Digital Commons Network^™

A Multiple-Objective Decision Analysis Of Stakeholder Values To Identify Watershed Improvement Needs, Jason R. W. Merrick, Gregory S. Parnell, Jamison Barnett, Margot Garcia

Statistical Sciences and Operations Research Publications

The paper describes the use of multiple objective decision analysis to qualitatively and quantitatively assess the quality of an endangered watershed and guide future efforts to improve the quality of the watershed. The Upham Brook watershed is an urban watershed that lies at the interface of declining inner city Richmond, Virginia and growth-oriented Henrico County. A section of stream within the watershed has been identified as so dangerously polluted that it threatens the health of the residents who live within the watershed boundaries. With funding provided by the National Science Foundation, the Upham Brook watershed project committee was formed to …

Extent Of Exposure To Environmental Tobacco Smoke (Ets) And Its Dose-Response Relation To Respiratory Health Among Adults, Wasim Maziak, Kenneth D. Ward, Samer Rastam, Fawaz Mzayek, Thomas Eissenberg

Psychology Publications

Background

There is a dearth of standardized studies examining exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and its relationship to respiratory health among adults in developing countries.

Methods

In 2004, the Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies (SCTS) conducted a population-based survey using stratified cluster sampling to look at issues related to environmental health of adults aged 18–65 years in Aleppo (2,500,000 inhabitants). Exposure to ETS was assessed from multiple self-reported indices combined into a composite score (maximum 22), while outcomes included both self-report (symptoms/diagnosis of asthma, bronchitis, and hay fever), and objective indices (spirometric assessment of FEV₁ and FVC). Logistic …

Comparison Of Patterns Of Use, Beliefs, And Attitudes Related To Waterpipe Between Beginning And Established Smokers, Taghrid Asfar, Kenneth D. Ward, Thomas Eissenberg, Wasim Maziak

Psychology Publications

Background

To compare patterns of use, beliefs, and attitudes related to waterpipe smoking between university students (beginning smokers) and café customers (established smokers) in Aleppo Syria, in order to explore the evolution of this smoking method.

Methods

Two cross-sectional surveys were conducted among representative samples of university students (total 587, 48.4% men, mean age 22 years), and waterpipe users among cafe' customers (total 268, 60% men, mean age 30 years) in Aleppo, Syria. We used interviewer-administered questionnaire inquiring about pattern of waterpipe smoking (initiation, frequency), situational characteristics of use (partner, place, sharing), beliefs related to waterpipe smoking (harmful/addictive properties of …

Health Related Quality Of Life In Sickle Cell Patients: The Pisces Project, Donna K. Mcclish, Lynne T. Penberthy, Viktor E. Bovbjerg, John D. Roberts, Imoigele P. Aisiku, James L. Levenson, Susan D. Roseff, Wally R. Smith

Biostatistics Publications

Background Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a chronic disease associated with high degrees of morbidity and increased mortality. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among adults with sickle cell disease has not been widely reported.

Methods We administered the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short-Form to 308 patients in the Pain in Sickle Cell Epidemiology Study (PiSCES) to assess HRQOL. Scales included physical function, physical and emotional role function, bodily pain, vitality, social function, mental health, and general health. We compared scores with national norms using t-tests, and with three chronic disease cohorts: asthma, cystic fibrosis and hemodialysis patients using analysis of …

Virginia Dental Journal (Vol. 82, No. 2, 2005)

Virginia Dental Journal

No abstract provided.

In Search Of A "Singular I:" A Structurational Analysis Of Passing, Dawkins Marcia Alesan

Ethnic Studies Review

It is easy to envision the socio-cultural phenomenon of passing as a relic of a bygone era, yet passing is markedly more. From a historical perspective, "passing-as-white" is a strategy of representation through which light-skinned, white-looking, legally non-white Americans attempt(ed) to reconcile "two unreconciled ideals:" their limited opportunities as non-white people in a segregated society with their idealized life goals as full American citizens (DuBois, 1903; Candy, 1998). Recent scholarship on the phenomenon explains that passing is more than a masquerade. Passing can be accidental, incidental, or a committed lifestyle that is noted: when people effectively present themselves as other …

Ethnic Studies Review

Ethnic Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Contributors

Ethnic Studies Review

Contributors to Ethnic Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2005.

In Passing: Arab American Poetry And The Politics Of Race, Katherine Wardi-Zonna, Anissa Janine Wardi

Ethnic Studies Review

Racial passing has a long history in America. In fact, there are manifold reasons for passing, not the least of which is to reap benefits-social, economic and legal-routinely denied to people of color. Passing is conventionally understood to be a volitional act that either situationally or permanently allows members of marginalized groups to assimilate into a privileged culture. While it could be argued that those who choose to pass are, in a sense, race traitors, betraying familial, historical and cultural ties to personhood,1 Wald provides another way of reading passing, or "crossing the line," as a "practice that emerges from …

Beauty, Borders And The American Dream In Richard Dokey's 'Sanchez', Kenneth Hada

Ethnic Studies Review

Critics have pointed out discrepancies between what is commonly understood as the American Dream in the mainstream culture at large and the fictive representation of Chicanos or Mexican-Americans who attempt to appropriate the dream as their own. For example, Luther S. Luedtke explores the Chicano novel Pocho only to conclude that this novel confirms its protagonist as a "universal man" who "suffers an existential insecurity against which no community can protect him" (14). The existential plight demonstrated in the novel is heightened because of the distance between the historical and mythical origins of the Chicanos and the white mainstream culture …

Teacher-In-Residence Program At California State University, Chico, W. Fisher

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

California State University, Chico has incorporated a Teacher-in-Residence program within the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. The purpose of this program is to have an elementary school teacher take a leave of absence from his or her classroom in order to work half—time in the Department of Mathematics at the University and half-time for the Chico Unified School District as a Mathematics Resource Specialist.

Toward Art-Making As Liberatory Pedagogy And Practice: Artists And Students In An Anti-Bullying School Reform Initiative, Sharon Verner Chappell

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

I sit at my desk for the last thirty minutes before driving to school where I will teach a painting lesson on abstract art. I am an after school visual arts intervention teacher who travels among ten K-6 urban schools in the Bay Area of California. When I am not on campus, I am working at the district office coordinating visiting artist programs and developing integrated arts curriculum. Yet each day, I notice an increasing disconnect between my duties as a teacher and my own arts practice. My painting, collage, and drawing lessons look just like the ones in the …

Identity Politics Of Disability: The Other And The Secret Self, Alice Wexler

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Ambivalence with severe physical and mental abnormality runs deep in pedagogy, but it is only a reflection of an historical ambivalence in western culture. By analyzing institutionalized behaviors towards, and assumptions about, disability in art and education, I hope to speak to the theme of the journal, which is "(Un)becoming." For at least a century individuals with severe physical disabilities have been derided as freaks, while for two decades of youth counterculture, the same term denoted a rite of passage. Individuals who exhibit their disability professionally want to be called performers or entertainers, while the Mothers of Inventions' first album …

Abu Ghraib: (Un)Becoming Photographs: How Can Art Educators Address Current Images From Visual Culture Perspectives?, Nancy Pauly

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

On Friday, May 7, 2004 the front page of The New York Times contained two photographs and a headline: "From Picture of Pride to Symbol of Abuse" (Dao, 2004, p.1). In the top photograph Lynndie R. England appears in 2003, smiling, standing in a relaxed family setting, and wearing a blue" Authentic USA" hooded sweatshirt with red and white lettering. Until early May that photo had been displayed in the Mineral County West Virginia Courthouse with other photographs of local soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Un/Becoming Digital: The Ontology Of Technological Determinism And Its Implications For Art Education, Alison Colman

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Artists have been experimenting with analog and digital technologies since the 1960's; early examples include Billy Khiver's Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) and Nam June Paik (1966). While countless artists have since made highly innovative use of new media such as the computer, artificial intelligence (AD, biotech, the Internet and the World Wide Web, LED, motion capture, gesture tracking, CPS, open source, and robotics, artist/ theorists such as Penny (1995), Lovejoy (1997), Weibel (1996; 2001) and Wilson (2002) have cautioned against appropriating deterministic engineering models underlying such technologies.(l)These models, predominant in commercial industry, government and the military, embrace efficiency, …

Editorial: The Paradoxes Of Un(Becoming), Jan Jagodzinski, Bill Wightman

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Un(becoming) is one of those adjectival words in the Merriam Webster dictionary that holds the tension of its own contradiction. Its synonyms seem to summon an endless array of descriptive abjections: unsuitable, unflattering, unappealing, undesirable, unfitting, out of place, unfit, tasteless, malapropos, unseemly, indecorous, inappropriate, unsuitable. We need not go on to get the point. Becoming, on the other hand, appears entirely positive. It denotes well chosen, tasteful, presentable, welcoming, excellent, graceful, acceptable, agreeable, attractive, effective, and so on; in short, all that which is familiar, acceptable and beautiful. Un(becoming) is, therefore, purposefully presented as a portmanteau word containing the …

In The Realm Of The “Real”: Outsider Art And Its Paradoxes For Art Educators, Jan Jagodzinski

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this essay I want to argue that un (becoming) is a word much like Freud's (1919) discussion of the word unheimlich (uncanny), which reveals a secretive and clandestine aspect of art that art educators must and should concern themselves with, since it identifies a "realm of the Real" whose abjection legitimates our very practice at its expense. It marks a return of the repressed. Un (becoming), like Freud's uncanny is visual art's non-reflected double as I attempt to show. This is the issue I wish to raise when it comes to the question of so-called "Outsider art," sometimes referred …

The Journal Of Social Theory In Art Education

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Migratory Movement: The Politics Of Ethnic Community (Re) Construction Among Creoles Of Color, 1920-1940, Andrew Jolivétte

Ethnic Studies Review

This article considers the social and economic conditions under which Creoles of Color left the state of Louisiana from 1920-1940.1 Because Creoles in the years following 1920 were legally reclassified as black, many lost their land, social and legal rights, and access to education as well as the possibility of upward mobility to which they had previously had access when they were accorded the status of a distinct/legal ethnic group. Creole families had to make decisions about the economic, social, religious, and cultural futures of their children and the community as a whole. As a form of resistance to colonial …

Teen Mothers' Perceptions Of Medicalization And The Patient/Provider Relationship, Preston Martin-Lyon

Theses and Dissertations

Within the past twenty years, a great deal of research has addressed pregnancy and childbirth in the United States. Often, however, prior studies have focused on white middle-class women and have neglected the experiences of women of color and low-income women. Teen mothers have also been marginalized in past research. With few exceptions, the limited research that does exist on African American teen mothers is usually framed around the "teen pregnancy crisis" in the U.S; seldom are teens included in studies dealing with the overall issue of medicalization. In an effort to understand the extent to which the medical model …

Method Of Infant Feeding As A Predictor Of Maternal Responsiveness, Emily Eiwen Drake

Theses and Dissertations

Infants need to develop effective, secure attachment to their primary caregivers in the first year of life. Researchers have not been able to identify all the factors that may influence the development of infant attachment. Most of the studies in this area have been done without regard to infant feeding as a potential factor. Maternal responsiveness appears to be key in the child's development of secure attachment behaviors, yet even after decades of research on infant attachment and maternal responsiveness, there is little evidence available to assist with early identification of families at risk and few interventions known to be …

Experiencing Music, Michael Alan Gray

Theses and Dissertations

I am exploring the way music alters or enhances the perception of our environment. This creative project allows me to explore and visualize several issues that intrigue me: music (sound), emotion, and visual imagery (film). My goal in developing this topic is to allow others to have an experience related to sound and image, where image is altered and enhanced by the use of music.

Intelligent Autonomous Data Categorization, Edward Graham Finegan

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research was to determine if the results of a simple comparison algorithm (SCA) could be improved by adding a hyperspace analogue to language model of memory (HAL) layer to form NCA. The HAL layer provides contextual data that otherwise would be unavailable for consideration. It was found that NCA did improve the results when compared to SCA alone. However, NCA added complexity problems that limit its practicality. The complexity of this algorithm is On3 where n is equal to the number of unique symbols in the data. While there is a relativity reasonable soft upper bound …

Exploring Classical And Contemporary Conception Of Ethos Applied Case-The Rhetorical Ethos Of President George W. Bush, Bobby J. Antrobus

Theses and Dissertations

By exploring classical and contemporary conceptions of rhetorical ethos, this thesis assembles theories of analysis and then applies them in the form of rhetorical analysis of the rhetorical ethos exhibited by President George W. Bush in his presidential speeches. The theoretical investigation reveals the extensive use of the ethical appeal in all manner of rhetorical situations in the contemporary world but especially focuses on how political rhetoric has come to rely predominantly on this persuasive appeal. The study examines several speeches given by President Bush and concludes that his success as president is attributed largely to the sophisticated rhetorical strategies …

An Exploration Of Impediments To Attachment In A Juvenile Offender Population: Comparisons Between Juvenile Sex Offenders, Juvenile Violent Offenders And Juvenile Non-Sex, Non-Violent Offenders, Sharon Kay Funari

Theses and Dissertations

This current study addresses potential impediments to attachment that may differentiate between incarcerated juveniles who have committed sexual crimes and incarcerated juveniles who have not committed such offenses. The exploration of such potential barriers to attachment has been organized around Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model. Subjects were 2948 incarcerated male adolescents adjudicated to the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice and were divided based solely upon adjudicating offense: Juvenile non-violent, non-sexual offenders (JNVNSO, n=1149), Juvenile violent, non-sexual offenders (JVNSO, n=1433) and Juvenile sexual offenders (JSO, n=366). Results indicated that JSOs differed from JNVNSOs and JVNSOs in their histories of sexual abuse as well …

The Relationship Between Breastfeeding And The Development Of Asthma In Early Childhood, River Anne Pugsley

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: Asthma can have significant adverse effects on the health and quality of life of children, and the prevalence of this condition continues to rise. Breastfeeding may protect against asthma, but some uncertainty remains. The purpose of this study was to further examine the relationship between breastfeeding and the risk of developing asthma in early childhood. Methods: Data were collected from the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey: National Survey of Children's Health, 2003. The study population consisted of 33,315 children ages 0 to 5 years. Prevalence rates of asthma and breastfeeding ,were calculated, as were crude and Mantel-Haenszel …

Substance Abuse And Psychosocial Factors In The Hepatitis C Population: Identifying Risk Factors In Disease Severity And Quality Of Life, Jill Courtney Clarida

Theses and Dissertations

Hepatitis C is the most common chronic blood-borne infection in the United States. Research has focused on contributing factors to the development and progression of liver disease, but few studies have considered nicotine use as a potential prognostic factor with CHC. Research has commonly found that CHC patients report with a diminished quality of life. Several factors have been proposed to account for a decrease in QOL; however, the mechanisms underlying the impairment in QOL have not yet been elicited. 76 CHC patients completed self-report measures on a variety of psychosocial variables and biochemical data for determining the patient's liver …

The Effects Of Footshock On The Reinforcing Efficacy Of Cocaine In Male Long-Evans Rats, Elizabeth S. Hendrick

Theses and Dissertations

Many links exist between cocaine abuse and stress. The literature and laboratory studies in rats suggest that this could be because stress increases the reinforcing efficacy of cocaine. Using male Long-Evans rats, experiments in this thesis tested effects of footshock on the reinforcing efficacy of cocaine using a progressive ratio schedule of reinforcement. They also examined effects of footshock on the reinforcing efficacy of a half-maximal dose of cocaine. Finally, they tested the effects of footshock on cocaine self-administration in rats initially resistant to acquisition of cocaine self-administration. Footshock did not increase reinforcing efficacy of cocaine on a PR schedule …

The Need, Feasibility, And Means Of Establishing A Speech Center, Julie Carter Irvin

Theses and Dissertations

According to Tom Shachtman, "the speech of too few people achieves eloquence, and that of the vast majority does not even reach a tolerable level of articulate behavior" (5). Articulate behavior has not always been a rare characteristic; from antiquity through the mid-twentieth century, the study of rhetoric was privileged and considered necessary for a well-rounded education. If today's society is inarticulate, then how can eloquence and articulateness be reintroduced as staples of a successful person in today's society? The answer is easy - through the study of rhetoric. After examining the study of rhetoric from antiquity to the present, …

Faculty Perceptions Of Academic Freedom At A Metropolitan University: A Case Study, Zachary Grant Goodell

Theses and Dissertations

This research study examines how faculty perceive academic freedom at a metropolitan university. Thirty structured interviews were conducted with social science faculty, who have been tenured for 10 years or more, at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). These faculty came from the departments of Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Political Science, Urban Studies, Criminal Justice, Women’s Studies, and African-American Studies. The following five questions were the central research questions: (a) how do core faculty in the social sciences at VCU define academic freedom; (b) do these same faculty perceive academic freedom to be a significant feature of a career in higher education; (c) …