Digital Commons Network^™

Insider Trading: Why To Commit The Crime From A Legal And Psychological Perspective, Emily A. Malone

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

The Status Of Same Sex Adoption In The Keystone State Subsequent To The State Supreme Court's Decision In Adoption Of R.B.F. And R.C.G., Martha Elizabeth Lieberman

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Family Connectedness And Sexual Risk-Taking Among Urban Youth Attending Alternative High Schools, Christine M Markham, Susan R Tortolero, S Liliana Escobar-Chaves, Guy S Parcel, Ronald Harrist, Robert C Addy

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

CONTEXT: Youth in alternative high schools engage in risky sexual behavior at higher rates than do their peers in regular schools, placing themselves at an increased risk of sexually transmitted disease and unintended pregnancy. Family connectedness is associated with reduced adolescent sexual risk-taking, although this association has not been tested among alternative school youth.

METHODS: A sample of 976 urban, predominantly minority alternative high school students in Houston, Texas, were surveyed in 2000-2002. Survey data were analyzed using logistic regression to determine whether family connectedness is related to sexual risk-taking.

RESULTS: Overall, 68% of students reported ever having had sex. …

A Trial Of The Effects Of Intercessory Prayer On Student Performance, Christopher Clark

Masters Theses

The purpose of the present study is to test the efficacy of intercessory prayer on academic performance. One hundred and four students enrolled in a college business class and 63 regular church attendees volunteered to participate in the study. Design for the study was a matched groups reversal design. The students were paired according to their GPA's and randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first test of the semester constituted a baseline measure. For the first four-week period of the class and the first test, neither of the groups received prayer. Next, the church goers each received the …

The Effect Of Choice Order On Off Task Behavior In A Child With Autism, Lisa R. Cole

Masters Theses

This research project was designed to examine the effects of child-choice versus clinician-choice over the ordering of activities during speech-language therapy sessions. The dependent variables included disruptive/inappropriate behavior, non-task related verbal behavior, and redirection to the task. The independent variable was the presentation of choice over the ordering of activities within a therapy session.

The subject in this case study was a nine-year-old boy diagnosed with autism. At the beginning of each therapy session either the child or the clinician decided on the ordering of activities. A picture board and picture cards showed the activities that would be completed in …

The Effects Of Social Fields On The Telepathic Reception Of Information, Jamie A. Yarnall

Masters Theses

Field theories are increasingly used as explanations for extrasensory perception, suggesting the existence of some form of collective mind or social field. These theories imply that groups of individuals create fields that can contain and transfer information. The current study explored the telepathic transfer of information regarding randomly selected target locations. Groups of participants "sent" target locations to individuals, observed on close circuit television, who were either members of the group (ingroup) or not members (outgroup). We hypothesized that ingroup members would achieve above chance hit rates while outgroup members would score below chance. Approximately 30 senders sent 16 trials …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Coping Strategies And The Coming Out Process Of Gay Males In College Fraternities, Jack R. Trump

Masters Theses

Purpose

The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to identify existing themes in the lived experiences of five gay males who disclosed their sexuality to some or all of their fraternity brothers while still an undergraduate member. Interviews with the participants were conducted to identify (1) their perceptions of the environment within the fraternity in regard to sexuality, (2) coping strategies used to conceal their sexuality, (3) variables that facilitated coming-out to their fraternities, and ( 4) their approach to coming-out to their fraternities.

Methodology

Participants were obtained by means of a Call for Participants Email sent over a …

The Mermaid's Dress: Marriage And Empire In The Voyage Out And Mrs Dalloway, Melissa Wharton-Smith

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how socio-historical influences shape the protagonists of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (1915) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925)-- Rachel Vinrace and Clarissa Dalloway. During the writing of these two novels, attitudes about roles for women before and after World War I shifted as pre-war domestic strife was replaced by a post-war push to return to normalcy. Throughout the period, imperialist ideology demanded that women conform to traditional gender roles by marrying and reproducing. Woolf depicts this pressure as it affects her two protagonists.

In The Voyage Out, the British Empire's imposing presence is exhibited through the setting of …

Transitional Needs Of First Year Graduate Students With Housing Assistantships, Dixie L. Sullenger

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to identify transitional needs of first year graduate students who have housing assistantships. Previous research in this area identified academic adjustment, student support services, assistantship experiences, and graduate student socialization as important variables to examine. A qualitative study was conducted using a focus group interview of four participants to examine these variables. Using the constant comparative method of data analysis, the four transitional areas listed above were confirmed as the primary challenges to a successful transition from undergraduate to graduate school for first year graduate students with housing assistantships. The results also suggest that …

Prediction Of Mental Health Treatment Outcome In Asian American College Students, Jamie Michelle Pitzman

Masters Theses

The current study aimed to examine the relationship between presenting problems and treatment outcome among Asian American college students compared to non-Asian students. The present study also provides information about the relationship between treatment outcome and the following types of demographic and treatment related variables: age, gender, ethnic status, year in school, religion, marital status, parents' marital status, referral source, previous counseling, medical problems, and family history of medical, emotional, or substance abuse problems. Data for this study were obtained from an existing database from an East Coast university counseling center. The entire sample consisted of 173 males and 271 …

Domestic Violence In Legal Education And Legal Practice: A Dialogue Between Professors And Practitioners, Kristin Gebelaar, Stacy Caplow, Patricia Fersch, Betty Levinson, Jennifer L. Rosato, Elizabeth M. Schneider, Anthony J. Sebok, Lisa C. Smith

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Packaged And Sold: Subjecting Elder Law Practice To Consumer Protection Laws, Donna S. Harkness

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Evolution, Child Abuse And The Constitution, Christopher Malrborough

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Spindle Frequency Activity Following Simulated Jetlag In Young Adults, Jonathan Bruce Santo, F. O. James, E. Chevrier, D. B. Boivin

Psychology Faculty Publications

Recent evidence indicates that sleep spindles and spindle frequency activity display a circadian pattern. The temporal distribution of spindle frequency activity during the night should thus be sensitive to the circadian phase at which sleep is scheduled. The aim of the present study is to test the effect of a 5-hour advance of the sleep schedule on spindle frequency activity during sleep in healthy young subjects.

John Punshon's Reasons For Hope: The Faith And Future Of The Friends Church*: A Review, Arthur O. Roberts

Quaker Religious Thought

In 1969 Elton Trueblood attributed the forfeiture of values in our culture in part to academicians and looked for recovery from the Christian intellectual who “has access to both the reasons of the heart and the reasons of the head” (A Place to Stand, p. 31). Friend John Punshon is such a Christian intellectual. His Reasons for Hope is a tract for the times. In language hortatory as well as analytical the book tugs at heart and mind. I found myself pondering it prayerfully as well as reading it critically.

Review Of Rosemary Moore's The Light In Their Consciences, Corey Beals

Quaker Religious Thought

No abstract provided.

Director's Duties In A Post-Enron World: Why Language Matters, Margaret M. Blair

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This essay observes that, in the face of corporate scandals of the last few years, a number of prominent advocates for shareholder primacy have retreated to the position that directors and officers should attempt to maximize long run share value performance, rather than short term value. But the mantra of share value maximization has no distinctive meaning and policy implications if it is not interpreted to mean maximization of short term value. This is because the actions required to maximize share value in the long run are indistinguishable in practice from actions taken in pursuit of other more broadly-stated goals …

A Jurisprudence Of Dangerousness, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article addresses the state's police power authority to deprive people of liberty based on predictions of antisocial behavior. Most conspicuously exercised against so-called "sexual predators," this authority purportedly justifies a wide array of other state interventions as well, ranging from police stops to executions. Yet there still is no general theory of preventive detention. This article is a preliminary effort in that regard. The article first surveys the various objections to preventive detention: the unreliability objection; the punishment-in-disguise objection; the legality objection; and the dehumanization objection. None of these objections justifies a complete prohibition on the state's power to …

Rethinking Legally Relevant Mental Disorder, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The law insists on maintaining mental disorder as a predicate for a wide array of legal provisions, in both the criminal justice system and the civil law. Among adults, only a person with a "mental disease or defect" can escape conviction for an intentional, unjustified crime on grounds of cognitive or volitional impairment.' Only people with "mental illness" or "mental disorder" may be subjected to indeterminate preventive commitment based on dangerousness. Under the laws of many states, only people with a mental disorder are prevented from making decisions about treatment, criminal charges, wills, contracts, and a host of other important …

Teaching A Course On Regulation Of The Police (With A Special Focus On The Sixth Amendment), Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The organizers of this symposium gave us the choice of writing about effective assistance of counsel or about teaching criminal procedure. I've decided to do both. This article discusses teaching the criminal procedure course most often called "Police Practices," for which I write a textbook entitled Regulation of Police Investigation: Legal, Historical, Empirical and Comparative Materials.' Borrowing heavily from the Teacher's Manual for that book, the first part of this article describes my general philosophy for teaching the course. The rest of the article illustrates this philosophy by describing how I teach students about the application of the Sixth Amendment …

The Structure Of Expertise In Criminal Cases, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This essay, part of a two-issue symposium on the implications of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals and its progeny, is built around three propositions about expert testimony and criminal cases. First, the "Daubert trilogy's" focus on verifiability as the threshold for expert testimony pushes the criminal justice system away from the notion that knowledge is socially constructed and toward a positivist epistemology that assumes we can know things objectively. Second, in the long run, that development will be good for prosecutors and bad for criminal defendants, given the different types of expertise on which they rely. Third, the consequence of …

Myth Of Ownership / Myth Of Government, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Indisputably, the lives of all individuals, now and throughout history, have not been commensurate in every respect. No individual has the most of everything at all times - net worth, love, happiness, security, companionship, fame, food, land, grandchildren, or whatever else he or she values.1 Nevertheless, a utopian strain in intellectual thought, emanating as the Enlightenment afterglow,2 continues to place its faith in the public construction of an ersatz equality that has never existed naturally.3 The Myth of Ownership, a recent book by two New York University law/philosophy professors, Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, is a striking exemplar of this …

The Role Of Predator-Induced Polyphenism In The Evolution Of Cognition: A Baldwinian Speculation, Scott F. Gilbert

Biology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Whiplash: Who's To Blame?, Valerie P. Hans, Juliet Dee

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Tom is sitting in his car at an intersection, waiting for the red light to change. Without warning, the car behind him, driven by a distracted mother named Elaine, slams into the rear of Tom's car. After the accident, Tom experiences severe neck pain, which interferes with his work and family life. Who's to blame?

If Tom suffered physical injury as a result, then under current legal principles she is responsible for compensating him for his injury. However, research on jury decision making in civil cases suggests that a constellation of psychological, legal and political factors operate together to focus …

Testing The Relationship Between Student's Perceptions, Achievement, And Learning Style Characteristics In Campus Based Lecture Classes, Campus Based Lecture Classes With Computer Enhanced Components, And Classes Offered On-Line, Blake Embrey Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

Educational professionals have always been attracted by the potential of what is going to happen in the future. From film in the 1920s, to television in the 1950s, to computers in the 1980s, and now informational technology in the 1990s, there have always been great expectations that new technology would soon enhance learning and instruction. This study investigated the relationship between student perceptions, academic achievement, and learning style characteristics across three instructional delivery formats: campus-based lecture classes, campus-based lecture classes with computer-enhanced components, and classes offered fully online. As users of the electronic classroom, faculty must properly and professionally integrate …

Every Day Is Halloween: A Goth Primer For Law Enforcement, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The following article is based upon field research conducted by Dr. Gordon A. Crews dealing with juveniles and young adults involved in the “Goth” lifestyle across the United States. This research is part of his ongoing efforts over the last decade to examine the impacts of alternative lifestyles, beliefs, and practices upon juvenile delinquency and violence. Most of the information in this article has been derived from face-to-face interviews with individuals aged 13 to 39 years of age proclaiming to be Goth, Vampires, Satanists, Pagans, Wiccans, New Agers, Druids, and a myriad of other occult-based identities.

Nova Quarterly: The University Of Texas At El Paso, The University Of Texas At El Paso University Communications

NOVA

Winter 2003, Vol. 41, No. 4; No. 156

A Day in the Life

Stochastic Learning Feedback Hybrid Automata For Power Management In Embedded Systems, Pushkin Kachroo, S. K. Shukla, T. Erbes, H. Patel

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

In this paper we show that stochastic learning automata based feedback control switching strategy can be used for dynamic power management (DPM) employed at the system level. DPM strategies are usually incorporated at the operating systems of embedded devices to exploit multiple power states available in today's ACPI compliant devices. The idea is to switch between power states depending on the device usage, and since device usage times are not deterministic, probabilistic techniques are often used to create stochastic strategies, or strategies that make decisions based on probabilities of device usage spans. Previous work (Irani et al., 2001) has shown …

Tough Love: Nurturing And Coercing Responsibility And Recovery In California Drug Courts, Stacy Lee Burns

Sociology Faculty Works

This article considers the activities of the participants in California drug treatment courts and their differences from more traditional criminal courts. The article focuses on how drug court judges and defendants interact to construct the defendant as a personally responsible and rehabilitatively changed "recovering" person, or, alternatively, as an essentially "addicted" and deficient self. The research also explores broader links between the ways drug courts operate and the potential complications involved in mixing coerced treatment and "voluntary" participation. The study finds that certain kinds of defendants may be discovered to be unsuitable for participation in the program; that clients negotiate …

Self-Efficacy, Jennifer T. Gosselin, James E. Maddux

Psychology Faculty Publications

The study of self-efficacy is concerned with understanding this important aspect of self and identity—people's beliefs about their personal capabilities and how these beliefs influence what they try to accomplish, how they try to accomplish it, and how they react to successes and setbacks along the way.