Digital Commons Network^™

Geographic Information Science And Public Participation, Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Geo-Ontology Tools – The Missing Link, Jochen Albrecht, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Brandon Derman

Publications and Research

Numerous authors have presented ontology building tools that have all been developed as part of academic projects and that are usually adaptations of more generic tools for geo-spatial applications. While we trust that these tools do their job for the special purpose they have been built, the GIScience user community is still a long way away from off-the-shelf ontology builders that can be used by GIS project managers. In this article, we present a comparative study of ontology building tools described in some twenty peer-reviewed GIScience journal articles. We analyze them from the perspective of two application domains, crime analysis …

Educating For Justice: A History Of John Jay College Of Criminal Justice. [Third Edition]., Gerald Markowitz

Publications and Research

Revision of the previously updated edition Educating for justice. 2004. Includes an interview with Jeremy Travis, the fourth President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice conducted June 5, 2008.

TOC: Introduction. The making of John Jay College; 1965-1970. The era of open admissions: 1970-1976. The crisis: 1976. The development of criminal justice: 1976-1989. The student takeovers of 1989-1991. The quest for equity. John Jay comes of age. Epilogue. Index.

Fetal Positions: Unraveling The Influence Of Religion On Premarital Pregnancy Resolution, Amy Adamczyk, Jacob Felson

Publications and Research

This study illustrates the ways religiosity and denominational affiliation influence the probability that a young woman will have an abortion.

Religion And Initiation Into Marijuana Use: The Deterring Role Of Religious Friends, Amy Adamczyk, Ian Palmer

Publications and Research

Over the last two decades researchers have begun to look at how personal religious beliefs and behaviors influence substance use, finding that more religious teens are less likely to drink, smoke, and use illegal drugs. This study builds on this previous research, combining it with work on religious contextual effects to develop a theoretical model that explains why friends’ religion would influence teens’ marijuana use, even if teens are not personally religious. Using two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines whether individual and friends’ religiosity (e.g., religious participation and importance) or born-again …

Reference Retooled: How Google Tools Strengthen And Streamline Reference Service, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

This slideshow examines the role of Google and various Google tools (circa 2008) in reference librarianship. It looks at the ways in which Google can be an active and equal participant in the reference interview and help with various kinds of ill-formed questions.

Race, Civil Rights, And Hate Speech In The Digital Era, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

The emergence of the digital era has had unintended consequences for race, civil rights, and hate speech.This chapter looks at the prevalence of both overtly racist sites, such as Stormfront, and at "cloaked" sites, that purport to advocate civil rights but disguise a racist agenda.

Pregnancy Intentions And Happiness Among Pregnant Black Women At High Risk For Adverse Infant Health Outcomes, Susan M. Blake, Michele Kiely, Charlotte C. Gard, Ayman El-Mohandes, M. Nabil El-Khorazaty, Nih-Dc Initiative

Publications and Research

CONTEXT:Unintended pregnancy is associated with risk behaviors and increased morbidity or mortality for mothers and infants, but a woman's feelings about pregnancy may be more predictive of risk and health outcomes than her intentions.

METHODS: A sample of 1,044 black women who were at increased risk were enrolled at prenatal care clinics in the District of Columbia in 2001-2003. Bivariate and multivariate analyses assessed associations between pregnancy intentions or level of happiness about being pregnant and multiple psychosocial and behavioral risk factors, and identified correlates of happiness to be pregnant.

RESULTS: Pregnancy intentions and happiness were strongly associated, but …

Permanently Failing Organizations? Small Business Recovery After September 11, 2001, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

Small businesses in Lower Manhattan after September 11, 2001, paint a telling portrait of vulnerability after disasters. This qualitative analysis of recovery for small retail and service firms with 50 or fewer employees is based on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and documentary research from September 2001 through 2005. A postdisaster emphasis on place-based assistance to firms conflicted with macro-level redevelopment plans for Lower Manhattan. Small business recovery was impeded as aid programs responded to a new sense of urgency, attachment to place, and prestorm conceptions of the neighborhood at the expense of addressing community-wide economic changes accelerated by the disaster. Ingredients …

Novel In Silico Method For Teaching Cytoarchitecture, Cellular Diversity, And Gene Expression In The Mammalian Brain, Raddy L. Ramos, Phoebe T. Smith, Joshua C. Brumberg

Publications and Research

Neuroanatomy can be a challenging topic for undergraduates, making the development of new methods of instruction an important goal of neuroscience educators. In the present report we describe the utility and versatility of the Allen Brain Atlas as a novel tool for instruction of several important anatomical principles of the mammalian central nervous system. Using this digital database, we detail how instructors of laboratory or lecture-based courses can demonstrate cytoarchitecture, cellular diversity, and gene expression profiles of the brain.

Northeast Under/Graduate Research Organization For Neuroscience (Neuron): Our Third New York City Meeting, Sharon Ramos Goyette, Kassandra L. Edinger, Vicki Luine, Jason Young, Cheryl A. Frye

Publications and Research

The NorthEast Under/graduate Research Organization for Neuroscience (N.E.U.R.O.N.) promotes preparation, education, and undergraduate research in Neuroscience. The N.E.U.R.O.N. Conference was initially held at undergraduate institutions primarily in New England. Then, for the previous two years, to broaden its impact and increase diversity, the meeting moved to Hunter College, CUNY, New York. This year represents the first year in which two N.E.U.R.O.N. meetings were held, one in Boston and one in New York City. The following is a report of the New York City meeting which was held at Hunter College on April 28, 2007. Eminent Neuroscientist, Dr. Carol Sue Carter, …

Reframing School Dropout As A Public Health Issue, Nicholas Freudenberg, Jessica Ruglis

Publications and Research

Good education predicts good health, and disparities in health and in educational achievement are closely linked. Despite these connections, public health professionals rarely make reducing the number of students who drop out of school a priority, although nearly one-third of all students in the United States and half of black, Latino, and American Indian students do not graduate from high school on time. In this article, we summarize knowledge on the health benefits of high school graduation and discuss the pathways by which graduating from high school contributes to good health. We examine strategies for reducing school dropout rates with …

Cracking Silent Codes: Critical Race Theory And Education Organizing, Celina Su

Publications and Research

Critical race theory (CRT) has moved beyond legal scholarship to critique the ways in which “colorblind” laws and policies perpetuate existing racial inequalities in education policy. While criticisms of CRT have focused on the pessimism and lack of remedies presented, CRT scholars have begun to address issues of praxis. Specifically, communities of color must challenge the dominant narratives of mainstream institutions with alternative visions of pedagogy and school reform, and community organizing plays an important role in helping communities of color to articulate these alternative counter-narratives. Yet, many in education organizing disagree with CRT's critique of colorblindness. Drawing on five …

Recruitment And Retention Of Low-Income Minority Women In A Behavioral Intervention To Reduce Smoking, Depression, And Intimate Partner Violence During Pregnancy, M Nabil El-Khorazaty, Allan A. Johnson, Michele Kiely, Ayman El-Mohandes, Siva Subramanian, Haziel A. Laryea, Kennan B. Murray, Jutta S. Thornberry, Jill G. Joseph

Publications and Research

Background
Researchers have frequently encountered difficulties in the recruitment and retention of minorities resulting in their under-representation in clinical trials. This report describes the successful strategies of recruitment and retention of African Americans and Latinos in a randomized clinical trial to reduce smoking, depression and intimate partner violence during pregnancy. Socio-demographic characteristics and risk profiles of retained vs. non-retained women and lost to follow-up vs. dropped-out women are presented. In addition, subgroups of pregnant women who are less (more) likely to be retained are identified.

Methods
Pregnant African American women and Latinas who were Washington, DC residents, aged 18 years …

Perigenual Anterior Cingulate Morphology Covaries With Perceived Social Standing, Peter J. Gianaros, Jeffrey A. Horenstein, Sheldon Cohen, Karen A. Matthews, Sarah M. Brown, Janine D. Flory, Hugo D. Critchley, Stephen B. Manuck, Ahmad R. Hariri

Publications and Research

Low socioeconomic status (SES) increases the risk for developing psychiatric and chronic medical disorders. A stress-related pathway by which low SES may affect mental and physical health is through the perception of holding a low social standing, termed low subjective social status. This proposal implicates overlapping brain regions mediating stress reactivity and socioemotional behaviors as neuroanatomical substrates that could plausibly link subjective social status to health-related outcomes. In a test of this proposal, we used a computational structural neuroimaging method (voxel-based morphometry) in a healthy community sample to examine the relationships between reports of subjective social status and regional gray …

Novel Research Translates To Clinical Cases Of Schizophrenic And Cocaine Psychosis, João V. Nunes, Patricia A. Broderick

Publications and Research

Pharmacotherapies for schizophrenic and cocaine psychoses are complex but similar because of similarities in their brain neurochemistry and behavioral outcomes. Their neurochemical neuronal mechanisms of action, as shown in preclinical and clinical studies, involve primarily dopaminergic dysfunction and, secondarily, neuroadaptive effects that seem to involve central serotonergic function. Behavioral outcomes of both disorders include hyperactivity and antipsychotic medications can ameliorate psychotic symptoms. Patients with both disorders often arrive at emergency departments and present floridly psychotic with a predominance of positive symptoms, often prompting physicians to select a typical antipsychotic medication such as haloperidol. While this has become conventional wisdom, we …

Human Mst But Not Mt Responds To Tactile Stimulation, Michael S. Beauchamp, Nafi E. Yasar, Neel Kishan, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Previous reports of tactile responses in human visual area MT/V5 have used complex stimuli, such as a brush stroking the arm. These complex moving stimuli are likely to induce imagery of visual motion, which is known to be a powerful activator of MT. The area described as “MT” in previous reports consists of at least two distinct cortical areas, MT and MST. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we separately localized human MT and MST and measured their response to vibrotactile stimuli unlikely to induce imagery of visual motion. Strong vibrotactile responses were observed in MST but not in MT. Vibrotactile …

Violence, Vision, And Voice: A Journey From Liminal To Transgressive Spaces, Stephanie Urso Spina

Publications and Research

This paper was inspired by the author’s experiences teaching a required class about feminism to affluent, predominantly female undergraduates who vociferously considered it outdated and irrelevant to their lives until they realized, in painfully personal ways, that this was the dominant discourse speaking, not their own voices. Inspired by these women, and in the hope of further displacing the hegemonically imposed code of silence, this paper breaks the author’s tacit complicity with these societal forces of repression. Written on a bus from Boston to New York, the author weaves her narrative with a description of that trip and its passengers, …

Utility And Versatility Of Extracellular Recordings From The Cockroach For Neurophysiological Instruction And Demonstration, Raddy L. Ramos, Andrew Moiseff, Joshua C. Brumberg

Publications and Research

The principles of neurophysiology continue to be challenging topics to teach in the context of undergraduate neuroscience education. Laboratory classes containing neurophysiological demonstrations and exercises are, therefore, an important and necessary complement for covering those subjects taught in lecture-based courses. We developed a number of simple yet very instructive exercises, described below, which make use of extracellular recordings from different sensory systems of the cockroach (Periplanta americana). The compendium we developed provides students with hands-on demonstrations of several commonly taught topics of neurophysiology including sensory coding by neural activity.

New York Placenames In Film Titles, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

From 1914 to 2006, 396 feature films with titles containing New York place names were released. This pattern emerged during the silent era, peaked from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, and then dropped off steadily before rebounding in the 1970s. This article discusses the cinematic representation of cities and urban life in the movies and the special place of New York as an “imagined city” and a cultural icon. New York’s associations in the popular imagination help explain the frequent occurrence of themes of negativity, violence, nightlife, and grandiosity (royalty or divinity) in these titles. The use of …

Behavioral Approaches To Weight Control: A Review Of Current Research, Angela Marinilli Pinto, Jessica Gokee-Larose, Rena R. Wing

Publications and Research

Weight management is a salient issue for women. Studies of behavioral, pharmacological and surgical interventions indicate that women comprise the majority of patients presenting for weight-loss treatment. In this review we discuss the health impact of obesity for women, review behavioral treatments for adult overweight and obesity, and address topics of particular relevance for women, including concerns that weight-loss treatment may precipitate the development of eating pathology, as well as time periods of high risk for weight gain such as pregnancy and menopause.

Low-Income Minority Mothers’ Reports Of Infant Health Care Utilisation Compared With Medical Records, Kennan D. Murray, Ayman El-Mohandes, M. Nabil El-Khorazaty, Michele Kiely

Publications and Research

This study aimed to investigate mothers’ reporting of the nature, location, frequency and content of health care visits for their infants, as compared with data abstracted from the infants’ medical records. It was part of a community-based parenting intervention designed to improve preventive health care utilisation among minority mothers in Washington, DC. Mothers 18 years old with newborn infants and with poor or no prenatal care were enrolled in the study. A total of 160 mother–infant dyads completed the 12-month study. Mothers were interviewed when the infants were 4, 8 and 12 months old, and were asked to recall infant …

Sensory Deprivation Alters Aggrecan And Perineuronal Net Expression In The Mouse Barrel Cortex, Paulette A. Mccrae, Mary M. Rocco, Gail Kelly, Joshua C. Brumberg, Russell T. Matthews

Publications and Research

An important role for the neural extracellular matrix in modulating cortical activity-dependent synaptic plasticity has been established by a number of recent studies. However, identification of the critical molecular components of the neural matrix that mediate these processes is far from complete. Of particular interest is the perineuronal net (PN), an extracellular matrix component found surrounding the cell body and proximal neurites of a subset of neurons. Because of the apposition of thePNto synapses and expression of this structure coincident with the close of the critical period, it has been hypothesized that nets could play uniquely important roles in synapse …

Female Agency And Oppression In Caribbean Bacchanalian Culture: Soca, Carnival, And Dancehall, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

In this essay Kevin Frank discerningly analyzes agency and gender in public sexual performances emanating out of what Paul Gilroy identifies as part of the compensatory politics of the subordinated within Black Atlantic culture, Jamaican dancehall (dancehall reggae/ dancehall queens).

Secular Trends In The Association Of Socio-Economic Position With Self-Reported Dietary Attributes And Biomarkers In The Us Population: National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey (Nhanes) 1971–1975 To Nhanes 1999–2002, Ashima K. Kant, Barry I. Graubard

Publications and Research

Objective: Recent reports suggest persistence of health disparities related to socioeconomic position (SEP). To understand if diet may be a contributor to these trends, we examined secular trends in the association of diet and indicators of SEP from 1971–1975 to 1999–2002.

Design: We used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) I (1971–1975), II (1976–1980), III (1988–1994) and 1999–2002 to examine the independent associations of poverty income ratio (PIR) and education with diet and biomarkers of diet and disease in 25–74-year-olds (n ¼ 36 600). We used logistic and linear regression methods to adjust for multiple covariates …

Maintenance Of Visual Stability In The Human Posterior Parietal Cortex, Erik Chang, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Visual stability refers to our stable visuospatial perceptions despite the unstable visual input caused by saccades. Functional neuroimaging results, studies on patients with posterior parietal cortex (PPC) lesions, and single-unit recordings in the lateral intraparietal sulcus of primates indirectly suggest that the PPC might be a potential locus of visual stability through its involvement with spatial remapping. Here we directly explored the role of the PPC in visual stability by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) while participants performed a perisaccadic displacement detection task. We show that TMS over the PPC but not a frontal control site alters sensitivity to displacement …

Learning To Love After Learning To Harm: Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Gender Equality And Cultural Values, Penelope Andrews

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Minority Groups And Intimate Partner Violence: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, Raquel Gabriel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Viewing Family Court Practice Through The Prism Of Purpose, Donna Lee

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Integrating Academic Skills Into First Year Curricula: Using Wood V. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon To Teach The Role Of Facts In Legal Reasoning, Deborah Zalesne, David Nadvorney

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.