Digital Commons Network^™

The Reluctant Sorority: Stories Of American Wives Of Prisoners Of War And Missing In Action, 1965–1973. Lessons In Exercising Leadership In The Absence Of Power, Steven L. Smith Edd

Dissertations

Increasingly, political action committees and special interest groups dominate the national policy-making process. Critics charge that campaign contributions buy access to and influence with policy makers, and that the differential ability to make such contributions results in disproportional representation. The question then becomes: how do ordinary citizens who are unable to use substantial financial contributions to "purchase" access to power mobilize people to influence public policy. To state the question another way: how can people provide leadership when they possess neither positional power nor the means commonly used to influence those with positional power? This historical study examines these questions …

Mentoring Of Special Education Administrators, Deborah Mcdonald Toups Edd

Dissertations

Mentoring powerfully develops human potential but little has been known about mentoring in special education administration. Because mentoring has a centuries-long record of success, because of the importance of special education administrators, and because of the paucity of empirical knowledge on mentoring in special education administration, this study examines mentoring in the special education administration community. The population for the study was approximately 1,465 practicing special education administrators in the state of California identified by the Center of Personnel Studies in Special Education (COPSSE). Electronic mail was used to introduce the on-line survey, Mentoring for Special Education Administrators. The instrument …

Effects Of Organizational Trust, Pablo Velez Phd, Msn, Rn

Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between levels of organizational trust (OT) and nursing turnover rates, turnover expenditures, patient satisfaction scores, nurse managers' job satisfaction, and nurse managers' perception of fair compensation. An OT inventory and demographic questionnaire were used to collect data from 57 nurse managers working for not-for-profit hospitals in California. Pearson correlations analysis showed that OT was statistically significantly (p = .05) related to overall hospital patient satisfaction scores, nurse managers' job satisfaction, nurse managers' perception of fair compensation, and executives' tenure. OT was not correlated with nursing turnover rates or nursing turnover expenditures. By focusing on developing …

New Innovations In State Legislatures: An Examination Of The Successes Of Diffusion And The Potential Of Personal Home Pages, Amber Jean Reetz Narro

Dissertations

This dissertation examined state legislators’ dissemination of innovations on their websites by determining the extent to which state legislators’ web sites reflect “best practices” as recommended by Park and Choi (2002) and Jewell (1982). The researcher utilizes content analysis to determine which legislators employ tools of sophistication, as well as relationship-building tools. In addition, the researcher interviewed webmasters across the country to determine the limitations placed on legislators. Finally, the researcher examined legislator and constituency demographics. Using chi-square analysis, the researcher determined if there were relationships between the tools on the websites and the demographics of the legislator and constituency …

Creativity Fostering Behaviors In The Nurse Educator, Barbara Neher Taylor Phd

Dissertations

The purpose of this descriptive study of 93 BSN nurse educators in the State of California was to examine the relationship between creativity fostering behaviors in the nurse educator and intrinsic motivation, creativity fostering behaviors and the teaching/learning goals, and creativity fostering behaviors and class size, number of years teaching, and university type. This sample included 93 participants, 93% were female, Caucasian (91%), with a mean age of 53 and worked in a public university (65%). Medical/surgical was the most common clinical specialty (26%), with a mean of 29.15 years in nursing practice, and 15 years as a nurse educator. …

The Effects Of Participating In Youth Theater, Mark Plato Arapostathis Edd

Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of student participation in youth theater on the students. Research suggests that theater arts have aided in building student cognition and contributed to the development of literacy. Davenport (1999) concluded that the experience and knowledge that one gains from theater arts form the basic building blocks for the skills needed to learn and to become literate. He added that creative expression is the actual production of a work of art, and this direct, personal involvement provides the experience base upon which cognitive development occurs. This cognitive development has practical application …

Martin Ellerby: A Biographical Sketch Of The Composer And Descriptive Analysis Of Paris Sketches And Symphony For Winds, Jeffrey Cliff Mathews

Dissertations

This study of the wind band music of Martin Ellerby was undertaken in order to obtain information about the important components of his musical style and to understand his compositional procedures. An interview with the composer combined with other background information related important influences and events in the development of his musical language. Martin Ellerby has published over seventy works that include compositions for wind band, brass band, orchestra, choir, and chamber ensembles. Paris Sketches and Symphony for Winds are representative of his wind band output; therefore, these are the focus of this project. Their proper performance requires significant study …

So You Think It's Inclusion…Think Again: A Quantitative Analysis Of Stakeholder Perceptions In Community Youth Organizations, Mary Mcallister Shea Edd

Dissertations

Over the last thirty years, a cultural transformation has occurred in public schools as students with disabilities have slowly moved from segregated sites and special day classes to more inclusive classroom environments. Although this change has largely been driven by legislative mandate, including the requirement that students be supported in the least restrictive environment possible, the benefits of inclusion have been exceedingly well documented in the literature. Unfortunately, the inclusiveness seen within schools has not extended to the provision of out-of-school programs, and as a result, sixteen years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, children with disabilities …

Considering The Rationality Of African Ritual Behavior, Joel Grant Mort

Dissertations

The traditional social scientific method undervalues the role that cognitive processes play in human behavior and instead focuses on posited external causal forces, the most common of which is 'culture.' Normative models of rationality, on the other hand, often do suggest and emphasize cognitive reasoning strategies. What is lacking is a familiarity and understanding of what human beings actually do which is, ironically, something social scientists do know something about. Both assume a sort of rational normative baseline cognitive structure and then try to discover those circumstances in which this structure is compromised by the culture, the environment, learning, and …

Effects Of Single Versus Multiple Verbal Operant Arrangements On The Acquisition Of Mands And Tacts In Preschool Children, Tina M. Sidener

Dissertations

Verbal Behavior programs for children diagnosed with autism typically teach novel language in the context of multiple verbal operant arrangements. Commonly called "mixed verbal behavior", this involves the interspersal of various exemplars across verbal operant categories. Despite the current recommended use of this teaching procedure, only 2 studies to date have empirically evaluated its effectiveness (i.e., Arntzen & Almas, 2001; Carroll & Hesse, 1987). In both of these studies, mixed mand-tact training resulted in faster mean acquisition of tacts than tact-only training. In Experiment 1 of the current investigation, a systematic replication of previous studies was conducted with 3 typically-developing …

Olfactory Bulb Neurons Of Adult Zebrafish Morphology, Distribution, Cellular Interactions And Structural Stability Following Deafferentation, Cynthia L. Fuller

Dissertations

The zebrafish is becoming an increasingly popular model for studies involving olfactory function, yet there is still much to be learned about the anatomy and circuitry of different cell types in the olfactory bulb. This study focuses on identifying the morphology and distribution of output neurons and interneurons in the olfactory bulb of adult zebrafish, Danio rerio . Furthermore, this investigation examines the cellular interactions of the primary output neuron, the mitral cell, and addresses the issue of neuronal plasticity by considering the structural stability of this cell type following loss of afferent innervation.

Using retrograde tract tracing with various …

The War On Drugs V. The War On Pain: Do Controlled Prescribing Laws Have A Role?, Susanne F. Homant

Dissertations

The illegal use of prescription drugs and the under-treatment of chronic pain are both considered serious public health issues in this country. Strong medicines classified as controlled substances by the DEA are often used to treat chronic pain conditions and are also known to be diverted to non-medical uses, thus a solution to one problem may happen at the expense o f the other. Prescription Monitoring Programs (PMPs) are public policies that are felt by many to address diversion of controlled substances, and are generally welcomed by law enforcement as an excellent tool in the war against drugs. A number …

Doers Of The Living Word: Gospel Ideology And The African American Womanist Novel, Rebecca Erin Huskey

Dissertations

In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison issues a charge and illuminates the challenge that she and other African American writers face in defining the self through a racially oppressive language:

Neither blackness nor "people of color" stimulates in me notions of excessive, limitless love, anarchy, or routine dread. I cannot rely on these metaphorical shortcuts because I am a black writer struggling with and through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive "othering" of people and language which are by no means marginal or already and completely known and …

More Than In And Out Of The Classroom Closet: A Study Of Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Teachers’ Identity Management Strategies, Teresa S. Lance

Dissertations

Two advancements in the study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals’ workplace sexual identity management, the Workplace Sexual Identity Management Measure (WSIMM) and the Workplace Sexual Identity Management (WSIM) social cognitive model of identity management are incorporated in the current study of LGB K-12 teachers’ workplace sexual identity management strategies. The purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties o f a revised version the WSIMM, investigate the workplace sexual identity management strategies of LGB teachers, and gain further understanding of the complex process LGB individuals navigate related to managing their sexual identity at work by exploring …

Localization In Wireless Sensor Networks, Mark Terwilliger

Dissertations

With the proliferation of wireless sensor networks, providing location-aware technology and services to new applications have become important for developers. Localization is the problem of determining the positions of nodes in an ad hoc network. With the constrained resources of network sensors, providing robust localization services remains a fundamental research challenge facing the entire sensor network development community.

The initial localization problem that we addressed was to design and develop a working system that could locate equipment, such as a laptop or video projector. Ferret, the localization system developed, uses two different ranging techniques to help locate an object to …

A Study On Perceptions Of Civil Engineers Regarding Mandatory Continuing Education, Alee A. Sleymann

Dissertations

This study explored the perceptions of civil engineers regarding continuing professional competency requirements for license renewal. In this study,continuing professional competency is assumed to have a direct relationship to public welfare and safety. The policy of mandatory continuing education was adopted primarily for this reason. Currently, mandatory continuing education is adopted by 29 states as the method of assuring continued professional competency.

Many professionals, however, have not welcomed this mandatory continuing education (MCE) policy. The reason for this opposition is the claimed ineffectiveness of this policy in fostering continued competency. In addition, the regulatory boards and policy advocates have not …

An Examination Of The Job Satisfaction Of Mid-Level Managers In Student Affairs Administration, Jessie L. Grant

Dissertations

This study examined the job satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and attrition (intent to leave their position within the next twelve months) of mid-level managers in student affairs administration using Herzberg's (1966) Motivation-Hygiene Theory.

A purposive sample of 1943 mid-level managers from the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) was sent an invitation to take a Web-based survey. Four hundred seventy seven responses were received. Statistics were calculated for the demographic variables of age, education, gender, ethnic background, degree level and currently pursuing a degree, functional area(s) of the mid-level manager, supervision, Carnegie classification, student enrollment, institutional type, and career tenure in the student …

Clients' Expectations Of Public Health Nurses' Home Visits, Eva G. Miller Dnsc, Ms, Rn, Phn

Dissertations

Although there is considerable research on the relationship between client expectations and outcomes of care in acute care settings, less is known about clients' expectations for public health nurses' home visits. The aim of this study was to understand clients' expectations of public health nurses' home visits as a first step in making explicit how expectations affect client responses to, and ultimately, outcomes of public health nurses' care. Interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 19 primary caretakers of high-risk infants admitted to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and voluntarily enrolled in a High-Risk Infant (HRI) Program in …

Homeless Mothers' Perceptions Of Parenting In Shelters, Sarah E. Young Whitaker Dnsc, Msn, Rn

Dissertations

Descriptions of parenting in a homeless shelter were obtained from nine single mothers housed in one of two shelters in a major southwestern border metroplex. Case study methodology was used to obtain their perspectives on parenting in this unique context. Content analysis was used to organize and analyze emerging themes. Major themes that emerged from the study were (a) a lack of autonomy, (b) gaining access to material resources, (c) lack of privacy, (d) constant change and insecurity in the environment, (e) differing values, and (e) psychosocial support.

Male Arab-Muslims Health And Health Promotion Perceptions And Practices, Abdel-Raheem O. Yosef Phd, Msn, Rn

Dissertations

The Arab Muslim population is one of the dramatically increasing minorities in the United States. In addition to other factors, gender, religion and cultural background influence individuals' beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes to health and illness. Little is known about Arab American male immigrants, how they perceive illness, how they promote their health, and the stressors they experience and barriers they face in accessing the American health care system. The purpose of this study was to develop knowledge about the male Arab-Muslims' health perceptions and health promotion perceptions and practices. This qualitative exploratory study used a grounded theory approach to gain …

Facial Feature Representation And Recognition, Chao-Fa Chuang

Dissertations

Facial expression provides an important behavioral measure for studies of emotion, cognitive processes, and social interaction. Facial expression representation and recognition have become a promising research area during recent years. Its applications include human-computer interfaces, human emotion analysis, and medical care and cure.

In this dissertation, the fundamental techniques will be first reviewed, and the developments of the novel algorithms and theorems will be presented later. The objective of the proposed algorithm is to provide a reliable, fast, and integrated procedure to recognize either seven prototypical, emotion-specified expressions (e.g., happy, neutral, angry, disgust, fear, sad, and surprise in JAFFE database) …

Design And Stability Analysis Of High Performance Packet Switches, Zhen Guo

Dissertations

With the rapid development of optical interconnection technology, high-performance packet switches are required to resolve contentions in a fast manner to satisfy the demand for high throughput and high speed rates. Combined input-crosspoint buffered (CICB) switches are an alternative to input-buffered (IB) packet switches to provide high-performance switching and to relax arbitration timing for packet switches with high-speed ports.

A maximum weight matching (MWM) scheme can provide 100% throughput under admissible traffic for lB switches. However, the high complexity of MWM prohibits its implementation in high-speed switches. In this dissertation, a feedback-based arbitration scheme for CICB switches is studied, where …

Probabilistic Approaches To The Design Of Wireless Ad Hoc And Sensor Networks, Zhen Guo

Dissertations

The emerging wireless technologies has made ubiquitous wireless access a reality and enabled wireless systems to support a large variety of applications. Since the wireless self-configuring networks do not require infrastructure and promise greater flexibility and better coverage, wireless ad hoc and sensor networks have been under intensive research. It is believed that wireless ad hoc and sensor networks can become as important as the Internet. Just as the Internet allows access to digital information anywhere, ad hoc and sensor networks will provide remote interaction with the physical world.

Dynamics of the object distribution is one of the most important …

Multilevel Adaptive Security System, Hongwei Li

Dissertations

Recent trends show increased demand for content-rich media such as images, videos and text in ad-hoc communication. Since such content often tends to be private, sensitive, or paid for, there exists a requirement for securing such information over resource constrained ad hoc networks. In this work, traditional data security mechanisms, existing ad hoc secure routing protocols and multilevel security are first reviewed. Then a new system, called the Multilevel Adaptive Security System, which incorporates the multilevel security concept at both the application layer and the network layer, is proposed to provide adaptive security services for data and routing processes.

MLASS …

The Effects Of Aging On Cardiac Mechanics, Samuel C. Lieber

Dissertations

It is well established that the aging heart exhibits left ventricular (LV) diastolic dysfunction and changes in mechanical properties, which have been attributed to alterations in the extracellular matrix (ECM). The investigators tested the hypothesis that the mechanical properties of cardiac myocytes significantly change with aging thereby contributing to the LV diastolic dysfunction. Cellular mechanical properties were determined by indenting cells with an atomic force microscope (AFM). The indentation results were interpreted by modeling the AFM probe as a blunted cone and determining an apparent elastic modulus (B) with classical infinitesimal strain theory (CIST). A commercially available finite element software …

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks For Intelligent Systems, Zhigang Wang

Dissertations

Advances in wireless technology and portable computing along with demands for high user mobility have provided a major promotion toward the development of ad hoc networks. Mobile ad hoc networks feature dynamic topology, self-organization, limited bandwidth and battery power of a node. They do not rely on specialized routers for path discovery and traffic routing. Research on ad hoc networks has been extensively investigated in the past few years and related work has focused on many of the layers of the communications architecture.

This research intends to investigate applications of MANET for intelligent systems, including intelligent transportation system (ITS), sensor …

Design And Resource Management Of Reconfigurable Multiprocessors For Data-Parallel Applications, Xiaofang Wang

Dissertations

FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array)-based custom reconfigurable computing machines have established themselves as low-cost and low-risk alternatives to ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) implementations and general-purpose microprocessors in accelerating a wide range of computation-intensive applications. Most often they are Application Specific Programmable Circuiits (ASPCs), which are developer programmable instead of user programmable. The major disadvantages of ASPCs are minimal programmability, and significant time and energy overheads caused by required hardware reconfiguration when the problem size outnumbers the available reconfigurable resources; these problems are expected to become more serious with increases in the FPGA chip size. On the other hand, dominant high-performance computing …

Dynamic Measuring Tools For Online Discourse, Jeffrey S. Saltz

Dissertations

When evaluating participation within an Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN), current best practices include counting messages and reviewing participant surveys. To understand the impact of more advanced dynamic measurement tools for use within an ALN, a web-based tool, known as iPET (the integrated Participation Evaluation Tool), was created. iPET, which leverages Social Network Analysis and Information Visualization techniques, was then evaluated via an empirical study. This research demonstrates that using a tool such as iPET increases participation within an ALN without increasing facilitator workload. Due to the fact that active online discussion is a key factor in the success of an …

Flow-Oriented Anomaly-Based Detection Of Denial Of Service Attacks With Flow-Control-Assisted Mitigation, Sui Song

Dissertations

Flooding-based distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks present a serious and major threat to the targeted enterprises and hosts. Current protection technologies are still largely inadequate in mitigating such attacks, especially if they are large-scale. In this doctoral dissertation, the Computer Network Management and Control System (CNMCS) is proposed and investigated; it consists of the Flow-based Network Intrusion Detection System (FNIDS), the Flow-based Congestion Control (FCC) System, and the Server Bandwidth Management System (SBMS). These components form a composite defense system intended to protect against DDoS flooding attacks. The system as a whole adopts a flow-oriented and anomaly-based approach to the detection …

Network Level Performance Of Differentiated Services (Diffserv) Networks, Li Zhu

Dissertations

The Differentiated Services (DiffServ) architecture is a promising means of providing Quality of Service (QoS) in Internet. In DiffServ networks, three service classes, or Per-hop Behaviors (PHBs), have been defined: Expedited Forwarding (EF), Assured Forwarding (AF) and Best Effort (BE).

In this dissertation, the performance of DiffServ networks at the network level, such as end-to-end QoS, network stability, and fairness of bandwidth allocation over the entire network have been extensively investigated.

It has been shown in literature that the end-to-end delay of EF traffic can go to infinity even in an over-provisioned network. In this dissertation, a simple scalable aggregate …