Digital Commons Network^™

A Sustainable, Systematic Process For Continuous Program Improvement, Nikos J. Mourtos

Faculty Publications

The USA Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) adopted recently a new set of criteria for evaluating engineering programmes. One of these (criterion 3) refers to programme outcomes and assessment. In this article, the author describes the design and implementation of a sustainable, systematic process for defining and assessing programme outcomes. This process involves analysing each outcome into elements, defining a set of attributes for each element, selecting outcome indicators and performance targets, and developing special rubrics for an accurate assessment of student skills. The author also describes a systematic way of addressing specific programme outcomes through course and …

Governance And The Religion Question: Voluntaryism, Disestablishment, And America's Church-State Proposition, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

The quandary over how to structure the relationship between religion and the civil state is an ancient one. From the perspective of political philosophy this is the religion question, and events over many centuries have proven that the answer is easy to get wrong. Religion, by its very definition, is the fixed point from which all else is surveyed. It is about ultimate matters, both micro and macro. Hence, religion addresses the irreducible core of personhood and its meaning, while at the same time religion embraces a worldview that transcends and encompasses everything else. Religion generates intense emotions that when …

Naming Racism: A Conceptual Look At Internalized Racism In Us Schools, Rita Kohli, R.N. Johnson, L H. Perez

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hrm Strategies In Structurally Depressed Industries: The Japanese Approach, Mahesh N. Rajan, O. K. Gupta

Faculty Publications

Several adverse macro-economic trends beginning in the early 1970’s drastically reduced the relative competitiveness of various sectors of the Japanese economy. Firms in Western (industrialized) countries that were faced with a similar loss of comparative advantage dealt with the problem by undertaking strategies of restructuring--primarily, retrenchment and downsizing strategies. However, in sharp contrast to the Western approach, the Japanese response to industrial decline, from a HRM standpoint, was a product of the political, cultural, and social institutions/values of that society. The Japanese government, business sector and the labor unions worked together to ‘maintain’ employment levels (albeit, mainly that of permanent …

Developing The Ict Infrastructure For Africa: The Influence On Global Scholarship, Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, Samantha K. Hastings

Faculty Publications

http://jelis.org/ © 2006

The Medical Library Association's Professional Development Progam: A Look Back At The Way Ahead, Fred W. Roper

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Information Vaccine: Hiv/Aids And Libraries In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kendra S. Albright

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Competition And Market Failure In The Antitrust Jurisprudence Of Justice Stevens, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Death Of Procedural Safeguards: Prior Restraint, Due Process And The Elusive First Amendment Value Of Content Neutrality, Edward L. Carter, Brad Clark

Faculty Publications

In recent years, federal courts eroded the procedural safeguards required for prior restraint licensing schemes established in Freedman v. Maryland. The Supreme Court of the United States stated that the dangers of prior restraint were accounted for by content neutrality. But a close examination of federal courts of appeals opinions since 2002 reveals that erosion of procedural safeguards may threaten speech interests. First, procedural safeguards have not been required, in some cases, even for content-based prior restraints. Second, courts of appeals have held that, in the context of content-neutral prior restraints, the First Amendment no longer requires a time limit …

Homer Simpson Meets The Rule Against Perpetuities: The Controversial Use Of Pop-Culture In Legal Writing Pedagogy, Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Faculty Publications

Imagine that you have returned to your first year of law school. In your legal writing course, you are required to finish the year with an extensive brief analyzing a legal problem. After months in your doctrinal courses dealing with mind-bending legal issues such as liquidated damages, substantive due process, felony murder, personal jurisdiction, and shifting executory interests, you are ready to sink your teeth into a challenging legal writing assignment. You want to show your stuff and prove that your writing is law review caliber. Your assignment starts as follows: Greenacre is a parcel of land bounded on three …

Debtor Discharge And Creditor Repayment In Chapter 13, Scott F. Norberg, Andrew Velkey

Faculty Publications

Consumer bankruptcy filings hit another record high in 1998, with nearly 1.4 million consumers filing for bankruptcy relief. This trend sparked a debate in Congress about means-testing chapter 7 bankruptcy filings. Proponents of reform argued that it would curtail fraud and abuse. Opponents believed that consumer debt was swamping income growth, and that the deregulation of the consumer credit market had led to overgenerous lending and hence to more bankruptcies. This is an empirical study of whether filers for chapter 13 bankruptcy cases are abusing the system, or whether debtors are truly being swamped by debt in excess of their …

The Citizenship Dialectic, Ediberto Román

Faculty Publications

Imagine that you reside in a country not unlike the United States, with a similar cultural, economic, racial and ethnic mix. As in many other countries, the events of September 11, 2001, dramatically changed the lives of the inhabitants of your land. Your country passed a series of Special Laws specifically designed to enhance national security, and has joined the United States in its efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Your country's law enforcement and military officials, in several high-profile arrests that captured the attention of the populace, took three suspects into custody who allegedly were involved in terrorist-related activities. While …

The Family As A Context For Religious And Spiritual Development In Children And Youth, Chris J. Boyatzis, David C. Dollahite, Loren D. Marks

Faculty Publications

Our chapter addresses how the family promotes or hinders transcendence of the self in children, that is, how the family is a context in which spiritual development occurs. Due to space limitations, our emphasis is on socialization and interaction processes within the family and not on other issues such as psychodynamic processes (e.g., Rizzuto, 1979) or faith development (e.g., Fowler, 1981). There are many motivations to explore family socialization of religious and spiritual development. One, family spirituality and religiosity are linked with many desirable outcomes and inversely with negative outcomes in children and youth. (Other chapters in this volume examine …

Multicultural Education In The Mental Health Professions: A Meta-Analytic Review, Timothy B. Smith, Madonna G. Constantine, Todd W. Dunn, Jared M. Dinehart, Jared A. Montoya

Faculty Publications

The American Psychological Association and many other professional mental health organizations require graduate programs to provide education in multicultural issues. However, the effectiveness of multicultural education has been debated in the literature over the past several years. The overall purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of multicultural education using meta-analytic methodologies. Findings revealed that multicultural education interventions were typically associated with positive outcomes across a wide variety of participant and study characteristics. Multicultural education interventions that were explicitly based on theory and research yielded outcomes nearly twice as beneficial as those that were not. Priorities for future …

The Marriage Moments Program For Couples Transitioning To Parenthood: Divergent Conclusions From Formative And Outcome Evaluation Data, Alan J. Hawkins, Elizabeth B. Fawcett, Jason S. Carroll, Tamara T. Gilliland

Faculty Publications

This article presents the results of a pilot study of the Marriage Moments program, designed to prevent relationship deterioration during the 1st year of parenthood. The self-guided, low-intensity program emphasizes strengthening marital virtues and partnership during this time of significant personal and family transition. One hundred fifty-five married couples participated in a randomized clinical trial with 2 psychoeducational treatment groups (a self-guided group and an instructor-encouraged group) and a comparable control group. Despite positive formative evaluation results from program participants, hierarchical linear modeling analyses failed to find significant Group X Time differences on spouses' reports of marital virtues and a …

Learning Competent Fathering: A Longitudinal Analysis Of Marital Intimacy And Fathering, Kay Bradford, Alan J. Hawkins

Faculty Publications

Although scholars have documented many links between marital relationships and parenting, these associations are not commonly explained in terms of behavior that is learned or achieved over time. This paper examines the idea that good fathering – conceptualized here as competent fathering – is the result of a developmental process, and that a loving, committed relationship between parents creates a context in which traits supportive of caring fathering are likely to be learned and practiced. After setting the stage conceptually, we provide a modest initial test of this hypothesis to discern the associations between three components of marital intimacy (emotional …

Measuring Tongue Movements During Speech: Adaptation Of A Magnetic Jaw-Tracking System, Christopher Dromey, Shawn Nissen, Petrea Nohr, Samuel G. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

The purpose of the present investigation was to determine whether measurements of tongue movement during speech could be obtained with an electronic device originally designed to record jaw movements via a magnetized pellet. The findings indicated that the system allowed basic quantification of tongue movements in a straightforward manner. The primary advantages of this system are that no distracting wires are attached to the pellet, and it is much less costly than other systems used for this purpose. Its main disadvantages are that it is unable to track multiple tongue fleshpoints simultaneously, lacks an anatomically based coordinate system, and the …

Information Pursuit In Financial-Statement Analysis: Effects Of Choice, Effort, And Disaggregation, Mark W. Nelson, William B. Tayler

Faculty Publications

Prior research provides evidence that financial-statement users weight information less heavily in judgment when that information is provided in a less accessible format (e.g., information disclosed in a footnote or less important financial statement rather than being recognized on the income statement (Maines and McDaniel 2000)). We provide evidence that, conditional on users performing the analysis necessary to transform the financial statements to appear as if disclosed information had been recognized, users may weight that information more heavily than it would have been if it had been recognized. Our experiments are set in the context of constructive capitalization of operating …

Interventions With Family Caregivers, Jonathan G. Sandberg

Faculty Publications

As a typical self-centered teenager, I struggled to find anything good about grandma moving in with us. Grandma required a lot of help with stairs, dressing, bathing; I noticed this brought a new kind of stress into our home. I think it was particularly hard on my mother, who provided most of the daily care for her mother-in-law. Living in a basement bedroom, I could escape form the stress if I wanted. I did not share a bathroom or hallway, I did not have to listen to incoherent talk and cries in the night as Alzheimer's disease began to take …

The University Library: The Center Of A University Education?, Patricia A. Frade, Allyson Washburn

Faculty Publications

During 2001-2002, a formal study was conducted jointly by Brigham Young University's Office of Planning and Assessment (OPA) and the Harold B. Lee Library (HBLL) to determine the value of the library to the university community. The study described in this paper was undertaken at a time when some experts were predicting the demise of the academic library, and university administrators were questioning the need for new building, budget, and personnel requests. This paper will present a description of the study and its results, a comparison of similar data collected two years later, and a description of two new student …

The Hippocampus Supports Both The Recollection And The Familiarity Components Of Recognition Memory, Peter E. Wais, John T. Wixted, Ramona O. Hopkins, Larry R. Squire

Faculty Publications

The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) has been used to investigate the component processes of recognition memory. Some studies with this technique have been taken to indicate that the hippocampus selectively supports the process of recollection, whereas adjacent cortex in the parahippocampal gyrus supports the process of familiarity. We analyzed ROC data from young adults, memory-impaired patients with limited hippocampal lesions, and age-matched controls. The shape of the ROC changed in similar ways from asymmetric to symmetric, as a function of the strength of memory (strong to weak) in both the young adults and the patients. Moreover, once overall memory strength …

Behold, Ye Shall Have Joy With Me’: A Study On The Lord, The Servant And The Allegory Of The Olive Tree, Dan Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap

Faculty Publications

In chapter 5 of the book of Jacob, we find a unique text commonly referred to as the allegory of the olive tree. President Joseph Fielding Smith once said that “the parable of Zenos . . . is one of the greatest parables ever recorded.”1 Composed of seventy-seven verses, this allegory is thought to follow the progression of a particular olive tree and its offspring in the Lord’s vineyard. Many readers have commented on the special nature of the allegory, with studies ranging from theological meaning, to linguistic comparisons, to actual viticultural practices. Though these studies differ in content, they …

Mass Spectrometry Assisted Assignment Of Nmr Resonances In Reductively 13C-Methylated Proteins, Megan A. Macnaughtan, Austin M. Kane, James H. Prestegard

Faculty Publications

Reductive 13C-methylation of proteins has been used as an isotope labeling strategy to study protein structure, function, and dynamics by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. However, assigning the resulting 13C-dimethylamine peaks in a 1H-13C NMR spectrum has proved to be difficult, but it is important to expand the scope of the method. The assignment strategy presented here utilizes mass spectrometry (MS) for sequence identification and varying 13C/12C isotope ratios to correlate with NMR data. The site-specific reactivity of the lysines and N-terminal amine of a protein is exploited to produce a sample with varying 13C/12C ratios at each dimethylamine. MS …

Book Review: Legal Writing Advice: Questions And Answers, Lisa Mazzie Hatlen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Glycosylphosphatidylinositol-Anchored Proteins Are Required For Cell Wall Synthesis And Morphogenesis In Arabidopsis, C. Stewart Gillmor, Wolfgang Lukowitz, Ginger Brininstool, John C. Sedbrook, Thorsten Hamann, Patricia Poindexter, Chris Somerville

Faculty Publications

Mutations at five loci named PEANUT1-5 (PNT) were identified in a genetic screen for radially swollen embryo mutants, pnt1 cell walls showed decreased crystalline cellulose, increased pectins, and irregular and ectopic deposition of pectins, xyloglucans, and callose. Furthermore, pnt1 pollen is less viable than the wild type, and pnt1 embryos were delayed in morphogenesis and showed defects in shoot and root meristems. The PNT1 gene encodes the Arabidopsis thaliana homolog of mammalian PIG-M, an endoplasmic reticulum-localized mannosyltransferase that is required for synthesis of the glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchor. All five pnt mutants showed strongly reduced accumulation of GPI-anchored proteins, suggesting that …

Cryopreservation Of Human Hematopoietic Stem And Progenitor Cells Loaded With Trehalose: Transient Permeabilization Via The Adenosine Triphosphate-Dependent P2z Receptor Channel, Sandhya S. Buchanan, Michael A. Menze, Steven C. Hand, David W. Pyatt, John F. Carpenter

Faculty Publications

Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HPCs) are a heterogenic population of cells used to treat a number of human diseases. Multilineage differentiation is a required function in successful hematopoietic reconstitution after transplantation of cryopreserved grafts. Conventional use of the cryoprotectant dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) has resulted in some reports of infusion related toxicity attributed to DMSO and/or damage to cells during freeze-thawing procedures. The purpose of this study was to explore the use of trehalose, a nontoxic disaccharide of glucose, as an alternative cryoprotectant. Trehalose was introduced into HPCs using the P2Z receptor, known to form nonselective pores in the presence …

Importance Of Race/Ethnicity In Clinical Trials: Lessons From The African-American Heart Failure Trial (A-Heft), The African-American Study Of Kidney Disease And Hypertension (Aask), And The Antihypertensive And Lipid-Lowering Treatment To Prevent Heart Attack Trial (Allhat), Anne L. Taylor, Jackson T. Wright, Richard S. Cooper

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Mobile Element Based Phylogeny Of Old World Monkeys, Jinchuan Xing, Hui Wang, Kyudong Han, David A. Ray, Cheney H. Huang, Leona G. Chemnick, Caro Beth Stewart, Todd R. Disotell, Oliver A. Ryder, Mark A. Batzer

Faculty Publications

SINEs (Short INterspersed Elements) are a class of non-autonomous mobile elements that are states, making them useful genetic systems for phylogenetic studies. Alu elements are the most successful SINE in primate genomes and have been utilized for resolving primate phylogenetic relationships and human population genetics. However, no Alu based phylogenetic analysis has yet been performed to resolve relationships among Old World monkeys. Using both a computational approach and polymerase chain reaction display methodology, we identified 285 new Alu insertions from sixteen Old World monkey taxa that were informative at various levels of catarrhine phylogeny. We have utilized these elements along …

Avian Hosts For West Nile Virus In St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, 2002, Nicholas Komar, Nicholas A. Panella, Stanley A. Langevin, Aaron C. Brault, Manuel Amador, Eric Edwards, Jennifer C. Owen

Faculty Publications

West Nile virus (WNV) infections in free-ranging birds were studied in Slidell, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, after a human encephalitis outbreak peaked there in July 2002. Seroprevalence in resident, free-ranging wild birds in one suburban site was 25% and 24% in August and October, respectively, indicating that most transmission had ceased by early August. Mortality rates, seroprevalence rates, host competence, and crude population estimates were used in mathematical models to predict actual infection rates, population impacts, and importance as amplifying hosts for several common passerine birds. Northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) and house sparrow (Passer domesticus) were the principal amplifying hosts, …

Are Specific Language Impairment And Dyslexia Distinct Disorders?, Hugh W. Catts, Suzanne M. Adlof, Tiffany Hogan, Susan Ellis Weismer

Faculty Publications

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to determine whether specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia are distinct developmental disorders.

Method - Study 1 investigated the overlap between SLI identified in kindergarten and dyslexia identified in 2nd, 4th, or 8th grades in a representative sample of 527 children. Study 2 examined phonological processing in a subsample of participants, including 21 children with dyslexia only, and 43 children with SLI only, 18 children with SLI and dyslexia, and 165 children with typical language/reading development. Measures of phonological awareness and nonword repetition were considered.

Results - Study 1 showed limited but …