Digital Commons Network^™

Filtered Fiction, Tunnel Truth, Karen Ruth Schierhoff

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this writing is to ask questions about identity, to re-evaluate and to better articulate my world and self. The form of this manuscript is a blend of poetry and prose forms, mainly autobiographical in nature, somewhat fictionalized (or revised) and using subjects that are most significant to the understanding of my world and self views, ancestry and family, education, environment, etc.{dollar}\..{dollar}; My goal, and reasons for the content and form selections, is not to find truth and convince my audience of this truth--to achieve synthesis of thought. Instead, through my writing I intend to deeply probe and …

Strategic Planning For Hotel -Casino Projects, Franklin Neil Baker

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Hotel-casinos have exhibited financial trouble and failure rates which exceed 30%. Even so, billions of dollars have been earmarked for continual development within the industry. The purpose of this study was to examine classical theories of strategic decision-making when planning for new or expanded hotel-casinos and then determine if these theories work for the industry or if the industry is so unique that special measures must become part of the strategic-planning process; Three factors related to strategic planning were selected for study: economic indicators, the product/service life cycle, the Altman Z Factor for bankruptcy prediction. Twelve Chief Financial Officers representing …

Metaphorically Speaking: Putting Las Vegas On The Cultural Map, Ester Sara O Fearghail

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Las Vegas has art galleries, an art museum, a Cultural and Community Affairs Division. It also supports the Allied Arts Council of Southern Nevada and a southern branch of the Nevada Arts Council. Clearly, art and art advocates are present in Las Vegas. Yet, Las Vegas is traditionally viewed as a town with no culture and, furthermore, as a place that it is incompatible with art; This paper is a study of the relationship people believe Las Vegas has to art. I have used the methodology of Lakoff and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson: 1980) to analyze …

Retrieval Effectiveness For Ocr Text Using Thesauri, Elena Dimitrova

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This thesis reports on the effects of an automatic query expansion with a subject specific thesaurus on retrieval effectiveness for document collection consisting of OCR text; The investigation encompasses several experiments with a modern retrieval engine based on the probabilistic model. Each experiment is performed on two document collections. The first version of the collection consists of raw OCR output. The second collection consists of the ground truth (retyped from hard copy) version of the same collection; It is shown that the usage of the thesaurus as a source for query expansion can significantly improve recall for Boolean queries, for …

What Does Smart Growth Mean For Housing?, Karen A. Danielsen, Robert E. Lang, William Fulton

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

Barely noticed amid the returns from the 1998 midterm elections was a quiet revolution that goes to the heart of how and where Americans live. While most news accounts focused on the high-profile candidate elections, voters across the nation-in Democratic and Republican areas alike-approved more than 160 state and local ballot measures intended to preserve open space and limit urban sprawl.

The coalition forming around the idea of limiting sprawl includes environmentalists, farmers, big-city mayors, and some developers. But perhaps most important, the so-called "smart growth" movement also includes many suburban voters who are fed up with growth. For example, …

Multiple Stochastic Learning Automata For Vehicle Path Control In An Automated Highway System, Cem Unsal, Pushkin Kachroo, John S. Bay

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

This paper suggests an intelligent controller for an automated vehicle planning its own trajectory based on sensor and communication data. The intelligent controller is designed using the learning stochastic automata theory. Using the data received from on-board sensors, two automata (one for lateral actions, one for longitudinal actions) can learn the best possible action to avoid collisions. The system has the advantage of being able to work in unmodeled stochastic environments, unlike adaptive control methods or expert systems. Simulations for simultaneous lateral and longitudinal control of a vehicle provide encouraging results

Incident Management In Intelligent Transportation Systems, Kaan Ozbay, Pushkin Kachroo

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

Since the conception of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in the 1980s, many transportation researchers have also worked on the development of incident management models and integrated systems for real-time operations. ITS created the required infrastructure for collecting, processing, and managing real-time traffic data that can be used to develop on-line incident management strategies. This book provides the reader with a broad picture of the overall incident management process in the context of ITS along with a quick review of the models and systems developed by numerous researchers worldwide. This book is a direct result of the long-term incident management research …

Unlv College Of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter, Steve Mccafferty, John Filler, Nancy P. Gallavan, Le Ann Putney, Nancy Sileo, Kyle Higgins, Porter Troutman, Stanley Zehm, Cyndi Giorgis, Aimee Govett, Jean Henry, Bill Pankratius, Susan Rumann, Joyce Nelson-Leaf

College of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter

Each morning I wound my way up the steep hill along the deeply rutted dirt path, exchanging daily "maaa's" with five bleating sheep and shouting out, "¡Hola!" in response to the children who gleefully identified me as "¡Gringa!" Women and children, colorful bowls of cooked maize balanced atop their heads, sauntered to and from Maria Elena's where their maize would be ground; at home the dough would be shaped and flattened into tortillas, the mainstay of every meal in the small Guatemalan village of San Juan.

Unlv College Of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter, Steve Mccafferty, John Filler, Nancy P. Gallavan, Le Ann Putney, Nancy Sileo, Kyle Higgins, Porter Troutman, Paul Mecham, Cyndi Giorgis, Aimee Govett, Jean Henry, Bill Pankratius, Susan Rumann, Joyce Nelson-Leaf

College of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter

A newsletter discussing a variety of topics dealing with multicultural topics and diversity in education.

Unlv College Of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter, Steve Mccafferty, John Filler, Nancy P. Gallavan, Le Ann Putney, Nancy Sileo, Kyle Higgins, Porter Troutman, Paul Mecham, Cyndi Giorgis, Aimee Govett, Jean Henry, Bill Pankratius, Susan Rumann, Joyce Nelson-Leaf

College of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter

The observance of tolerance and respect is, fundamentally, a personal decision. This decision emanates from an attitude that is learnable and embraceable,--a belief that every other person on earth is a treasure. As individuals, we each have the power to change our personal attitudes to overcome our ignorance and fears. As educators, we have the responsibility to influence the students with whom we work, our peers, and our community. It begins with "us."

Unlv College Of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter, Steve Mccafferty, John Filler, Nancy P. Gallavan, Le Ann Putney, Nancy Sileo, Kyle Higgins, Porter Troutman, Paul Meacham, Cyndi Giorgis, Aimee Govett, Jean Henry, Bill Pankratius, Susan Rumann, Joyce Nelson-Leaf

College of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter

A newsletter discussing a variety of topics dealing with multicultural topics and diversity in education.

Caribbean: Online Bibliography Environmental History Of Latin America, Darcy C. Del Bosque

Library Faculty Research

This is an annotated bibliography of articles, conference proceedings, reports, and books.

Qos-Based Multipath Routing For The Internet, Bing Chen

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The new generation of network services is being developed for incorporation in communication infrastructure. These services, generally called Quality of Services (QoS), should accommodate data file, video, and audio applications. The different performance requirements of these applications necessitate a re-examination of the main architectural components of today's networks, which were designed to support traditional data applications. Routing, which determines the sequence of network nodes a packet traverses between source and destination, is one such component. Here, we examine the potential routing problems in future Internet and discuss the advantages of class-based multi-path routing methods. The result is a new approach …

Suicide In The Las Vegas Homeless Population: Applying Durkheim's Theory Of Suicide, Joseph Dean Diaz

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study is an empirical test of Durkheim's theory of suicide. Durkheim's 1897 theory holds that suicide is caused not by environmental or physiological forces, but by social forces, which either push to the individual to take his or her own life, or fail to prevent suicidal behavior; The population from which the data were gathered for this study was the Las Vegas homeless population. The lack of social bonds and social integration, which Durkheim found to be related to suicide, are generally present in homeless persons. Therefore, it was suspected that factors which contribute to homelessness would be positively …

Plant Physiology And Competition In A Mojave Desert Riparian Ecosystem: Proximate Solutions To Ultimate Questions, James Ray Cleverly

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The distribution and abundance patterns of species are of primary interest in ecology, and the interactions between an organism and its abiotic and biotic environment provide a basis for a better understanding of the mechanisms by which distribution and abundance patterns are governed. Physiological ecology provides an ideal platform for integrating the effects of both biotic and abiotic influences upon species performance, thus conferring a process-oriented insight into ecological patterns. This dissertation considers the physiological characteristics that may be related to Mojave Desert floodplain domination by Tamarix ramosissima, an exotic invasive riparian plant; Four woody riparian species---Tamarix ramosissima, Salix exigua, …

An Exploratory Study Of Accommodations Provided To Welfare -To -Work Participants In Housekeeping Classifications, Terry Kent Jones

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study explored the workplace needs of welfare recipients in their transition from welfare to work, and the willingness of housekeeping managers and supervisors to provide workplace accommodations that could enhance the probability of a successful transition to self-sufficiency. Personal interviews and two separate survey questionnaires were used to survey employers and welfare recipients in an attempt to explore several research questions. Questions focused on the respective needs of employers and welfare recipients, and on each group's perceptions of the other group. This exploratory study was supported by a literature review and survey techniques. Data was subjected to appropriate statistical …

Domestic Violence In The Hyperreal: An Examination Of Race And Ethnicity In "Real Life" Police Drama, Melissa J Monson

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This project investigates public representations of domestic violence by highlighting televised reality-based police dramas (e.g., COPS, L.A.P.D.: Life on the Beat, Real Stories of the Highway Patrol, etc.). Specifically, it focuses on the intersection of race, class, and gender in the portrayal of police treatment of victims and suspects of domestic violence. The data for this research were gathered through the use of latent and manifest content analysis. Seventy-two hours (including commercials) of reality based programing were recorded for analysis, making 144 total individual shows and 48 episodes of each program; In general, police officers were portrayed as treating domestic …

An Analysis Of The Funding Of Public School Transportation In New Mexico, Joseph Roger Pribyl

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the major factors that currently influence school transportation costs in the 89 school districts in New Mexico. The study also compared a linear regression methodology with an alternative neural network methodology to identify the most robust predictive model for updating the current transportation funding model for New Mexico Public Schools. Finally, the study looked at the redistributive effect under the two alternatives; The research design was implemented in three phases. In Phase One, literature was reviewed to determine factors that contribute to the cost of pupil transportation, to recognize fiscal models used …

Affirmative Action In Higher Education: A Legal Analysis Of The Use Of Race As A Factor In College Admissions After Bakke, N. J Pettit

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the legal status of affirmative action in higher education admission policies with regard to the use of race as a factor. This study answered these three questions:;What is the current status of the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision as a basis for assessing higher education admission policies? What legal benchmarks have emerged since the Bakke decision which may impact the development of university admission policies? What policies may achieve diversity in higher education admissions without incurring legal risks by using race and ethnicity in the admissions policies?;The significance …

A Survey Of Southern Nevada Employers Regarding The Importance Of Scans Workplace Basic Skills, Greg P Richens

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study utilized quantitative research methodology and incorporated a descriptive research design that described the perceptions of southern Nevada employers who responded to a survey regarding the importance of the workplace basic skills identified by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) established by the U.S. Department of Labor. The study sought to determine whether the SCANS skills and competencies were perceived by responding employers as necessary for entry-level employment. Over 75 percent of respondents to the survey essentially considered the SCANS skills and competencies as adequately identifying competencies and skills needed for entry-level employment in their respective business. …

The Structural Dimensions Of Community-Oriented Police Departments, Stavros S Anthony

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

With the beginning of the twentieth century, police departments throughout the nation, during what has been called the reform movement, changed their organizational structure to that of a bureaucracy. This structural change occurred to deal with the problems of political patronage and corruption in police departments. The result, over time, was the development of municipal police departments into ridged, formalized, and centralized structures that were not responsive to the communities they served. Police officers became professional crime-fighters, who sought little community input; For the past 20 years, pressures from police professionals, local communities and governmental forces have caused police executives …

Middle Level Practices And Teachers' Perceptions Of School Climate In Nevada, Cathy Andrews

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study was designed to determine the extent to which recommended middle level practices have been implemented in Nevada's middle level schools and whether statistically significant differences in teachers' perceptions of school climate existed between schools that reported high levels of implementation of middle level practices when compared to schools that reported low levels of implementation. The Middle Level Practices Index (MSPI) was designed to measure the level of implementation of 18 middle level practices recognized in literature as being effective responsive practices appropriate to meet the identified needs of young adolescents (Riegle, 1971). The principal of each middle level …

Educator Study Groups: An Exploration Of An Alternative Method Of Preservice Teacher Development, Leah Mary Herner

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study was conducted to investigate the effect study groups have on preservice teacher education. The participants were enrolled in ESP 444, The Special Education Student in the General Education Classroom. The study took place during a 9-week period; Forty-two students participated in this study. The study involved placing the students randomly into two groups. The lecture group received lectures from graduate students in special education. The study group worked together in groups to research and discuss inclusion of students with disabilities. All students took a knowledge-based pretest and attitude survey prior to beginning the study. All students took a …

An Analysis Of The Governance And Administrative Elements Of A Public -Private Partnership Approach To Community -Based Education, Celia Feres-Lewin

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

An Analysis of the Governance and Administrative Elements of a Public-Private Partnership Approach to Community-Based Education is the study of the partnership forged between the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (Kellogg), Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA), and the United States Department of Agriculture Cooperative States Research Education and Extension Service (USDA-CSREES) in 1994. The partners launched the Healthy Family America (HFA) model through Cooperative Extension's delivery system. HFA is a community-based education program for first-time parents in overburdened families. Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, Las Vegas (Clark County), Nevada, and Walworth County, Wisconsin, were the only three pilot sites selected by the partnership …

Written Retellings Of Narrative And Expository Texts: A Case Study Of Elementary Primary Grade Delayed Male Readers, Timothy Todd Houge

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study examined how four second grade delayed readers, who were delayed in various stages of reading and writing, read and wrote about narrative and expository paired-topic texts. This study was based on the assumption that: (a) elementary primary grade children could read and write about narrative and expository texts; (b) delayed readers are children who can learn to read, even though they are below grade level, if they are given the opportunity; and, (c) written retellings could be used to assess students' understanding of texts and are one method of bringing the reading-writing relationship together; A case study research …

Nationally Recognized Superintendents: Perceptions On How They Lead In Relation To The Characteristics Of Effective Schools Research, Warren Paul Mckay

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to increase the knowledge about the qualities, attitudes, and behaviors of public school superintendents in relation to the effective schools research. It also sought to further investigate the relationship between the role of the superintendent and the creation of effective schools and effective school districts. Finally, this research described how a recognized population of public school superintendents perceived themselves to incorporate effective school methods in their leadership strategies. This ultimately provided the opportunity to validate the findings of the effective schools research through the investigation of the superintendents office; This study employed what Creswell …

The Art Of Truth: The Architecture Of 19th -Century American Allegory, Gary Brian Bennett

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The current study, in its broadest scope, explores the nature of literary art primarily as a moral experience. Specifically, it addresses ironic allegory---a genre of fiction born during the American Renaissance of the mid-nineteenth century. As an amalgam of two other oblique genres, Gothic fiction and Puritan allegory, ironic allegory was originally the product of Nathaniel Hawthorne's moral imagination and tragic sensibility; consequently, its primary themes are the properties of time, the problems of tragedy, the process of transformation, and the preeminence of truth. Focusing exclusively on the architectural metaphors in Cooper's Templeton trilogy, Hawthorne's The House of the Seven …

Dynamic Element Matching Techniques For Data Converters, Jerry Wayne Bruce

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Analog to digital converter (ADC) circuit component errors create nonuniform quantization code widths and create harmonic distortion in an ADC's output. In this dissertation, two techniques for estimating an ADC's output spectrum from the ADC's transfer function are determined. These methods are compared to a symmetric power function and asymmetric power function approximations. Standard ADC performance metrics, such as SDR, SNDR, SNR, and SFDR, are also determined as a function of the ADC's transfer function approximations. New dynamic element matching (DEM) flash ADCs are developed. An analysis of these DEM flash ADCs is developed and shows that these DEM algorithms …

Finite Elements With H -Adaptation For Momentum, Heat And Mass Transport With Application To Environmental Flow, David Bradley Carrington

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Self-adaptive algorithms for 2 and 3-dimensional unstructured finite element grids are recent to the solution of partial differential equations, particularly those equations describing environmental transport. An h-adaptive grid embedding method is developed to solve the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow and scalar transport. An application to atmospheric mass transport is presented; This h-adaptive algorithm, in combination with the finite element method, has been designed to solve 2 and 3-dimensional problems on Pentium PC's, including problems involving complex geometry on high end PC's, workstations and mainframes. The Galerkin finite element solver is a 2 point Gauss-Legendre integration scheme which employs …

Think Different: A Comparison Of The Critical Thinking Abilities Of Education Majors, Shelly Weeks Channel

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

In an increasingly complex society, the need for people to exercise critical thinking effectively is clearly evident. The institution of education recognizes that its responsibility to teach students to think critically is vital in order for them to negotiate decisions humanely and intelligently in an ever-changing world; Hundreds of reports from various committees and researchers along with such insidious incidents as the rise in murderous assaults on children inside school buildings, such as the massacre in Littleton, Colorado, attest to the fact that schools fail to teach students to evaluate social life critically. While educators advocate critical thinking, teacher education …