Digital Commons Network^™

Primum Non Nocere: Measuring And Benchmarking Hospital Malpractice Performance., Carlton C. Young

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

Characterization Of A Rod Photoreceptor Cgmp -Gated Cation Channel Beta-Subunit Knockout Mouse., Youwen Zhang

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

Medellin V. Dretke: Federalism And International Law, Curtis Bradley, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Martin Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

This evening, we're going to have, at the very least, a discussion which may blossom into a debate-we will see as the evening progresses. However one characterizes the event, we're here to discuss the Medellin v. Dretke case and, more broadly, we are going to be discussing cutting edge issues of international law, including the operation of self-executing treaties and state legal systems, the weight to be given to judgments of international courts interpreting such treaties, and the duties of state and federal judiciaries in this process, all in the context of death penalty cases. Let me give you a …

Investment Companies Industry Developments, 2005/06; Audit Risk Alerts, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Auditing Standards Division

Industry Guides (AAGs), Risk Alerts, and Checklists

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of The Teacher–Leader In Modern Society: Insights From The Master Teacher’S Pedagogy, Stanley E. Fawcett, James C. Brau, Amydee M. Fawcett

Faculty Publications

Meeting the challenges of a modern era, including corporate scandal, government gridlock, and societal turmoil, requires a high level of effective leadership. In such an environment, the teacher–leader plays a critical role in cultivating the knowledge worker and learning organization. After all, the teacher–leader leverages the human resource by challenging and inspiring people to bring forth their best efforts and ideas in the quest to identify and implement creative solutions to society’s dilemmas. To understand the opportunities and challenges encountered in the teacher–leader paradigm, the pedagogy of a prototypical teacher was modeled and evaluated. As the ideal model of the …

Equilibrium Underdiversification And The Preference For Skewness, Todd Mitton, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

We develop a one-period model of investor asset holdings where investors have heterogeneous preference for skewness. Introducing heterogeneous preference for skewness allows the model's investors, in equilibrium, to underdiversify. We find suppport for our model's three key implications using a dataset of 60,000 individual investor accounts. First, we document that the portfolio returns of underdiversified investors are substantially more positively skewed than those of diversified investors. Second, we show that the apparent mean-variance inefficiency of underdiversified investors can be largely explained by the fact that investors sacrifice mean-variance efficiency for higher skewness exposure. Furthermore, contrary to the asset-pricing predictions of …

Stock Market Liberalization And Operating Performance At The Firm Level, Todd Mitton

Faculty Publications

I use firm-specific measures of openness to foreign investors to study the impact of stock market liberalization on firm-level operating performance. In a sample of over 1,100 firms from 28 countries, firms with stocks that are open to foreign investors experience higher growth, greater investment, greater profitability, greater efficiency, and lower leverage. Strategies to address potential endogeneity suggest that the observed relationship, at least in part, reflects a causal effect of openness on operating performance.

Dependability Auditing With Model Checking, Bonnie Anderson, James Hansen, Paul Benjamin Lowry

Faculty Publications

Model checking offers a methodology for determining whether a model satisfies a list of correctness requirements. We propose a theory of dependability auditing with model checking based on four principles: (1) The modeling process should be partitioned into computational components and behavioral components as an aid to system understanding; (2) The complex system will be abstracted to create a model; (3) A language must be available that can represent and evaluate states and processes that evolve over time; (4) Given an adequate model and temporal specifications, a model checker can verify whether or not the input model is a model …

What Does The Naep Tell Us About Student Achievement In Arkansas?, Joshua H. Barnett, Gary W. Ritter

Arkansas Education Reports

This brief discusses the most recent and historical NAEP data in math, science, reading, and writing. Arkansas’ NAEP results are compared to national and border state averages. Based on the most recent NAEP exams, Arkansas is performing slightly below the national average in reading, math, science, and writing. There is also data to support that Arkansas students perform less well in Grade 8 than in Grade 4 when compared to the national and border state averages. Arkansas, however, is among the highest performing states with regard to change over the last decade. Since 1992, Arkansas has gained on the national …

A Longitudinal Survey Of The Language Learning Careers Of Actr Advanced Students Of Russian: 1976-2000, Dan E. Davidson, Susan Goodrich Lehmann

Russian Language Journal

In 1976, the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) began sending American college students to Russia for advanced training in Russian language and literature. The original ACTR program was open to qualified students from any U. S. institution and represented one of the very few opportunities available to American students, graduate students, or faculty to pursue advanced language training in Russia, in this case, the newly established A. S. Pushkin Institute of the Russian Language in Moscow. Admission to the program was competitive, and, in practice, the ACTR program accepted for the most part graduate students and immediate-post BA …

Perspectives On Curriculum Construction At The Postsecondary Level: Contexts, Approaches, Principles, Heidi Byrnes

Russian Language Journal

A curriculum is an attempt, wrote Stenhouse three decades ago (1975, 4), to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational proposal in such a form that it is open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective translation into practice.

If one applies that notion of curriculum to the foreign language field in general, and to second- or foreign-language learning in U.S. colleges and universities in particular, one is immediately confronted with a dilemma: how can we speak of a foreign-language curriculum at the college level when a principled approach that is open to scrutiny and that builds on …

The Concept Of “World Language”, V. G. Kostomarov

Russian Language Journal

Although the United Nations has declared that its working languages—English, Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese, and, more recently, Japanese and Arabic— are “world languages,” there is no strictly linguistic basis for such a claim. Indeed, many linguists reject the term, and many of those who do accept it believe that it denotes—roughly—an artificial global language. Moreover, many find in it an unpleasant hint of the pseudoscientific idea that one language can be superior to another.

Globalization, Internationalization, And Language Learning In Russia, Liudmila Verbitskaya

Russian Language Journal

In reviewing international trends over the last few decades, two words— globalization and internationalization—inevitably come to mind. Thinkers around the world are pondering these processes, which are rooted in the technological and social changes of the last quarter of the twentieth century.

The notions of globalization and internationalization are obviously related, but exactly what do they mean? In The Globalization of Higher Education, Peter Scott (1998a) concludes that not only are the words not synonyms, but the processes they denote are radically different and even dialectically opposed.

Learners And Teachers: The Application Of Psychology To Second-Language Acquisition, Madeline Ehrman

Russian Language Journal

The successful acquisition of second languages depends as much on good psychology as it does on sound linguistics. Both teaching and learning can be enriched by understanding and applying basic psychological principles.

The speaking and reading performance of second-language learners has received a great deal of attention in areas of applied linguistics such as conversation analysis, speech production analysis, oral testing research, classroom interaction analysis, and task-based learning research.(Ellis, 1994). In addition to linguistic variables, researchers have examined psychological determinants of learner achievement in speech performance, among them “individual difference variables.” These relatively stable learner characteristics—including language aptitude, motivation, and …

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume 55

Russian Language Journal

The present issue of RLJ reflects the new editorial board’s view of the state of Russian study in the U.S. and the world today in the context of globalization, internationalization of curriculum, and increased expectations regarding the outcomes of language study everywhere. (Verbitskaya) While more modest than the bold Soviet-era policy assertions concerning Russian as a “primary language of mass international communication,” Kostomarov addresses the new role of Russian as mother tongue, second language, or major foreign language for more than 300 million speakers in the world, nearly 3 million of whom are now resident in the United States, and …

Individual Difference Theory In Faculty Development: What Faculty Developers Should Know About Style, Betty Lou Leaver, Rebecca L. Oxford

Russian Language Journal

Over the past three decades and more, growing attention has been paid to the need to tailor instruction to meet the differing learning and affective styles of students. However, little has been written about doing the same for faculty.

Typically, the purpose of faculty development is to empower new and experienced teachers by providing information, enhancing self-confidence, and developing attitudes and beliefs favorable to effective teaching. Such empowerment usually requires teachers to change their teaching behaviors— and change does not come automatically or identically to all teachers. Rather, “teachers change in areas [in which] they are already primed to change, …

Change Agents And Change Agencies In Language Education: Implications For Langnet, Richard D. Brecht

Russian Language Journal

Educational innovation is a richly satisfying enterprise, particularly in an age of rising demands and expanding technology. But unless the innovators have an explicit strategic plan and a dedicated system for diffusing their work, innovation is destined to have little or no impact on the teachers and learners for whom it is intended. That truth lies at the heart of the literature on the diffusion of innovation.

The Online Language Learning Environment: New Roles For The Humanist, James S. Noblitt

Russian Language Journal

Thomas Edison played an important role in improving the technologies needed for the telephone. He was said to have been excited about the educational potential of the new instrument and speculated that it would soon be found in every classroom.

Well, he was right about the educational potential of information and communication technology, but he was wrong about the form the new technology would take.

This chapter raises questions concerning the role humanists will play in determining the development and implementation of information and communication technologies for educational purposes.

The Legal Subject And The Judicialization Of French Civic Culture: Fin De Siècle Roots Of Contemporary Politics, John J. Cerullo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Resource Guide For Authors: Open Access, Copyright, And The Digital Commons., Charlotte Hess

Librarian Publications

"This article aims to introduce you to the important issues about copyright and open access; to convince you that providing open access to your research is a right and a responsibility; and to provide concrete information and instructions so that all of you can easily contribute and enrich the global information commons. This is a push for institutional change, commoners, because few of you see yourselves as archivists, publishers, or librarians. But you must begin to take an active role in freeing information. The information that the world needs and values is in your hands."

La Transformación De La Visión De John Quincy Adams Sobre Mexico, Lyon Rathbun

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

En este artículo se analiza la actitud cambiante frente a Mexico de John Quincy Adams, de ser el primer arquitecto de la expansion territorial de Estados Unidos en la epoca nacional temprana hasta convertirse en ardiente defensor de la integridad territorial de Mexico en los años treinta. El autor se plantea también la siguiente pregunta: ~Que nos dice la transformación de John Quincy Adams sobre las relaciones mas amplias entre Estados Unidos y Mexico? El trabajo muestra como, durante la segunda década del siglo XJX, en la búsqueda de autosuficiencia y ampliación territorial de Estados Unidos, Adams valoraba poco el …

Modification Of Carbon-Carbon Composites With Carbon Nanofibers., Rahul Jain

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

Handling Large Farm Animals, Andrew B. Conroy, Laurie Chapman-Bosco, Dwight Barney

Faculty Publications

Livestock Handling Techniques for 4-H Youth

Another Test Of The News: How The Early American Press Reported The French Revolution, Jacquelyn Cole

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Concert Recording 2005-04-04, Richard Rulli, Nicholas Althouse, Timothy Thompson, Gerald Sloan, Benjamin Pierce, University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Boston Mountain Brassworks

Concert Recordings & Programs

Dance / Wilke Renwick -- Fugue in g minor (The little) / Johann Sebastian Bach -- Sketches / Anthony Plog -- Colonial song / Percy Grainger -- Suite Americana no. 1. Ragtime; Vals Peruano ; Zamba guacha ; Son de Mexico / Enrique Crespo

Redox Signaling In Colonial Hydroids: Many Pathways For Peroxide, Neil W. Blackstone, Matthew J. Bivins, Kimberly S. Cherry, Robert E. Fletcher, Gabrielle Geddes

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Studies of mitochondrial redox signaling predict that the colonial hydroids Eirene viridula and Podocoryna carnea should respond to manipulations of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Both species encrust surfaces with feeding polyps connected by networks of stolons; P. carnea is more ‘sheet-like’ with closely spaced polyps and short stolons, while E. viridula is more ‘runner-like’ with widely spaced polyps and long stolons. Treatment with the chemical antioxidant vitamin C diminishes ROS in mitochondrion-rich epitheliomuscular cells (EMCs) and produces phenotypic effects (sheet-like growth) similar to uncouplers of oxidative phosphorylation. In peripheral stolon tips, treatment with vitamin C triggers a dramatic increase of …

Lessons From The Unusual Impacts Of An Abnormal Winter In The Usa, David Changnon, Stanley A. Changnon

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Economic impacts from the near record warm and snow-free winter of 2001–2 in the United States were assessed to ascertain their dimensions and relevance to issues like climate prediction and climate change. Unusual impacts resulted and embraced numerous sectors (heating/energy use, construction, tourism, insurance, government, and retail sales). Many outcomes were gains/benefits totalling $19.6 billion, with losses of $8.2 billion. Some economists identified the sizable positive impacts as a factor in the nation’s recovery from an on-going recession stemming from the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Understanding the impacts of such a winter reveals how climate predictions of such …

The Role Of The Renin -Angiotensin System In Extracellular Matrix Remodeling During The Progression Of Hypertension And The Development Of Cardiac Fibrosis., Chastity N Mcrae Bradford

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Hyperfertility (Parity≥15) And Fetal Outcomes Among Singleton Births., Muktar H. Aliyu

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.