Digital Commons Network^™

The Influence Of The Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti On Soviet Foreign Policy During The Cold War, Mark James Curran

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The following thesis looks at possible influences of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) on the formulation and implementation of Soviet foreign policy. The approach taken to analyze this relationship is to evaluate the activities of the KGB during significant historical events occurring during the Cold War. This thesis is divided into chapters, the first of which illustrates the political connection between the KGB and the key governing body of the Soviet Union, the Politburo. The three succeeding chapters individually cover a specific region of the world: Western Europe and the United States, Eastern Europe and Cuba, and the Middle East …

A Neuropsychological Assessment Of Music Stimulation On Individuals With Dementia, Peter Leo Cuff

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Previous research has suggested that musical therapy temporarily improves the cognitive and perceptual functioning of individuals with varying forms of dementing illnesses. However, no research to date has focused on the effects of musical stimulation exclusively. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether, and to what extent, a brief exposure to music might enhance the cognitive and perceptual functioning of clients with mild to moderate forms of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. It was hypothesized that following a brief exposure (6 minutes) to musical stimulation, all subjects (N = 9) would achieve higher scores on the following neuropsychological …

Integrating Design Into The Sophomore And Junior Level Mechanics Courses, Douglas R. Carroll

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Engineering schools across the country are developing ways of integrating design into their curriculum, and a question that often arises is how to best integrate design into the sophomore and junior level courses. Freshman design projects or mechanical dissection courses are designed to give the students hands-on experience in conceptual design and construction, with little if any of the mathematical modeling normally used in engineering design. The capstone senior design project is a true engineering design experience, where students draw from their background to conceptualize, analyze, model, refine, and optimize a product to meet design, manufacturing, and life cycle cost …

Learning To Use Reader-Response Methods In The Classroom: One Teacher’S Journey Of Change, Marijo Grimes

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study presents a teacher's view of change as the author of this report planned, implemented, and evaluated a change from traditional literature discussion methods to reader-response discussion methods. Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of literature provided the basis for developing the instructional plan. This investigation followed a qualitative research plan of self-study. The setting was a seventh grade heterogeneous classroom in a Midwestern school district. During the semester of implementation, the teacher kept daily field notes, collected student papers, evaluated transcripts of video recordings, and completed regular exploratory writing in an attempt to analyze and understand the teacher's role and …

The Pain Related Self-Statements Scale (Prss): Psychometric Properties In A College Sample, Howard D. Griffin

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Pain Related Self-Statements Scale (PRSS) in a college sample. Specifically, the purpose was to replicate the two factor structure of the PRSS, evaluate the instrument's internal consistency, and examine the convergent validity of the PRSS with other measures of coping with pain. The PRSS is a measure of "situation specific" cognitive coping strategies for individuals suffering from chronic pain. The instrument has two subscales: Catastrophizing and Active Coping. Participants in this study were undergraduate psychology students. Each student was given a packet of self-report measures including a …

Perceptions Of Businesses On Environmental Regulatory Information, Kimberly K. Gunderson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to determine the source and amount of information that a sample of businesses receive on environmental regulatory topics and from what sources they would prefer to receive this information. More specifically, the study demonstrated the discrepancy between the sources from which businesses currently receive their information and the sources from which they would prefer to receive it. The study also addressed how relevant this information was to the businesses and with which regulations the businesses were the most and least knowledgeable. The study was done by conducting a mail-back survey of 500 Iowa small …

The Influences Of Curriculum Integration On Students’ Perceptions Of Learning, Sheryl Jean Hoffman

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to examine how integrative curriculum experiences influenced fifth grade students' perceptions of learning. An integrated curriculum for fifth grade students, based on a thematic unit of study, was written and implemented by the researcher and took place in a small, urban community in Northeast Iowa. The theme of Flight was used to integrate all subjects and taught for approximately four weeks. The researcher acted as participant/observer and documented how integrated curricular experiences influenced students' perceptions of learning in a classroom that had been primarily subject-centered. The data for this study was compiled from observations, …

Lithographers' Opinions About Waterless Lithography, Devang Pranlal Mehta

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purposes of this study were to identify the advantages and disadvantages of waterless litho in comparison with traditional litho, to solve the controversial issues, to forecast the growth of waterless litho, and to inform graphic arts professionals about it. The problem of this research was to identify and measure perceived controversial issues for using the waterless litho process. These controversial issues were related to the return on investment and operating costs involved, productivity, quality of images, eco-friendliness, and technical problems associated with waterless litho.

Due to the fact that waterless litho was a developing technology and some controversial issues …

Relationship Between Selected Health Behaviors Practiced And Health Behaviors Encouraged In Instruction Provided By School Health Educators, Terri Long Jedlicka

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to examine the personal health practices of school health educators endorsed by the Iowa Department of Education to determine if their health practices were consistent with the formal health education instruction they provided. A health education questionnaire and health risk appraisal, designed to obtain information about the personal health practices and formal instruction provided, were sent to a sample of 200 randomly selected school health educators endorsed by the Iowa Department of Education. There were 106 usable responses for a 53% return rate. The majority of the participants in this study were females in …

Curriculum Development And Evaluation For A Computer Literacy Course, Molly J. Fagan

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This paper describes a curriculum that was developed and used for a computer literacy course at the University of Northern Iowa. The curriculum included a unit of computer programming, which has not been included as part of the computer literacy course in recent years at the University of Northern Iowa. Surveys were given at the beginning of the semester to determine the approximate level of students' prior knowledge. The same survey was given at the end of the semester and the results of both were compared to see how much more comfortable each individual student felt using the various computer …

Am I Virtually Me?: Virtual Reality And The Self, Douglas J. Frederick

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Am I Virtually Me? Virtual Reality and the Self is a theoretical discussion that examines the consequences of using Virtual Reality technology. Virtual Reality is examined as a communication medium. The theoretical foundations for this examination include Marshall McLuhan's medium theory and George Mead's Symbolic Interactionism. Drawing upon these theories, which include concepts such as consciousness, mind and self, the focus of this examination is individual expenence. A theoretical argument is constructed which views Virtual Reality as a simulation of consciousness and details two different virtual-selves which arise by using Virtual Reality technology. These virtual-selves are "the pseudo-self' and "the …

High-Order Object Model Based Software Analysis, Xiaoqing Frank Liu, Hungwen Lin

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The integration of object oriented modeling and structured analysis (SA) for developing a well structured object oriented software system is a challenge for requirements analysts and software designers. Some of the existing object oriented modeling techniques adopt approaches that are very different from SA, and others have clumsily stayed with SA after a few modifications. Our High Order Object Modeling Technique (HOOMT) however, attempts to strike a mean between both extremes while at the same time provides an effective modeling method. HOOMT consists of two models, the High Order Object Model and the Object Information Flow Model. By using the …

Rmesh Algorithms For Parallel String Matching, Hsi-Chieh Lee, Fikret Erçal

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

String matching problem received much attention over the years due to its importance in various applications such as text/file comparison, DNA sequencing, search engines, and spelling correction. Especially with the introduction of search engines dealing with tremendous amount of textual information presented on the world wide web and the research on DNA sequencing, this problem deserves special attention and any algorithmic or hardware improvements to speed up the process will benefit these important applications. In this paper, we present three algorithms for string matching on reconfigurable mesh architectures. Given a text T of length n and a pattern P of …

Timestamp-Based Approach For The Detection And Resolution Of Mutual Conflicts In Distributed Systems, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present a timestamp based algorithm for the detection of both write-write and read-write conflicts for a single file in distributed systems during network partitions. Our algorithm allows operations to occur in different network partitions simultaneously. When the sites from different partitions merge, the algorithm detects and resolves both read-write and write-write conflicts without taking into account the semantics of the transactions. Once the conflicts have been detected some reconciliation steps for the resolution of conflicts have also been proposed. Our algorithm will be useful in real-time systems where timeliness of operations is more important than response time (delayed commit)

Scaling Parallels In The Non-Debye Dielectric Relaxation Of Ionic Glasses And Dipolar Supercooled Liquids, David L. Sidebottom, Peter F. Green, Richard K. Brow

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We compare the dielectric response of ionic glasses and dipolar liquids near the glass transition. Our work is divided into two parts. In the first section we examine ionic glasses and the two prominent approaches to analyzing the dielectric response. The conductivity of ion-conducting glasses displays a power law dispersion σ(ω)∞ωn, where n≈0.67, but frequently the dielectric response is analyzed using the electrical modulus M*(ω) = 1/ε*(ω), where ε*(ω) = ε(ω) - iσ(ω)/ω is the complex permittivity. We reexamine two specific examples where the shape of M*(ω) changes in response to changes in (a) temperature and (b) ion concentration, to …

A 50 Kilowatt Distributed Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Generation System For The University Of Wyoming, Badrul H. Chowdhury, S. Muknahallipatna, T. Dinwoodie, D. Shugar, J. J. Cupal, J. C. Hamann

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The University of Wyoming (UW) campus (USA) is serving as the site for a 50 kilowatt solar photovoltaic (PV) power system. Three sub-systems were sited and built on the UW campus in 1996. The first sub-system, a 10 kW roof-integrated system of PV roof tiles is located on the roof of the Engineering Building. The second sub-system-a 5 kW rack-mounted, ballasted PV system is on a walkway roof of the Engineering building. The third sub-system is a 35 kW shade structure system and is located adjacent to the parking lot of the University's football stadium. The three sub-systems differ in …

An Efficient Algorithm For Direct Computation Of Adjacent Block Coefficients In The Transformed Domain, Chaman Sabharwal, Brian Quandt

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The current research in many areas of image processing involves operations performed in the compressed domain [Smith and Rowe 1993, Chang 93]. Compressed domain may be DCT, Wavelet, JPEG or MPEG etc. The algorithms for .these transformations may be used for information filtering such as feature extraction and edge detection. The image transformations such as compositing, occluding, and scaling may also be performed in the compressed domain. It is desirable to perform these operations on compressed data directly because the smaller size of data involves less computational complexity. The computation in the compressed domain eliminates the overhead of decoding the …

A Hypermedia Database To Manage World-Wide-Web Documents, Schubert Shou Boon Foo, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The surge of interest in the World-Wide-Web (WWW) with its potential commercial payoff has resulted in an explosion of information as organisations join in to publish and do business on the Internet. A related development, Intranet, which basically uses the same technology to build private corporate WWW-based networks, has emerged to provide cost-effective and efficient groupware and information management solutions for organisations. As a result, the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), used for constructing WWW documents, has become a contender for authoring future office documents. With this scenario, this study examines WWW practices and highlights the inadequacy and drawbacks of …

Low-Degree Graph Partitioning Via Local Search With Applications To Constraint Satisfaction, Max Cut, And Coloring, Magnus M. Halldorsson, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present practical algorithms for constructing partitions of graphs into a fixed number of vertex-disjoint subgraphs that satisfy particular degree constraints. We use this in particular to find k-cuts of graphs of maximum degree ∆ that cut at least a k - 1/k (1 + 1/2∆+k-1 ) fraction of the edges, improving previous bounds known. The partitions also apply to constraint networks, for which we give a tight analysis of natural local search heuristics for the maximum constraint satisfaction problem. These partitions also imply efficient approximations for several problems on weighted bounded-degree graphs. In particular, we improve the best performance …

The Arts Show Audience: Cultural Confidence And Middlebrow Arts Consumption, Brian O'Neill

Articles

The arts constitute a form of cultural consumption that has been relatively neglected in recent academic discourse in comparison to the burgeoning literature of cultural studies dedicated to popular and mass media forms of culture. This emphasis within cultural studies on popular genres over traditional forms of art, what has been labelled its ‘cultural populism’ (Mc Guigan, 1992), systematically emphasises common, ordinary taste and resistant aesthetic strategies while denigrating ‘high culture’ as an elitist, middle class leisure pursuit that has little relevance to most people (Willis, 1990). Going against this populist tide, this chapter argues that an examination of popular …

Winning The Accreditation Game: The Library As Key Player And Hidden Gold Mine, Antje Mays

Dacus Library Faculty Publications

Libraries are a central hub of information resources supporting college and university curricula. Several library strategies, cross-campus collaborations, and philosophical considerations of electronic and print offerings led to successful accreditations in business and engineering programs.

Breast Cancer, The Genetic "Quickfix," And The Jewish Community: Ethical, Legal, And Social Challenges, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Tactile Sensation Mediated By The Infraorbital Branch Of The Trigeminal Nerve (V) On Sexual Behaviour Of Male And Female Rats, Vlastimil Malinek

School of Psychology Theses

This thesis examines Beach's hypothesis that the sexual behaviour of male rats is under multisensory control and is resistant to the loss of tactile information from the vibrissae. The loss of perioral sensation was found to profoundly disrupt sexual behaviour in sexually inexperienced males tested with females showing five ascending levels of precopulatory behaviour. Males did not copulate with females displaying presenting, presenting and hopping, hopping and darting levels of proceptive behaviour. However, males paired with darting females displaying the highest level level of proceptive behaviour did copulate in the presence of perioral anapsis caused by intramystacial injection of lidocaine. …

Cognitive Appraisals In Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder & Other Anxiety Disorders, Jackie Maccallam

School of Psychology Theses

This research applied ideas from the cognition-emotion literature to some of the theories in the OCD literature, and in so doing took'Va multi-dimensional approach to the understanding of OCD. The aim of the study was to explore the nature of 'emotionalcognitive profiles'^ of people with OCD,. and to compare these 'profiles' with those of people with other anxiety disorders and people from a non-clinical population.. Participants from the three groups i.e. an OCD group, ah anxiety group and a non-clinical group were asked to rate a number of appraisal dimensions, in response to four vignettes. There were 10 participants in …

Keyboardless Visual Programming Using Voice, Handwriting, And Gesture, Jennifer Leopold, A. Ambler

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Visual programming languages have facilitated the application development process, improving our ability to express programs, as well as our ability to view, edit and interact with them. Yet even in programming environments, productivity is restricted by the primary input sources: the mouse and the keyboard. As an alternative, we investigate a program development interface which responds to the most natural human communication technologies: voice, handwriting and gesture. Speech- and pen-based systems have yet to find broad acceptance in everyday life because they are insufficiently advantageous to overcome problems with reliability. However, we believe that a visual programming environment with a …

User Defined Prewrites For Increasing Concurrency In Design Databases, Sanjay Kumar Madria, A. Embong

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We introduce a prewrite operation before a write operation is performed on design databases, a database that consists of objects as engineering designs. A prewrite operation does not actually make a design but it only makes available the model of the design that the transaction will produce in future. Once the prewrite design by a transaction is announced, the transaction executes a pre-commit operation. After the pre-commit, read operations can access the prewrite design even before the pre-committed transaction has finally made the design and committed. Therefore, our algorithm increases the potential concurrency as compared to the algorithms that permit …

A Concurrency Control Algorithm For An Open And Safe Nested Transaction Model, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present a concurrency control algorithm for an open and safe nested transaction model. We use prewrite operations in our model to increase the concurrency. Prewrite operations are modeled as subtransactions in the nested transaction tree. The subtransaction which initiates prewrite subtransactions are modelled as recovery point subtransaction. The recovery point subtransaction can release their locks before its ancestors commit. Thus, our model increases the concurrency in comparison to other nested transaction models. Our model is useful an environment of long-running transactions common in object oriented databases, computer aided design and in the software development process

A Middle School Student-Centered Conflict Management Program: Impact On Student Managers' Self-Esteem, Communication Skills, And Approaches To Conflict Resolution, Thomas J. Keller

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to examine self-esteem, communication skills, and approaches to conflict resolution of trained student mediators in a conflict resolution program. This study also assessed the perceived transferability of conflict management information and skills from the school to the home environment. Indicators were the frequency, duration, and intensity of sibling conflicts reported by conflict managers and their parents.

The subjects in this study consisted of 60 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at two different middle schools in the state of Iowa. Thirty were trained as conflict managers and assigned to the experimental group, and thirty to …

A Design Of A Marine Radar Mast System For Minimum Vibration, Suey-Yueh Hu

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This experimental research focused on four areas: (a) the design of a new procedure for imitating the dynamic behavior of an electronic base plate on a radar mast system; (b) determination of a reasonable oscillation modal state; (c) avoidance of the destruction of the ability of the radar on the mast of a ship to receive and analyze incoming signals; and (d) design of a vibration absorber and vibration isolator based on an oscillation frequency. An adapted design for the vibration absorber and vibration isolator contributed to the prevention of excessive amplitude being produced by random forces acting upon a …

The Student Views The Teacher: Investigating Student Perception In Assessment Of High School Teachers, Richard N. Johns

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to examine student assessment of teachers at the secondary level and to add to the body of knowledge pertaining to the role of student evaluation of teacher performance in the instructional improvement process. The study was designed to determine which teacher behaviors and student/teacher relationship characteristics influenced summative assessments of teachers and if the influence was distorted by certain potentially biasing variables. Student assessments of teachers were compared to principal assessments of teachers to determine whether significant differences in ratings existed between these two evaluative sources.

The research questions focused on the composition of …