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Potential Use Of Nitrogen-15 To Assess Nitrogen Sources And Fate In Narragansett Bay, Joaquin E. Chaves

Open Access Dissertations

Anthropogenic N inputs have been identified as the main source of N to Narragansett Bay, a relatively well-mixed estuary in the northeast coast of the United States. Despite a well constrained N budget high levels of primary production during the summer months, mostly in the form of sporadic "blooms", cannot be explained in terms of current budget estimates. Inputs from the adjacent Rhode Island Sound have been invoked as a potential source of N to account for the Bay's summer production. The dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) from the Rhode Island Sound and the anthropogenic N entering the estuary through the …

Teacher Collaboration: Learning From Inclusion Dyad Dialogues, Carol Ann Frisk

Open Access Dissertations

Research on teacher collaboration since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142) in 1975 has increased the efforts in the field of education to improve the practice of collaboration. This is especially important as it applies to the collaboration, or co-teaching, of a special education teacher and a general education teacher in an inclusion classroom. Many textbooks and teaching guides have presented techniques for improving collaborative practice. Researchers have shown a strong interest in broadening the knowledge base about this best practice of collaboration in the educational field, but a continued reliance on surveys and …

Parallel Computations In Quantum Monte Carlo Simulation Of The Van Der Waals Cluster Vibrational Eigenstates, Haisen Li

Open Access Dissertations

The Quantum Monte Carlo computation of the van der Waals cluster vibrational states involves heavy-duty linear algebra computations of large matrices and many iterative procedures containing such computations, which constitute the major bottlenecks of the computational flow. Parallel algorithms can speed up these parts of computations significantly. The study of this dissertation is to parallelize these heavy-duty computations to reduce the overall run time. This thesis first reviews a method to compute the vibrational eigenstates of van der Waals clusters with the Quantum Monte Carlo method, identifies the bottlenecks of the computational flow, introduces the parallel computation facility, and discusses …

The Birth Of Bizdames: A Rupture In The Conversation, Engaging The Body In Decision-Making, Kathleen Mallon

Open Access Dissertations

Organizational studies consistently find that managers spend more time talking than any other activity (Mintzberg, 1973; Simon, 1945), that strategic decisions are developed and enacted through interactive talk (Perlow, 2003; Shaw, 2002), and that a diversity of perspectives has a positive effect on decision-making and organizational performance (Agyris, 1977). Conversely, the evidence suggests that cultures that perpetuate silence are less effective (Bourgeois, 1985; Enz & Schwenk, 1991; Morrison & Milliken, 2000; Ryan & Oestreich, 1991). Thus, knowledge about the inter-relationship of the micro-mechanisms of silence and talk and their effect on organizational performance is critical to management theory and practice …

Revaluing The Literary Naturalist: John Burroughs's Emotive Environmental Aesthetics, Stephen Mark Mercier

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation widens the circle of environmental aesthetics and ecocriticism by considering the role of the emotive in "appreciation." I demonstrate that emotion is a central feature in the literary naturalism of John Burroughs (1837-1921). Burroughs's model for environmental aesthetics combines narrative knowledge, sensory immersion, and emotional responses. Furthermore, I argue that Burroughs's "sentimental" emotions perform crucial roles in politics and therefore have serious implications for environmental consciousness. The rhetorical strategies inherent in Burroughs's paradigm for environmental aesthetics is essential to contemporary efficacious environmental discourse. This dissertation reclaims the importance of emotional affiliation with creatures, particularly birds, and their habitats. …

The Factors That Influence Middle-Level Teachers To Incorporate Community Service-Learning Into The Curriculum, Andrea J. Hainey-Turcotte

Open Access Dissertations

This study examined the factors that influence middle level educators to incorporate community service-learning into the curriculum. Eleven participants, each a teacher of middle level students, were interviewed to determine the extent to which they were influenced by intended outcomes for students, the community, and themselves. Findings suggest that participants were influenced to include community service-learning in the curriculum by anticipated benefits to students and community members. Participants hoped that by engaging in community service-learning activities, their students would become better scholars, leaders, citizens, and/or people. It would seem that participants were also driven to the implementation of community service-learning …

Individual, Organizational, And Contextual Determinants Of Realized Strategy In Not-For-Profit Organizations, Henry T. Ulrich

Open Access Dissertations

This study addresses organizational direction form the perspective of organizational strategy. It explores the factors that influence realized strategy and especially the degree to which realized strategy is deliberate or emergent. A model is offered that proposes both direct and indirect factors as determinants of realized strategy. Specific direct and indirect factors are hypothesized and the relationships are statistically examined. The sample is composed of twenty nonprofit organizations with a primary base of operations in southern New England. Data was collected for multiple respondents within each organization representing the various levels of management. Most participating organizations were mid-sized, social service …

Domestic Violence Screening By Nurses In The Primary Care Setting, Karen Hetzel

Open Access Dissertations

Domestic violence is one of the most important health care issues in the United States. One of every four women is a victim of domestic violence each year and thirty-one percent of women have a lifetime prevalence of domestic violence. Since most women receive their health care in primary care settings, nurses can play a critical role in decreasing the cycle of violence through screening and intervention. Although the research literature on domestic violence is voluminous, little is known about nursing practice related to routine screening of women for domestic violence or intervention in primary care settings. This study examined …

Determination Of Chlorophyll A Concentrations And Phytoplankton Primary Production In New England Estuarine Waters Using Ocean Color Remote Sensing From Low-Flying Aircraft, Darryl Joel Keith

Open Access Dissertations

The response of coastal systems to the addition of nutrients (especially nitrogen) is generally to stimulate phytoplankton biomass, measured using the concentration of chlorophyll a as a surrogate. However, the concentration and distribution of chlorophyll in the aquatic environment is variable in space and time. Historically, random to systematic design strategies have collected samples from specific locations in space (i.e. a point measurement). These strategies also are limited in sampling intra-annual, seasonal, and episodic events. Therefore, in order to sample on all time scales of interest over large geographic areas, a large number of point measurements and resources are required. …

Evaluation Of A Child Abuse Awareness Program, Jacqueline Jackson Kikuchi

Open Access Dissertations

Archived data from the Sexual Assault & Trauma Resource Center of Rhode Island (SATRC) was used to evaluate the effectiveness of their abuse awareness programs for fourth grade students. The goals of the program included helping children recognize potentially abusive situations so the abuse can be avoided, decreasing the length and extent of abuse through early disclosures, increasing disclosures so victims can received needed services and offenders can be arrested and convicted, decreasing the guilt and shame the victims feel when abuse happens, deterring juvenile offenders, and teaching children and adults how to discuss abuse and help victims. Fifty percent …

Preschool Teachers' Sense Of Teaching Efficacy: Scale Development And Correlates, Leah Alison Whynacht

Open Access Dissertations

The current study developed a scale to measure preschool educators' sense of teaching efficacy and then used the scale to explore relationships between efficacy scores and program and teacher variables. Participants were preschool educators from eighteen states and one country outside of the US (n = 131). A 121-item scale was used in data collection. A series of Principal Component Analyses with Varimax rotation resulted in a 36-item scale with factor loadings ranging from .82 to .58 (Cronbach's alpha = .97). The scale was comprised of the following four factors: Efficacy for Working With Children With Varying Abilities and Needs, …

Essays On Fisheries Management, Ramesh Baskaran

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three manuscripts that explore the present issues on both commercial and recreational fishery management in the United States of America. It reviews recent development and different management strategies in fisheries, which shows the need to expand and improve the present fishery management in order to entail sustainability of resources as well as the economic well-being of the fishery participants. The first manuscript is policy oriented and suggests a rights-based cooperative approach may provide an incentive for the rational management of Atlantic sea scallop fishery. Due to excessive harvest capability and regulatory inefficiencies, the sea scallop industry …

Geochemical Correlation, Variation, And Petrogenesis, Of Ignimbrites In Central America And Associated Caribbean Sea Tephra Layers, Benjamin R. Jordan

Open Access Dissertations

The Central American Tertiary Ignimbrite Province covers an area of 170,000 km2. A total of 112 marine tephra and 79 terrestrial samples from Nicaragua and Honduras were analyzed during this study, using an electron microprobe for major oxides and laser ICP-MS for trace elements. Cluster analysis resulted in the division of the samples into 6 geochemical groups. Visual inspection of these groups resulted in the reclassification of these 6 into 14 distinct geochemical groups. The geochemical correlation is strengthened using factor analysis in which the REE values for each sample were reduced to 2 factors. The Lesser Antilles can be …

The Advantage For Name -Designated Characters During Reading, Kelly A. Peracchi

Doctoral Dissertations

When two characters are mentioned in a text, one referred to by a title (e.g., professor) and one referred to by a proper name (e.g., Christopher), the character referred to by the name is more accessible in memory. Although there has been a lot of research documenting the advantages that name-designated characters have over title-designated characters, most of it has done so using very short texts. The experiments reported in this dissertation utilized longer passages of text to examine whether certain variables that are known to affect accessibility, such as order of mention, number of mentions, elaboration, and distance, will …

Perceptions Of Eighth-Grade Mathematics Teachers Of The Impact Of The Maine Educational Assessment On Instructional Practices, Mary Christine Runge

Doctoral Dissertations

The purposes of this study are (a) to examine the perceptions of eighth grade mathematics teachers in the state of Maine concerning their classroom instructional and assessment practices and the influence on their students' scores in the MEA tests and (b) to determine if there is a relationship between community social/economic levels and student achievement on the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) mathematics tests. The survey instrument consisting of a mailed questionnaire designed for this study contained 86 Likert scale items that measured teachers' beliefs regarding the following resource 1 indicators: awareness and use of MEA resources, content area knowledge, instructional …

Photo Intelligence And The Cuban Missile Crisis, Adam P. Bejger

All Volumes (2001-2008)

The Cuban Missile Crisis served as a prime example of the importance of photointelligence in the successful management of an international crisis. President Kennedy was provided with excellent, but not faultless, intelligence through the use of photointelligence. Kennedy used photointelligence to decide upon his policy of quarantine. The quarantine and subsequent diplomatic efforts led to a successful resolution of the missile crisis, with a minimum loss to American interests. During the Crisis, Kennedy followed the example of President Eisenhower in using photointelligence to make foreign policy decisions.

A Meta-Analytic Examination Of Decisional Balance Across Stage Transitions: A Cross-Sectional Analysis And Cross-Sequential Cross-Validation, Kara L. Hall

Open Access Dissertations

Interventions to decrease unhealthy behaviors and to increase healthy behaviors are crucial for health promotion and disease prevention. Computerized tailored interventions provide a promising approach for creating positive health behavior change. The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) delineates a way to conceptualize behavior change, provides the foundation for developing assessments of an individual's readiness to change, and is utilized in tailoring interventions for actualizing behavior change. To produce optimally tailored interventions: (1) theory that guides interventions needs to be comprehensively tested; and (2) empirical data that drive the tailored interventions needs to be systematically generated. This program of research tests theoretical assumptions …

Assessment Of Problem-Solving Abilities In Normal Adolescents, Kelley Ann Crownover

Open Access Master's Theses

This study examined the problem-solving abilities of adolescents, using a newly designed test, RAPS (the Rapid Assessment of Problem-Solving), by Marshall & Karow (2001). The tool is a modified version of the Twenty Questions Test that measures performance based on the number of questions asked to solve each problem, the percent of constraint-seeking questions used, and the efficiency or the amount of information gained from the first four questions asked. Participants included a total of 20 children with no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders who were categorized by age groups (10-11, 12-13, 14-15, and 16-17) with five subjects in …

Sarcastic Family Climates: Self-Reported Evaluations Of Family Interaction, Effect Of Non-Literal Communication, And Attachment Style, Gary Alan Beck

Open Access Master's Theses

The non-literal aspect of sarcastic utterance meaning opens up multiple perspectives regarding its interpretation, ultimately depending on the context and the relationship between those that use it. Self-reports from 151 young adults indicated that there was significant correlation between father's typical intensity of sarcasm use and subject verbal aggression, with significantly less father intensity of typical sarcasm use reported by subjects with low levels of verbal aggression. These findings suggested that sarcasm use is more prevalent in typical father young-adult directed communication with subjects that report themselves as being moderate and high verbally aggressive communicators. When observing actual communicative episodes …

Determining Components Of Fluorophoric Dom In Narragansett Bay Using Fluorescence Eems And Parafac, Jessica Dombroski

Open Access Master's Theses

Fluorophoric dissolved organic matter (FDOM) is an important component of the carbon cycle, factors in nutrient cycling, plays a role in determining the fates of trace metals and hydrophobic organic contaminants, and influences the inherent optical properties of water, affecting photosynthetic activities, productivity, and abundance of organisms in the area.

Fluorescence spectroscopy is a sensitive analytical method that can be used in conjunction with the canonical decomposition parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) to separate component fluorescence signatures embedded in excitation-emission matrices (EEMs) of complex chemical mixtures. In this study, the methods of fluorescence spectroscopy and PARAFAC were used to determine the …

Can Promise Enforcement Save Affordable Housing In The United States?

San Diego Law Review

Promise Enforcement is my original approach to the development of affordable housing. Promise Enforcement, as a system, includes three components: (1) contextual thinking; (2) valuing individuality, and (3) comprehensive responsibility. Contextual thinking involves a sense of environmental, historical, and geographic context. Valuing individuality allows residents of public housing to express themselves as unique individuals. Comprehensive responsibility involves a complete understanding of the costs and benefits of affordable housing. The theory was inspired in part by the work of Austrian activist, artist, and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser and the writings of French social contract theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. My article that introduced the …

In The Wake Of Enzo: The Impact Of The Federal Circuit’S Decision On The U.S. Life Science Industry

San Diego Law Review

The United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world.The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) helps drive health care costs higher by awarding monopolies to scientific researchers whose inventions meet the requirements dictated by Title 35 of the U.S. Code.3 Once the PTO awards such a monopoly, the inventor is the only party legally entitled to make, use, or sell the invention in the United States. Though monopolies are thought to impair competition, under the U.S. system these exclusionary rights are the rewards an inventor earns in exchange for enriching the pool of publicly …

Visuoconstructional Impairment: What Are We Assessing, And How Are We Assessing It?, Jessica Somerville Ruffalo

Open Access Dissertations

Visuoconstruction (VC) is a commonly-assessed neuropsychological domain that involves the ability to organize and manually manipulate spatial information to make a design. Tests used to measure VC are considered multifactorial in nature given their multiple demands (e.g., visuospatial, executive, motor), and therefore, interpretation of VC impairment can be difficult. Additionally, a wide variety of tests and methods are used to measure VC, further complicating interpretation of results. Although clinicians and researchers spend a great deal of time studying "VC," there has been much confusion about what it is, what is being measured, and how to best measure it. The following …

Suicide Assessment By Psychiatric Mental Health Nurses: A Phenomenographic Study, John M. Aflague

Open Access Dissertations

Suicide is the eleventh leading cause of mortality in the United States. This study explored suicide assessment by psychiatric nurses. The primary aims of this study were to gain an understanding of nurses' conceptions regarding suicide and suicide assessment, describe the strategies of suicide assessment adopted by psychiatric nurses, and contrast these to contemporary standards and practice guidelines of suicide assessment.

The research design was an inductive descriptive phenomenographic study. The nurse participants consisted of a snowball sample of six psychiatric nurses practicing in two psychiatric settings. The data were collected through participant observations of nurses' assessing patients and semi-structured …

2004 Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate.

Faculty Senate Records

Faculty Senate meeting minutes for the entire year of 2004.

Guaging Team Culture For Gay Student Athletes: A Descriptive Examination Of Intercollegiate Football, Amy L. Apicerno

Open Access Master's Theses

The purpose of this exploratory study was to learn more about Division I-A and Division I-AA collegiate football team culture and how it relates to gay student athletes. The study attempted to gauge player reactions to the presence of a gay teammate. It used qualitative methods and convenience sampling with phone interviews and a three part inquiry.

Twenty-eight scholar athletes participated, including eleven Division I-AA players and 17 from Division I-A. All were current players and attended geographically diverse institutions from four regions of the country. Telephone interview responses were transcribed by the interviewer, and responses were color coded by …

Riffing On The Constitution, Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Selected Works

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of Reconstructability Analysis, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper is an overview of reconstructability analysis (RA), a discrete multivariate modeling methodology developed in the systems literature; an earlier version of this tutorial is Zwick (2001). RA was derived from Ashby (1964), and was developed by Broekstra, Cavallo, Cellier Conant, Jones, Klir, Krippendorff, and others (Klir, 1986, 1996). RA resembles and partially overlaps log‐line (LL) statistical methods used in the social sciences (Bishop et al., 1978; Knoke and Burke, 1980). RA also resembles and overlaps methods used in logic design and machine learning (LDL) in electrical and computer engineering (e.g. Perkowski et al., 1997). Applications of RA, like …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind? : American Citizens And The Genocide In Rwanda, Colette T. Connor

Honors Theses

As citizens of the most powerful country in today's global world, Americans can no longer make the excuse, "out of sight, out of mind." Ten years ago Americans betrayed Rwandans. Their betrayal was mild yet widespread, but had repercussions of tremendous human cost. Each individual American most likely did not feel responsible for the genocide, but the collective outcome of their bystander behavior contributed to the world's inaction. This sad truth can serve as an inspiration: this does not have to happen next time, as American citizens have the agency to influence U.S. foreign policy decisions.

Valuing Servants Ends : A New Theory Of Ethical Service, Patricia Grace Devlin

Honors Theses

Many of today's universities encourage students to develop an ethic of service. Administrators, faculty, and staff members accompany students in campus-wide service activities; a number of collegiate honor societies reward students who engage in community service; and some academic programs require students to volunteer with local non-profit organizations. At its best, service learning inspires students to make a general commitment to service. The current emphasis placed on service learning in today's educational system reveals an emerging academic perspective not only on the value service has as an educational device but also on the significant role service plays in society. For …