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Undergraduate And Graduate Catalog [1999-2000], Georgia Southern University

Undergraduate & Graduate Catalogs

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Implementing Cost-Benefit Analysis When Preferences Are Distorted, Matthew D. Adler, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

Cost-benefit analysis is routinely used by government agencies in order to evaluate projects, but it remains controversial among academics. This paper argues that cost-benefit analysis is best understood as a welfarist decision procedure and that use of cost-benefit analysis is more likely to maximize overall well-being than is use of alternative decision-procedures. The paper focuses on the problem of distorted preference. A person's preferences are distorted when his or her satisfaction does not enhance that person's well-being. Preferences typically thought to be distorted in this sense include disinterested preferences, uninformed preferences, adaptive preferences, and objectively bad preferences; further, preferences may …

Pou Domain Genes In Metazoans, Dipti Shah-Shields

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

POU domain genes comprise a subset of homeodomain genes that are developmental regulators. These genes encode sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins that are found in diverse metazoans. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect previously undescribed POU genes in several invertebrate phyla. A class IV gene and a class VI gene were identified in sea anemones ( Condylactis ), two distinct class III genes were identified in snails ( Biomphalaria ), and a single class IV gene was identified in earthworms ( Lumbricus ). The identification of POU genes in cnidarians, mollusks, and annelids completes a survey of nine major metazoan …

Time Perception In Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Shawn Lee Fleck

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between time perception and working memory in 14 children with ADHD and 19 children without ADHD. The children were assessed in a university clinic using rigorous diagnostic criteria and procedures. Three licensed psychologists based their diagnosis on numerous assessment measures. Time perception of the children was assessed using a computerized, prospective time reproduction task. Working memory was assessed using a standardized measure of working memory. Children in the matched group reproduced the 60-second trial with significantly greater accuracy and produced significantly greater scores on the measure of working memory than the children with ADHD. These …

The Enforcement Of Environmental Law In England And Wales, Lisa Jane Page

Plymouth Business School Theses

The control of environmentally damaging activities has become one of the most important areas for concern in recent years. The amount of legislation relating to this subject area has increased several-fold, with European Directives and domestic laws being introduced in response to pressure from a variety of avenues. Key studies on the enforcement of environmental law have been carried out. However, this work was undertaken prior to the expansion of legislative provisions at the start of the 1990s. In the light of this new legislation, new regulatory agencies, and changing public opinion, the following research aims were formulated: 1. To …

Enviropreneurial Management An Effective Approach To Cope With The Ecological Challenge, Ljiljana Mitic

Plymouth Business School Theses

Humankind is the major force influencing our planet earth. Irreversible environmental degradation are a widespread problem. Atmospheric changes, worsening climate, ozone depletion, etc. is accompanying our daily life. From the ecological perspective the future of the 21st century is endangered. A change of consumption pattern, material thinking, lifestyles have to change fundamentally. lt may even require to break with 'business-as-usual'. In the age of continuously and rapidly changing compet1t1ve environments, companies are increasingly forced to be highly flexible and responsive to changes having an impact on their competitiveness or even affecting the firm's viability. "Entrepreneurship" is an emerging practice, which …

Specific Determination Of Hydrogen Peroxide With A Catalase Biosensor Based On Mercury Thin Film Electrodes, F. Ni̇l Ertaş, Suna Ti̇mur, Erol Akyilmaz, Erhan Di̇nçkaya

Turkish Journal of Chemistry

A biosensor for specific determination of hydrogen peroxide was developed using catalase (EC 1.11.1.6) in combination with a mercury film electrode. Catalase was immobilized with gelatine by means of glutaraldehyde on the electrode surface. The biosensor response was monitored by following the reduction peak of dissolved oxygen at around -0.24 V. The peak current changes upon addition of hydrogen peroxide and gives a linear response in a concentration range of 1-50 x 10^{-6} M within a response time of 3 minutes.

Heavy Metal Removal From Aquatic Systems By Northern Anatolian Smectites, Çi̇ğdem Arpa, Ridvan Say, Nuray Şatiroğlu, Sema Bektaş, Yuda Yürüm, Ömer Genç

Turkish Journal of Chemistry

Competitive adsorption of the heavy metal ions Cu(II), Cd(II) and Pb(II) from aqueous media onto northern Anatolian smectites with a mean particle diameter of 200 $\mu$m, was investigated. The adsorption rate and capacity of the smectite for the selected heavy metal ions, containing different amounts of these ions (5-900 mg/L) at values ranging from pH 1.0 to 7.0 were studied. Very high adsorptions rates were observed at the beginning, and adsorption equilibria were then gradually achieved in about 30 minutes. The maximum adsorption of metal ions onto the smectite were found to be 41.46 mg Cd(II), 36.11 mg Pb(II) and …

The Lozanov Method, Ryan James

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

Identification Of Noncognitive Factors As Predictors Of Freshman Academic Performance And Retention In A Community College Setting, Mark Fallon Freeze

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

This study identified noncognitive factors (via the use of discriminant analysis) that impact freshmen academic performance and retention in a community college setting. The study used a modified version of the Freshman Survey, that had been validated for use at an urban four-year institution, to determine the predictive validity of the instrument for use with first semester freshmen in a two-year college setting. Existing research suggests that cognitive factors can, at most, explain 10 to 20 percent of the variance in student retention and academic performance. The remainder (approximately 80 percent) of the variance in student academic performance and …

An Examination Of A Multidimensional Model Of Customer Satisfaction With Internet Purchasing, Kathleen Vanscoyoc

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The World Wide Web and Internet have transformed the competitive business environment and altered the customer-firm relationship by creating a new retailing format and service enterprise. It is rapidly growing as a competitive distribution medium in which customer satisfaction will be a major success factor in the development and maintenance of this new retailing format. Despite its growing importance as a new shopping medium, little empirical research has been conducted that examines the relationship between Internet shopping, customer satisfaction, company image, and future online purchasing. Research is needed to develop theoretical models that will systematically explain and predict behavior related …

Pretrial Release In Virginia: Investigating The Influence Of Defendant Characteristics And Community Type On Pretrial Outcome, Marie L. Vannostrand

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Management

This study identified defendant characteristics that are related to pretrial outcome (success or failure pending trial) in Virginia. The study also investigated the potential differences in predictors across community types (Large Urban, Small Urban, Mixed, and Rural). Identification of factors that are predictors of outcome, as well as any differences across community types, can assist judicial officers in making the bail decision. The bail decision, to release or incarcerate a defendant pending trial, is a monumental one. Judicial officers must attempt to fairly and equitably balance the rights and needs of the defendant with those of the public at large. …

The Construction Of A Diasporic Tradition: Indo-Caribbean "Local Classical Music", Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

A historical and stylistic survey of Indo-Caribbean local-classical music, an idiosyncratic form of North Indian song created by indentured immigrants and their descendants, primarily in Trinidad and Guyana.

Factors Associated With Asthma Readmissions In Children's Hospitals, Maria Acedo Kronenburg

Health Services Research Dissertations

Asthma is the most common chronic illness of childhood. Pediatric asthma hospitalization rates and costs of care have risen in recent years. Readmissions, an adverse outcome often used to monitor quality of care, may account for the increase in asthma hospitalization rates. This research examined selected hospital and patient risk factors related to asthma readmissions, using Donabedian's framework for structure, process, and outcomes to assess the quality of care for children with asthma. Outcome measures included readmission for asthma within one year of initial hospitalization, readmission within 30 days, and multiple readmissions within one year. Structure factors measured were insurance …

Changing And Choosing Together: A Case Study On Improving Professional Development And Student Achievement Through A Teacher-Initiated Early Literacy Program, Theresa Connor Molinelli

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to ascertain teacher's perceptions of the success of an early literacy professional development program designed to achieve more meaningful student assessment, facilitate observation of effective teaching practices, promote teacher-centered staff development, and encourage greater teacher collaboration. This research study also examined the extent to which teachers believed that school- and district-administrative support for this program benefited their classroom teaching practices.

An Architectural Framework For Performance Analysis: Supporting The Design, Configuration, And Control Of Dis /Hla Simulations, David B. Cavitt

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Technology advances are providing greater capabilities for most distributed computing environments. However, the advances in capabilities are paralleled by progressively increasing amounts of system complexity. In many instances, this complexity can lead to a lack of understanding regarding bottlenecks in run-time performance of distributed applications. This is especially true in the domain of distributed simulations where a myriad of enabling technologies are used as building blocks to provide large-scale, geographically disperse, dynamic virtual worlds. Persons responsible for the design, configuration, and control of distributed simulations need to understand the impact of decisions made regarding the allocation and use of the …

Multicast Services For Multimedia Collaborative Applications, Emad Eldin Mohamed Mohamed

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

This work aims at providing multicast services for multimedia collaborative applications over large inter-networks such as the Internet. Multimedia collaborative applications are typically of small group size, slow group membership dynamics, and awareness of participants' identities and locations. Moreover, they usually consist of several components such as audio, video, shared whiteboard, and single user application sharing engines that collectively help make the collaboration session successful. Each of these components has its demands from the communication layer that may differ from one component to another. This dissertation identifies the overall characteristics of multimedia collaborative applications and their individual components. It also …

Extending Traditional Static Analysis Techniques To Support Development, Testing And Maintenance Of Component-Based Solutions, Robert David Cherinka

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Traditional static code analysis encompasses a mature set of techniques for helping understand and optimize programs, such as dead code elimination, program slicing, and partial evaluation (code specialization). It is well understood that compared to other program analysis techniques (e.g., dynamic analysis), static analysis techniques do a reasonable job for the cost associated with implementing them. Industry and government are moving away from more ‘traditional’ development approaches towards component-based approaches as ‘the norm.’ Component-based applications most often comprise a collection of distributed object-oriented components such as forms, code snippets, reports, modules, databases, objects, containers, and the like. These components are …

Community Social Disorganization Theory Applied To Adolescent Academic Achievement, Spencer Ross Baker

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

Over the years, the public education system has been transformed by outside political and societal forces to provide an equal opportunity for all students. Investigations of the public education system were not consistent and yielded divergent results on how to improve adolescent academic achievement. These divergent results were caused by different operationalizations of variables, data analytical procedures that possibly provided biased parameter estimates, and a failure to use a comprehensive theory. Although these results were inconsistent, the latest transformation of the public education system currently involves holding schools, administrators, parents, and students accountable for learning.

The measurement of success in …

A History Of British Columbia Legal Education, W. Wesley Pue

All Faculty Publications

This paper explores the history of legal education in twentieth century British Columbia. The period covers the transition from qualification by apprenticeship to the foundation of Canada's first post-WWII Faculty of Law - the beginning of modern legal education in Canada. Issues addressed include the moral vision of legal education, gender and the legal profession (the admission of women lawyers), race-based exclusions, the question of whether communists could be qualified as lawyers, and the evolution of legal curriculum from the age of moral reform to the era of narrowly technocratic notions of legal knowledge.

Toward A Model Of Team Situation Awareness, Alexis Anne Fink

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Situation Awareness (SA) is a construct that is considered important to safety in dynamic, risky, time-constrained and complex environments, such as military aviation, nuclear reactors and emergency management. Research consideration of SA is complicated by the fact that there is no clearly superior methodology for SA measurement. Typically, SA is considered at the individual level; however, the nature of the SA context often requires more than one individual for safe and effective operations. Team SA is a qualitatively different phenomenon than individual SA. Few models of team SA have been proposed. The primary purpose of this paper was to develop …

Human Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone (Hgnrh) Gene Expression And Hormone Regulation In Human Placental Jeg-3 Cells, Heming Zheng

Theses and Dissertations in Biomedical Sciences

Using the human placental choriocarcinoma JEG-3 cell line as an in vitro human placental model, I studied the mechanisms of the tissue-specific expression and steroid hormone regulation of the hGnRH gene in the human placenta. The results showed that all of the previously identified four elements are required for the full activity of the hGnRH upstream promoter in JEG-3 cells, while the element 4 (FP4, −987/−968) is the most important. Studies performed with 5′ end deletion of this region confirmed these observations. Further, supershift assay using Oct-1 antibody demonstrated the involvement of Oct-1 in the FP4 DNA-protein interaction in JEG-3 …

Telomerase Activity In Human Preimplantation Embryos, Diane Lynne Wright

Theses and Dissertations in Biomedical Sciences

Telomerase, a ribonucleoprotein, has been described as an essential component of highly proliferative cells, which stabilizes the telomeres and avoids cellular senescence. Telomerase has been identified in various embryonic cell stages, hematopoietic cells, and in >85% of tumor tissue biopsies analyzed. The ability to measure the potential to proliferate successfully could provide an objective measure of an embryo's quality. The objectives of this study were to modify the telomeric repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay system for increased sensitivity to allow detection of telomerase activity in the single cell of an oocyte and embryo, obtain telomerase activity levels for the oocyte …

Cytotoxic T Cell Response To Influenza Vaccination In Older Adults, Caroline R. Letter

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

Influenza infections result in activation of cellular and humoral immune responses, leading to stimulation of cytotoxic T cells (CTL) and helper T cells with subsequent viral clearance.

By using an assay of granzyme B activity, the in vivo cellular-mediated immune response of old adults was found to be significantly decreased in comparison to young adults. The effect of aging on the CTL response was further investigated via enzyme-linked immunospot technique. A significant increase in number of virus-specific T cells occurred in older adults after vaccination, although the magnitude of the CTL response decreased in comparison to young adults. These data …

Virtual Compton Scattering In The Nucleon Resonance Region, Luminita Anca Todor

Physics Theses & Dissertations

This thesis is a study of virtual Compton scattering reaction in which a virtual photon is elastically scattered off a proton γv p → γp. The p( e,e′p)γ reaction was measured in the nucleon resonance region for the first time in the experiment E93-050 in Hall A at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. To lowest order in ^αQED, this reaction is a coherent superposition of radiation from the incident or scattered electron in elastic ep scattering (Bethe-Heitler) and exclusive production of a photon on the proton, by absorption of a virtual photon …

Detection And Modeling Of Radiation Induced Effects In Tissues By Dielectric Spectroscopy, Dorin A. Todor

Physics Theses & Dissertations

The work presented here is applied physics research in the field of radiation treatment. We address the development of a new and innovative method, in vivo and possibly non-invasive, for tumor and healthy tissues control during and after the radiation treatment. The radiation treatment is delivered in an almost standardized manner for particular classes of tumors. The large variance in the individual radio sensitivity of healthy tissues and tumors often leads to local recurrence of neoplastic growth and/or distant metastatic disease which often remains untreated. The method is based on the measurement and analysis of electrical impedance data in …

Effects Of Ventilation On Human Thermal Comfort In Rooms, Ahmed F. Alfahaid

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Nowadays, the majority of people spend up to 90% of their time indoors; as a result, the maintenance of optimal indoor climate conditions has become important for their overall health and comfort. The main goal of this study is to predict numerically the flow and temperature patterns and the human thermal comfort conditions in an indoor environment using displacement ventilation.

A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code has been used to analyze thermal comfort conditions for a fullscale ventilated room. Unstructured grids have been used to discretize the numerical domain. Before undertaking a detailed investigation, the code was validated by comparing …

Evaluation Of Fish Scale Chemistry For Determining Habitat Associations, Brian Kenneth Wells

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

This is the first work examining the utility of scale chemistry for determining natal origins and habitat associations. I quantified a relationship of scale chemistry to water chemistry, quantified geographic variation in scale chemistry, and evaluated stability of scale chemistry through maturation. Scale chemistry accurately reflected trace element composition of the water in which fish had lived. Juvenile spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) were held in four concentrations of Sr, Cd, and Ba maintained at either 20°C or 25°C, for 42 days. Strontium:Ca, Cd:Ca, and Ba:Ca levels in scales were linearly related to environmental concentrations while temperature had no effect. …

Perceptions Of Clinical Psychologists Relative To Other Mental Health Providers, Glenora Nelson

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

There is a myriad of job titles that exist within the mental health profession. Public perception about the differences between these professionals has been the focus of many studies and the results generally suggest that the public cannot clearly distinguish among these mental heath professionals. The present study is also concerned with perceptions about the various mental health professionals, in particular, perceptions of clinical psychologists relative to other professionals in this field. Undergraduate psychology students age 18–47 participated in a study of perceptions and attitudes about the qualifications and competence of clinical psychologists, professional counselors, psychiatrists and clinical social workers. …

Disability And The Income Tax, David G. Duff

All Faculty Publications

The federal Income Tax Act contains an extensive number of provisions addressing the taxation of families with disabled persons. These provisions, however, have been the subject of a series of ongoing incremental adjustments, and do not reflect a comprehensive and coherent approach to the taxation of these individuals in light of their unique financial circumstances. This article considers the existing income tax provisions regarding families with disabled persons, analyzing the relationship between disabilities and appropriate tax liabilities, and providing suggestions for reform of the current tax structure. Focussing on the goals of tax policy narrowly defined as compared to the …