Digital Commons Network^™

Amount Of International News By Four World Newspapers: Pre And Post-9/11, Sidney Mitchell

Master's Theses

World newspapers, The New York Times, The London Times, The Australian, and The Toronto Star, have the power to enlighten countries and shape public opinion domestically and abroad. However, at times, newspapers tend to be biased and reflect ideologies or values, which tend to be slanted towards home cultures and personal politics. Consequently, the public often suffers because what it learns about the world may be distorted. As a result, newspapers have witnessed a steady decline in readership following the end of the Cold-War and continuing throughout post-9/11. Irrespectively, studies have reported “spikes“ in international news coverage following 9/11 that …

Toward A Single-Consciousness: Challenging "Un-American-Ness" Of People Of Color, Bhawana Kamil

Master's Theses

Race is a major axis of social injustice in America. Social injustice is due to both maldistribution of material resources and opportunities and non-recognition or mis-recognition of people of color. One form of mis-recognition is the accusation that a person of color is not a real American, creating a conflict of identities (i.e., racial and American): a double-consciousness. This accusation has its origins in faulty ideas about race, identity, and race-group membership.

This paper presents a new model of identity that addresses these faulty ideas and provides a conceptual structure within which one can consistently maintain a single-consciousness while maintaining …

Visual Framing Of Patriotism And National Identity On The Covers Of Der Spiegel, Andrea Marie Pyka

Master's Theses

This thesis studied how Der Spiegel, a news magazine in Germany, visually framed images of German patriotism and national identity on its front covers between 1947 and 2009. This study specifically examined whether the covers showed an increase in symbols of patriotism and national identity following four major events in Germany. The events included: the building of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the adoption of the Euro, and the 2006 World Cup. A framing analysis of the covers showed that there was an increase in symbols of national identity across each of these four events. However, based …

A Phonetic, Phonological, And Morphosyntactic Analysis Of The Mara Language, Michelle Arden

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a linguistic analysis of the Mara language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northwest Myanmar and in neighboring districts of India. Data has been gathered through interviews with a native speaker. The analysis includes a full phonetic segment inventory of the dialect and a phonological analysis of contrastive sounds and contextual variants. Sound files embedded in the document illustrate the phonetic system. Mara's distinctive phonetic features include the loss of word-final consonants, a set of voiceless sonorants, pre- and post- aspirated nasals, and lowered and unlowered vowel pairs. The morphosyntax of Mara pronominal words demonstrates a split-ergative case …

Comparative Study Of The Practice Of Product Placement In Bollywood And Hollywood Movies, Shruti Vinayak Gokhale

Master's Theses

Product placement, or placing brands in movies, is a widely recognized practice that dates from the 1980s. This study is a content analysis of product placement in 15Bollywoodand 15Hollywoodmovies from 2005 to 2009.

Statistical tests showed that there were a significantly higher number of product placements in Hollywood movies that were integrated into the storylines, verbally referred to by characters in the movies, appropriate to the movie scenes, and containingimplied endorsementsby the actors than product placements in Bollywood movies. However, in terms of duration of the time that brands were onscreen, product placements in Bollywood movies in 2006 and 2007 …

A Framing Analysis Of Weblogs And Online Newspapers, Maria Carolina Janssen

Master's Theses

The thesis examined possible differences in framing of information in news weblogs and professional news articles. A frame analysis was conducted to answer the main question: Is news framed differently in online newspapers as compared to weblogs? Articles from four blogs and four online newspapers were gathered over a period of 30 days. A total of 43 frames were identified in the selected blogs. A total of 92 frames were identified in the selected online newspapers. The most commonly identified frame in both blogs and online newspapers was the progress frame with 51 appearances. The critical frame was used 47 …

Health Information Version 2.0: Female Students In Cyberspace, Sonia Easaw

Master's Theses

The arrival of the Internet, one of the greatest mass media vehicles of our time, has presented a wide platform for the dissemination of health information to the American public. A majority of adults in the United States search online for information about various health and medical topics, yet a particular portion of the general public, namely college students, searches for health information online at a higher rate than the general population. Female college students especially have cause to seek information about particular women's health matters that are relevant to their age group.

This study reveals new details about the …

The Russian Émigré In America: Translating And Transcending Exile In Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin And Pale Fire, Yelena N. Severina

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates how Vladimir Nabokov's experience as an exiled writer in America serves as a model for the protagonists of Pnin(1957) and Pale Fire(1962), two of Nabokov's English-language novels in which exile is a central theme. Although the protagonists, Pnin and Kinbote, are both true exiles, they illustrate markedly different responses to their dislocations; read in tandem, the novels constitute Nabokov's analysis of exile, his lament over its painfulness, and his transcendence of exile through art. Chapter One looks at Nabokov through the lens of exile while establishing fundamental theoretical concepts and terminology. Chapters Two and Three …

Teaching Artists In The High School: A Creative Approach To Student Self-Esteem, Jennifer Nye Walsh

Master's Theses

This thesis addresses the effect of teaching artists' (TAs) classroom instruction in the arts on student self-esteem at Downtown College Preparatory (DCP) High School, an at-risk high school in San Jose, California, over the course of two semesters. The data collected and used to analyze these effects were student observations, student art work, student journal entries, student surveys, and data provided by a third party consulting company. The purpose of this study was to determine if having teaching artists working in an at-risk high school classroom environment could positively affect their students' self-esteem through their arts programming. The results showed …

The Art Of Camille Rose Garcia: An Existential Fairy Tale, Jennifer De La Cruz

Master's Theses

Camille Rose Garcia is part of a contemporary underground art movement known as Pop Surrealism. An apparent dream-like and unexpected nature borrows from the oeuvre of Surrealism, while an allusion to the familiar and popular denotes similarities to the comic culture of the 1930s and Pop Art of the 1960s. Garcia's paintings are laced with the personal remnants of childhood memories that recall frequent trips to Disneyland and visits to her grandparent's cabin tucked away in the redwood forests of Northern California. Her artwork, a haunting recipe of sweet and sour, beautiful and grotesque, ominous and nostalgic, travels through Los …

Framing Corporate Social Responsibility On The Websites Of Fortune 10 Green Giants, Kriti Ashok

Master's Theses

This thesis reports a framing study of corporate social responsibility on the Internet. The study explores how Fortune 10 Green Giants frame corporate social responsibility on their websites. The Green Giants are Honda, Continental, Suncor, Tesco, Alcan, PG&E, S.C. Johnson, Goldman Sachs, Swiss Re, and Hewlett-Packard. According to Fortune magazine, these 10 companies have gone beyond what the law requires to operate in an environmentally responsible way. The study is focused on the textual content of these 10 corporation websites. The study involves identification of frames, determination of the most used and the least used frames, and identification of patterns …

A Framing Study Of Media Coverage On Climate Change From 1989 To 2009, Marie Mccann

Master's Theses

This thesis examined how climate change has been framed in four major news magazines--Maclean's, Newsweek, The Economist, and U.S. News and World Report--over the past 20 years. We looked at a number of framing elements, including primary frames, depth of coverage, framing the science, sources of information, section placement, and verbiage. A content analysis of 476 articles was performed. Articles included in the sample appeared in one of the four news magazines during the years 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, and 2009 and included at least one sentence devoted to climate change. We found that the most predominant …

Morton Subotnick's Ghost Scores: Interaction And Performance With Music Technology, Jeffrey Hanson

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates the ghost works of Morton Subotnick and their contribution to the world of sound art and electronic music technologies. Subotnick's work in this area is an integral part of his outstanding achievements, on which there is little collected research. The discussion focuses on the development of Subotnick's designs and techniques that he applied to the construction of the ghost works. Through an exploration of earlier background details, it is shown that tape recording, voltage-controlled technologies, and the analog sequencer provided Subotnick with the means to follow his vision and begin creating "music as studio art." An examination …

Kinna-Uganda: A Review Of Uganda's National Cinema, Kristin Alexandra Rasmussen

Master's Theses

Kinna-Uganda (K-U) is a form of cinema that has emerged in Uganda following decades of the totalitarian political regime of Idi Amin, which in turn followed almost a century of colonial rule. The concept of national cinema is evaluated in this thesis as a tool for analysis of K-U. The national cinema concept is compared with four other models -- regional, continental, Pan-African, and transnational -- that can also be used to analyze and deconstruct films and the academic space within which they reside. This study examines Uganda's pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial times and their impact on the production of …

Marketing Latin Alternative Music Through Social Networking Sites, Vanessa Ursala Garcia

Master's Theses

This thesis examined the marketing strategies for Latin alternative music used on MySpace, Facebook, and Al Borde (On the Edge). This study found that the understanding of the target demographic was important for implementing successful marketing strategies to niche audiences. Marketing Latin alternative music has not been successful at a mainstream level; therefore, marketers have targeted niche communities on social networking sites. The most dominant strategy used involved the status update feature on Facebook. It allowed musicians and marketers to communicate information and media to a large network of individuals across the country. Three other major strategies included event invitations, …

Women With Facial Disfigurements: Impact Of Media-Constructed Images Of Beauty, Sophia M. Papadopoulos

Master's Theses

WOMEN WITH FACIAL DISFIGUREMENTS: IMPACT OF MEDIA-CONSTRUCTED IMAGES OF BEAUTY

by Sophia M. Papadopoulos

The purpose of this study was to analyze whether women with congenital or acquired facial disfigurements were negatively influenced by the images of beauty found in television, magazines, newspapers, and advertisements and to determine how these images affected their overall perceptions of self. A qualitative study was conducted through in-depth telephone interviews with 25 women with various facial disfigurements. The study showed that, although media-constructed images of beauty did have some influence on the participants' overall perceptions of self, other factors such as the manner in …

New Media Use Among High Achieving Adolescents, Kathleen Sara Alpizar

Master's Theses

To date, there has been relatively little research on adolescents and their new media use in school and at home. It is important to study this new media use because it can reveal much about how communication patterns are changing or evolving as adolescents incorporate new media seamlessly into their lives.

This study examined high achieving adolescents' use of new media at school and in their homes. Data were gathered at school through questionnaires and group discussion sessions. In addition, students kept diaries of all of their media use for one week.

This study revealed that high-achieving adolescents use new …

Synthesis Of A Potentially Insulin-Mimetic, Lipid-Linked Inositol Glycan, Meenakshi Goel

Master's Theses

Inositol glycans (IGs) are naturally occurring oligosaccharides that can stimulate insulin sensitive cells. Several synthetic IG analogues have been shown to activate the insulin-signaling pathway, including the stimulation of the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) phosphatase that can further stimulate aerobic metabolism in cells. Cancer cells shift to anaerobic metabolism in order to escape intrinsic apoptosis (Warburg Effect). IG's ability to stimulate aerobic metabolism might provide a method to reverse the Warburg Effect and thereby induce apoptosis in the cancer cells. One specific palmitoylated IG analogue has been shown to selectively kill cancer cells while having no adverse effect on normal …

Assessment Of First Aid Knowledge And Decision Making Of Coaches Of Youth Soccer, Lynn Castro

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to assess the first aid knowledge of coaches of youth soccer and to assess the decision making ability of those coaches in hypothetical athletic situations. The study investigated coaches with passing scores on the First Aid Assessment test (FAA) and first aid and CPR certification; years of coaching experience and scores on the FAA; the difference between years of coaching experience and return to play; the relationship between first aid and CPR certification and education level and the scores on the FAA and education level. Coaches completed a FAA test, Game Situation Data Sheet …

Social Support As Moderator Of Job-Specific Or Generic Stressors With Strains, Kaci Deeana Mabe

Master's Theses

Two studies examining the relationship between job-specific stressors and strains versus the relationship between generic stressors with strain, as well as the moderating role of social support (from coworkers and administrators), are presented. Eighteen primary school teachers from a private Jewish day school (Study 1) and 242 teachers from an Arizona school district (Study 2) completed self-administered surveys. Results indicated that job-specific (vs. generic) stressors had a stronger positive relationship with strains, but social support was a better moderator for the relationship between generic stressors and strain. As hypothesized, administrator support had a reverse-buffering effect on the stressor-strain relationship in …

Who Am I?: The Reflexivity Of Self-Identity Through Tourism, Matthew Lee Milde

Master's Theses

This study has set forth to close gaps, explore innovative methods, and create a better understanding of "Who am I?", in tourism research. Few studies in tourism research focus on how experiences gained from traveling shape self-identity through personal biographies. Building on the work of seminal authors on self-identity, personal narrative, and tourism, this study explores the reflexivity of self-identity as represented in travel narratives. The lived experiences offered through narrative condition spontaneous instances of self-discovery allowing for the (re)creation of new self-identities.

Participants were selected through a snowball sample; in-depth interviews were held with fifteen (15) adults born and …

Family Of Circulant Graphs And Its Expander Properties, Vinh Kha Nguyen Tran Nguyen

Master's Theses

In this thesis, we apply spectral graph theory to show the non-existence of an

expander family within the class of circulant graphs. Using the adjacency matrix and its properties, we prove Cheeger's inequalities and determine when the equalities hold. In order to apply Cheeger's inequalities, we compute the spectrum of a general circulant graph and approximate its second largest eigenvalue. Finally, we show that circulant graphs do not contain an expander family.

Where's My Daddy? Effects Of Fatherlessness On Women's Relational Communication, Latoya Marie Jackson

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis research was to understand the relationship between father absence and women's communication styles in romantic heterosexual relationships under social cognitive theory. Two studies were conducted using a multi-method research approach in order to triangulate the results. Seven fatherless women were interviewed to arrive at a better understanding of how father absence informed their romantic relational experiences. Specifically, the topics of relationship roles, self-disclosure, expression, and self-silencing in romantic relationships were examined in the interviews. Participants reflected on what growing up fatherless meant to them and whether or not this had any influence on the role …

Observed Water Vapor Enhancement In Smoke Plumes, Caroline Marie Kiefer

Master's Theses

Wildland fires cause the loss of life and billions of dollars in property damage every year in the US annually; thus, there is a need to better understand, predict, and manage both wildland and prescribed fires. Moisture released from combustion, in addition to added heat, can enhance buoyancy and convection, influencing fire behavior. Previous studies have shown a wide range of smoke plume moisture enhancement, but much uncertainty still exists in the quantitative values of moisture released during combustion. In this study, three measurement platforms were used to obtain in situ measurements of temperature and relative humidity during various prescribed …

Difference And Accommodation In Visigothic Gaul And Spain, Craig H. Schamp

Master's Theses

This thesis examines primary sources in fifth- and sixth-century Gaul and Spain and finds a surprising lack of concern for ethnicity. Authors in the fifth century expressed concern for the sanctity and safety of the church, their patria, and themselves, but seldom mention any issues that could be related to ethnicity. Even the Arian Christianity of the Goths seems to be of little or no concern. This changes in the middle of the sixth century, when Arian Christianity becomes an overarching issue in Visigothic history. The sources portray nearly every political concern in the second half of the sixth century …

A Longitudinal Study Of The Outcomes From Participation In Wilderness Adventure Education Programs, Jason Phillip Cummings

Master's Theses

The results from this study suggest that participants of wilderness adventure education programs offered by Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School felt challenged by many of the experiences from their programs. Interactions with their group helped in dealing with the challenges presented by the experience. The development of hard skills gave participants a confidence in their abilities to survive and feel safe in these wilderness environments, which allowed them to relax and enjoy the experience, develop new perspectives, become motivated and inspired, and develop a sense of independence. Participants developed a sense of growth and maturity from their …

Nutrient Removal By Algae Grown In Co2-Enriched Wastewater Over A Range Of Nitrogen-To-Phosphorus Ratios, Laura Michelle Fulton

Master's Theses

In conventional wastewater treatment, biological nutrient removal (BNR) depends on bacterial assimilation for phosphorus removal and nitrification+denitrification for nitrogen removal, with the resulting loss of the fixed nitrogen resource. Alternatively, treatment by microalgae allows for assimilative removal of both phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) thereby avoiding the oxygen demand of nitrification and preserving fixed N for fertilizer use. Paddle wheel mixed high-rate ponds have much higher algal productivity than typical oxidation ponds, but even high-rate ponds often cannot grow sufficient algae to completely assimilate the N and P in domestic wastewater. Algae growth in high-rate ponds is usually limited by …

The Effect Of Embryo Biopsy And Vitrification On The Development Potential Of Equine Embryos, Richard O. Gearhart

Master's Theses

This study investigated the development potential of equine embryos in vitro after biopsy and vitrification. Twenty embryos were obtained from Quarter Horse, Thoroughbred, and mix-breed light mares between three and ten years old. The twenty embryos were divided into a biopsy (n=10) and control group (n=10). The biopsy group underwent microaspiration biopsy using a micromanipulator to obtain a small tissue sample from the embryo. Both groups were then vitrified using a commercially available technique originally described by Carnevale (2006) at Colorado State \ University.

All 20 embryos were cultured in DMEM/Hams F-12 medium under oil at 37°C in 5% CO2 …

Automation In Cs1 With The Factoring Problem Generator, Joshua B. Parker

Master's Theses

As the field of computer science continues to grow, the number of students enrolled in related programs will grow as well. Though one-on-one tutoring is one of the more effective means of teaching, computer science instructors will have less and less time to devote to individual students. To address this growing concern, many tools that automate parts of an instructor’s job have been proposed. These tools can assist instructors in presenting concepts and grading student work, and they can help students learn to program more effectively. A growing group of intelligent tutoring systems attempts to tie all of this functionality …

Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation Applied To Flight Training, Joel D. Hanson

Master's Theses

Between 1994 and 2003 spatial disorientation resulted in at least 202 aircraft

accidents, 184 of them resulting in fatalities. Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS)

provides a cost effective and safe way to simulate spatial disorientation and

potentially test pilot’s vestibular system prior to aircraft operation. This experiment

investigates the use of GVS as an indicator of motion sensitivity and explores the

effects of GVS on flight simulation performance. Bilateral bipolar rectangular pulse

electrical stimulations were given to subjects via skin-mounted electrodes placed over

each mastoid process to stimulate the vestibular system with roll and yaw sensations.

Two studies were conducted in …