most daring exploits. This single volume contains all of Lamb’s historical seafaring stories, drawn from rare and fragile pulp magazines. Never before collected, these short stories and novels are a treasure trove of adventure. Best known for his stirring tales of Cossacks and crusaders, Lamb was no stranger to swashbuckling, and his sea stories deliver it in buckets. Sail with John Paul Jones as he fights to save the crippled Russian fleet from …

For Home And Country, Celai Malone Kingsbury

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

World War I prompted the first massive organized propaganda campaign of the twentieth century. Posters, pamphlets, and other media spread fear about the “Hun,” who was often depicted threatening American families in their homes, while additional campaigns encouraged Americans and their allies to support the war effort. With most men actively involved in warfare, women and children became a special focus—and a tool—of social manipulation during the war. For Home and Country examines the propaganda that targeted noncombatants on the home front in the United States and Europe during World War I. Cookbooks, popular magazines, romance novels, and government food …

Nature's Aristocracy, Jennie Collins

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

In 1871 Jennie Collins became one of the first working-class American women to publish a volume of her own writings: Nature’s Aristocracy. Merging autobiography, social criticism, fictionalized vignettes, and feminist polemics, her book examines the perennial problem of class in America. Collins loosely structures her series of sketches around the argument that nineteenth-century U.S. society, by deviating dangerously from the ideals set forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, had created a corrupt aristocracy and a gulf between the rich and the poor that the United States’ founders had endeavored to prevent. Collins’s text serves as a …

Kansas Politics And Government, H. Edward Flentje, Joseph A. Aistrup

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

The rich history of Kansas politics continues to generate an abundant literature. The state’s beginning as “Bleeding Kansas” followed by Prohibition, populism, the Progressive Era, and the Dust Bowl, through to the present day, have given local and national writers and scholars an intriguing topic for exploration. While historians and biographers shed light on pieces of this history, journalists focus on current political affairs in the state. Rarely, however, are past and present connected to fully illuminate an understanding of Kansas politics and government. This volume uses the prism of political cultures to interpret Kansas politics and disclose the intimate …

The Pawnee Mission Letters, 1834–1851, Richard E. Jensen

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Rev. John Dunbar and Samuel Allis set out in 1834 to establish a mission to Indians beyond the Rocky Mountains. Unable to obtain a guide and with only a vague knowledge of the West, they instead encountered the Pawnee Indians in Nebraska. It was the beginning of a twelve-year odyssey to convert the tribe to Protestant Christianity and New England “civilization.” Dunbar and Allis traveled with the Pawnees on buffalo hunts and spent time at their villages, recording the customs and habits of the tribe. After a permanent community was established, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 22:2 — Spring/Summer 2010, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

A Feast of Options Awaits Symposium Attendees in October [Textiles and Settlement: From Plains Space to Cyber Space, 12th Biennial Symposium, Lincoln, Nebraska, October 6–9, 2010]
From the President
TSA News
TSA Member News
In Memoriam: Natalie K. A. Rothstein, 1930–2010; Patricia J. Williams, 1944–2010; Stephen M. Beal, 1939–2010
Collections News
Textile Community News
Exhibition Reviews
Book Reviews
Publication News
Calls for Papers
Calendar-Conferences & Symposia, Exhibitions, Tours, Lectures & Workshops

Bringing The War Home The Patriotic Imagination In Saskatoon, 1939-1942, Brendan Kelly

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War, noted historian Gerald D. Nash argued that the war, more than any other event in the West's history, completely altered that region.1 There is as yet no equivalent of Nash's fine study for the Great Plains north of the forty-ninth parallel, or what Canadians call the "prairies."² This gap notwithstanding, historians of western Canada have begun to explore at least one key aspect of Nash's research: the war's impact on cities. Since 1995 there have been three histories of urban centers in wartime: Red Deer (Alberta), Lethbridge …

Selected Works For Violin And Piano By Chen Yi: Western Influences On The Development Of Her Compositional Style, Xiang He

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

This document is a study of the violin and piano pieces, Fisherman’s Song (1979) and Romance of Hsiao and Ch’in (1998), by the leading Chinese-born American composer, Chen Yi (b.1953). The two pieces are representative works of Chen Yi’s Chinese (college) period and American period respectively. Through detailed analysis, comparisons, and consultation with Dr. Chen Yi, the document attempts to reveal Chen Yi’s stylistic changes caused by the Western influences.

Chapter One provides a brief summary of the changes of compositional style throughout five generations of Chinese composers (from 1920s to present), which resulted from Western influences. Chapter Two examines …

Alkylresorcinol Synthases Expressed In Sorghum Bicolor Root Hairs Play An Essential Role In The Biosynthesis Of The Allelopathic Benzoquinone Sorgoleone, Daniel Cook, Agnes M. Rimando, Thomas E. Clemente, Joachim Schroder, Franck E. Dayan, N. P. Dhammika Nanayakkara, Zhiqiang Pan, Brice P. Noonan, Mark Fishbein, Ikuro Abe, Stephen O. Duke, Scott R. Baerson

Center for Plant Science Innovation: Faculty Publications

Sorghum bicolor is considered to be an allelopathic crop species, producing phytotoxins such as the lipid benzoquinone sorgoleone, which likely accounts for many of the allelopathic properties of Sorghum spp. Current evidence suggests that sorgoleone biosynthesis occurs exclusively in root hair cells and involves the production of an alkylresorcinolic intermediate (5-[(Z,Z)-8',11',14'-pentadecatrienyl]resorcinol) derived from an unusual 16:3D^9,12,15 fatty acyl-CoA starter unit. This led to the suggestion of the involvement of one or more alkylresorcinol synthases (ARSs), type III polyketide synthases (PKSs) that produce 5-alkylresorcinols using medium to long-chain fatty acyl-CoA starter units via iterative condensations with malonyl-CoA. In an effort …

Exchanges: Reconciling Confucianism And Socialism?, Daniel A. Bell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Today China Beat would like to introduce our new “Exchanges” feature, which we hope will become a regular item on the blog. The debate below, between Daniel A. Bell and Michael Walzer, was originally printed in the Winter 2010 issue of Dissent, and is reposted here with permission. We’d like to invite our readers to share their thoughts on this discussion, and will run a response from Daniel Bell in the coming weeks. Please send your comments and questions to thechinabeatgmail.com.

Google And China: The Analysis Continues

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Almost three weeks have passed since Google’s January 12 announcement that it would be reconsidering its Chinese operations, and although the company has not yet indicated a final decision about its future in China, the issues raised by this matter have sparked a number of thoughtful analyses. Yesterday, China Beatfeatured a piece by Geremie Barmé on “The Harmonious Evolution of Information in China”; below, some more recent commentaries on the Google and China story that have gotten our attention:

2009 Major Sponsored Programs And Faculty Awards For Research And Creative Activity

Office of Research and Economic Development: Publications

From discoveries in nanoscience, nutrigenomics and software engineering to innovative initiatives in math achievement, child welfare, water and climate change, UNL faculty are engaged in meeting the challenges of a changing world.

This eighth annual “Major Sponsored Programs and Faculty Awards for Research and Creative Activity” booklet highlights the successes of University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty during 2009. It lists the funding sources, projects and investigators on major grants and sponsored program awards received during the year; published books and scholarship; fellowships and other recognitions; start-ups and intellectual property licenses; and performances and exhibitions in the fine and performing arts.

This …

Fighting The Forces Of Gravity – Seapower And Maritime Trade Between The 18th And 20th Centuries, Ahmed S. Rahman

United States Navy: Publications

How have large naval powers affected international commerce in history? Using a panel gravity model, we investigate the interactions of wars, alliances, naval power and trade from the 18th to mid-20th centuries. Striking an alliance with a naval power helps a country’s interstate commerce. Fighting a naval power on the other hand limits a country’s interstate commerce. Further, we split this effect on trade between an extensive effect (effect on a country’s trade when fighting a naval power) and an intensive effect (effect of that power gaining more naval strength). We conclude that the intensive effect is a powerful one …

Dynamic And Static Characterization Of Compact Crack Arrest Tests Of Navy And Nuclear Steels, James A. Joyce, R. E. Link, C. Roe, J. C. Sobotka

United States Navy: Publications

Recent experimental and computational work by Link and associates has demonstrated that relatively small (W= 150 mm) single edge notched tension specimens (SE(T)) can be used to obtain crack arrest data high in the ductile-to-brittle transition of ferritic structural steel using dynamic computational techniques if a thermal gradient is utilized to aid in the crack arrest. Testing has been reported on two important navy structural steels that clearly defines the relative capability of the two materials to arrest rapidly growing cracks. The HY100 material demonstrated the expected large difference between the initiation and crack arrest toughnesses which has …

Genomics And Proteomics In Chemical Warfare Agent Research: Recent Studies And Future Applications, Patrick A. Everly, James F. Dillman

United States Army: Publications

Medical research on the effects of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) has been ongoing for nearly 100 years, yet these agents continue to pose a serious threat to deployed military forces and civilian populations. CWAs are extremely toxic, relatively inexpensive, and easy to produce, making them a legitimate weapon of choice for terrorist organizations. While the mechanisms of action for manyCWAshave been known for years, questions about their molecular effects following acute and chronic exposure remain largely unanswered. Global approaches that can pinpoint which cellular pathways are altered in response to CWAs and characterize long-term toxicity have not been widely used. …

Inflammatory Effects Of Inhaled Sulfur Mustard In Rat Lung, Rama Malaviya, Vasanthi R. Sunil, Jessica Cervelli, Dana R. Anderson, Wesley W. Holmes, Michele L. Conti, Ronald E. Gordon, Jeffrey D. Laskin, Debra L. Laskin

United States Army: Publications

Inhalation of sulfur mustard (SM), a bifunctional alkylating agent that causes severe lung damage, is a significant threat to both military and civilian populations. The mechanisms mediating its cytotoxic effects are unknown and were investigated in the present studies. Male rats Crl:CD(SD) were anesthetized, and then intratracheally intubated and exposed to 0.7–1.4 mg/kg SM by vapor inhalation. Animals were euthanized 6, 24, 48 h or 7 days post-exposure and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) and lung tissue collected. Exposure of rats to SM resulted in rapid pulmonary toxicity, including focal ulceration and detachment of the trachea and bronchial epithelia from underlying …

Kitab Al-Hadaya Wa Al-Tuhaf: A Unique Window On Islamic Textiles, Wendy Landry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the first millennium, a rare kind of literature evolved in the Islamic world that provides a fascinating window on the interest and importance of material objects. A unique example of this literature, entitled Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf [Book of Gifts and Rarities] was translated into English, annotated and published in 1996 by Kuwaiti curator and scholar Ghada al Hijjawi al-Qaddumi. It is an anthology of anecdotes referring to the period between the sixth century and the twelfth century, probably compiled in the late twelfth century by an official in the Islamic Egyptian government.

Although the historical veracity of the …

Investigating The Risk Of Cancer In 1990–1991 Us Gulf War Veterans With The Use Of State Cancer Registry Data, Heather A. Young, Jessica D. Maillard, Paul H. Levine, Samuel J. Simmens, Clare M. Mahan, Han K. Kang

United States Public Health Resources

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether proportional cancer incidence is greater among Gulf War veterans compared with non-Gulf War veterans.

METHODS: Files obtained from the Defense Manpower Data Center included data for 621,902 veterans who were deployed to the Persian Gulf during the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War (August 2, 1990, to March 1, 1991) and 746,248 non-Gulf War veteran controls. Identification of veterans who received a cancer diagnosis between 1991 and 2006 was accomplished through record linkage of the Defense Manpower Data Center dataset with files from 28 state cancer registries and the Department of …

“Mao In Transition To Becoming Mao”: Rebecca Karl On Her Forthcoming Book, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Some time back, I did a Q-and-A with Rebecca Karlabout her forthcoming trade book on Mao. Now that its publication date is drawing near, I decided to do a short follow-up and she was good enough to oblige once again by answering a few questions:

More Than A Coin Flip: Improving Honors Education With Real Time Simulations Based On Contemporary Events, Kurt Hackemer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

On October 7, 2001, in response to ongoing support for Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terror network responsible for the September 11 attacks in New York City, the United States and Great Britain attacked Taliban targets in Afghanistan with cruise missiles and airstrikes. Shortly thereafter, American ground forces were committed and played an important role in the ouster of the Taliban and the creation of a new Afghan government. America’s preoccupation with Iraq beginning in the spring of 2003 arguably allowed the Taliban enough time and space to rebuild and rearm, and by the summer of 2008 the Afghan …

Recent Editions, Margaret A. Hogan

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

This annual bibliography of documentary editions recently published in the fields of American and British history, literature, and culture is generally restricted to scholarly first editions of English-language works. In addition to the bibliographical references, Internet addresses are provided for the editorial project or the publisher.

Deconstructing The Hopewell Interaction Sphere, Steven Sarich

Nebraska Anthropologist

It is the intention of this paper to ponder the impetus behind the Hopewell Interaction Sphere and relate it back to the Hopewell society as a whole. I will present a number of models offered by other researchers and find a common theme that connects them all, namely ceremonialism. Socially valued items and ceremonialism are closely tied according to Katherine Spielmann and so through close examination I will find out how close they are. Also, more contemporary cross-cultural examples of ritual exchange will be presented to show its prevalence through time.