Digital Commons Network^™

Multi-Player Computer Gaming: Better Than Playing (Pc Games) With Yourself, Melanie Swalwell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Based on research conducted with a multiplayer gaming group, this article introduces and critically outlines the phenomenon of lanning, the practice where computer game players get together to play each other over a local area network or LAN. The author argues that lanning presents a significant challenge to a number of ingrained assumptions about computer gaming. Primary amongst these is that lanning entails players meeting, not just in the virtual world of a game, but also face to face, dealing a blow to theories that gamers are anti-social. The author argues that the sociality of this form of gameplay also …

Shooters To The Left Of Us, Shooters To The Right: First Person Arcade Shooter Video Games, The Violence Debate, And The Legacy Of Militarism, Karen J. Hall

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Adult concerns about video games erupted in the 1990s when parents and politicians came forward with claims that Doom, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and games like them were partially responsible for the rash of school shootings in predominantly white, middle class communities. The author of this chapter argues that arcade games serve the national interest by entertaining consumer-citizens and creating a consumer-based demand for military technology. However, when adolescent shooters disrupt the status quo, it is the games rather than militarist social and economic structures that are criticized by the news media, politicians, and parents. The author of …

Allegorical Reductions And Social Reconstructions: An Introduction To Games, Gamers, And Gaming Cultures, Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Games have become a central metaphor in representations of society, and most people are familiar enough with Lewis Carroll's Alice to know that when she passes through the looking glass she finds herself embroiled in a game a Chess which is also much more (Carroll 1992 [1897]). This strange game of Chess is simultaneously a simulation and an enactment of social life in Wonderland, and Carroll plots out Alice 's narrative path as a series of tactical Chess moves, which can be understood as both an attempt to win the game and to navigate through Wonderland and her …

Cold War Games And Postwar Art, Claudia Mesch

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

During the Cold War both “superpowers” used games, particularly chess, in order to construct an ideology of complete conflict and irreconcilable division between East and West. This essay focuses on the broad cultural challenge to divisive Cold War zero-sum mentality issued by a number of artists—André Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Öyvind Fahlström, and Fluxus artists George Maciunas, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Takako Saito and Yoko Ono. These artists, in a second wave of game-focused art, returned to the concerns of surrealist art practice and to earlier cultural game theory. Even conceptual art production was impacted by the predetermined structure of …

Demo 03, Columbia College Chicago

Alumni Newsletters

Alumni newsletter from Summer 2006 entitled "DEMO3." This issue is 44 pages.

Demo 04, Columbia College Chicago

Alumni Newsletters

Alumni newsletter from Autumn 2006 entitled "DEMO4." This issue is 52 pages.

A Framework For Assessing The Input Of Scientific Information Into Global Decisionmaking, Dagmar Lohan

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Kyoto Protocol And The Wto: Reconciling Tensions Between Free Trade And Environmental Objectives, Cinnamon Carlarne

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Feminizing Waste: Waste-Picking As An Empowerment Opportunity For Women And Children In Impoverished Communities, Catherine A. Madsen

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Headwaters And Headaches: Afghanistan's Need For International River Basin Agreements, Eric Ryan Potyondy

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

When A Killer Body Isn’T Enough: Cross-Gender Identification In Action-Adventure Video Games, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

While sports games try to recreate the atmosphere of a stadium or of television broadcasts of games, role-playing and action-adventure games attempt to duplicate cinematography through animation. For Tomb Raider, the virtual reality created by the cinematic animation of the game produces an environment for male-to-female cross-gender identification, a topic that has received little critical attention. The sense of identification intended in this chapter comes from psychoanalysts Jean Laplanche and Jean-Baptiste Pontalis, who describe identification as a psychological process in which a subject assimilates an aspect, a property, a characteristic of another and transforms himself [or herself] totally or partially …

Beyond Patents: The Cultural Life Of Native Healing And The Limitations Of The Patent System As A Protective Mechanism For Indigenous Knowledge On The Medicinal Uses Of Plants, Ikechi Mgbeoji

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The question that this paper seeks to tackle is whether in the contest of allegations of biopiracy and in the search for effective mechanisms for the protection of indigenous knowledge of the medicinal uses of plants possessed by traditional healers of southern Nigeria, there is any role for the patent regime. Given the popularity of alternative forms of health care, this question is of importance in contemporary discourse.

Davis V. Washington And Hammon V. Indiana: Beating Expectations, Robert P. Mosteller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Buffalo Hippies, Brooke Gibbs Hewes

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Effectiveness Of Post-Fire Erosion Control Techniques In Western Montana, Amy Heather Groen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Community Dynamics And Social Status At The Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, St. Kitts, West Indies, Jennifer B. Camp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

All Grown Up: How The Counterculture Affected Its Flower Children, Eva P. Dunn-Froebig

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Landscaping The "Femme-Jardin" In Despstre's Erotic Trilogy, Anna Kristen Lokowich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Effectiveness Of Stand-Scale Forest Restoration, Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon, Jay C. Lininger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lininger, Jay Charles, Fall 2006 Environmental Studies Chair: Dr. Len Broberg This case study documents the effectiveness of stand-scale forest restoration activities undertaken in the “Penny Stew” project on federal land in the central Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon. Its dual purpose is to 1) define reference conditions and build a site-specific case for restoration through multi-scale analysis of historical ecology (Chapter III), and 2) demonstrate streamlined monitoring protocols that practitioners can use to adapt restoration practices over time (Chapter IV). Discussion of methodological efficacy in Chapter IV offers implications for FEAT-FIREMON Integration (FFI), a fire effects monitoring and data …

An Organizational And Functional Classification Of The Stone Tool Assemblage From The Bridge River Archaelogical Site (Eer14) (2003 And 2004 Field Seasons), David S. Clarke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Demographic And Behavioral Responses Of Breeding Birds To Variation In Food Nest Predation And Habitat Structure Across Multiple Spatial Scales, Anna D. Chalfoun

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Application Of Cognitive Engineering Principles To The Redesign Of A Dichotomous Identification Key For Parasitology, Kimberly A. Smith-Akins, Sharon Mclane, Thomas M. Craig, Todd R. Johnson

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Dichotomous identification keys are used throughout biology for identification of plants, insects, and parasites. However, correct use of identification keys can be difficult as they are not usually intended for novice users who may not be familiar with the terminology used or with the morphology of the organism being identified. Therefore, we applied cognitive engineering principles to redesign a parasitology identification key for the Internet. We addressed issues of visual clutter and spatial distance by displaying a single question couplet at a time and by switching to the appropriate next couplet after the user made a choice. Our analysis of …

On Sovereignty And Overhumanity Why It Matters How We Read Nietzsche's Genealogy 11:2, Christa Davis Acampora

Publications and Research

There is nearly unanimous agreement, among those who bother to pay attention to Nietzsche's anomalous claim about the "sovereign individual" in the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals that the "sovereign" is Nietzsche's ideal, and many more still take sovereignty as the signature feature of the overman Nietzsche heralds in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra and other writings. I describe the reception among Nietzsche scholars as "nearly unanimous" because there has been at least one cry of dissent: that issued by Lawrence Harab. Curiously, his brief but incisive comments about the problematic nature of several readings along these lines …

Identification And Minimization Of Protein Loss During The Manufacturing Of A Beta Domain Deleted Recombinant Human Factor Viii, Cyrus Agarabi

Open Access Master's Theses

Purpose: To identify factors affecting the concentration loss during the manufacturing process of Beta Domain Deleted Recombinant Human Factor VIII (BDDrFVIII SQ)

Methods: Lyophilization cycles were stopped after each stage to characterize the protein through the cycle. Three different types of glass tubing vials; untreated, silicon dioxide coated, and siliconized were evaluated. Two formulations of BDDrFVIII SQ were evaluated to determine the effects of a concentrated formula. Factor VIII concentration (μg/ml) was determined using an anion exchange high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) assay, with ultraviolet (UV) and fluorescence detection.

Results: The freezing and annealing stages were found be critical aspects …

Modeling Design History In A Graphic Design Curriculum, Eunjin Jeong

Theses

Graphic design history can be a valuable resource, contributing to graphic design students' understanding of design theories, and applied to problem solving exploration. According to many graphic design educators, current history courses are too often taught as superficial surveys of graphic style with no examinations of social, cultural, and political contexts, and have little interaction with practical studio courses. It is essential to bridge the gap between graphic design history and practical studio classes to further enhance graphic design education. This thesis will develop a means by which to show the tangible connection between graphic design history and applied problem-solving …

Interactive, Tree-Based Graph Visualization, Andrew Pavlo

Theses

We introduce an interactive graph visualization scheme that allows users to explore graphs by viewing them as a sequence of spanning trees, rather than the entire graph all at once. The user determines which spanning trees are displayed by selecting a vertex from the graph to be the root. Our main contributions are a graph drawing algorithm that generates meaningful representations of graphs using extracted spanning trees, and a graph animation algorithm for creating smooth, continuous transitions between graph drawings. We conduct experiments to measure how well our algorithms visualize graphs and compare them to another visualization scheme.

Genetic Music, Ryan Becker

Theses

Algorithmic music composition has long been an active area of research in computer science, but the need for a human element only recently began to be more widely acknowledged. Interactive Evolutionary Computing (IEC), made popular by Karl Sims, effectively solves many high dimension problems, like music composition, involving creative and subjective elements. This work applies several Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP) approaches, inspired by Karl Sims, to algorithmic music composition. The implementation of these IEC algorithms is described and their effectiveness compared.

Harry Potter: A Comparison Of The Characters, Themes, Setting And Plot With The Arthurian Legend, Diane L. Engbretson

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to attempt to predict if Harry Potter is a re-creation of King Arthur and if the ending of the Potter stories will mirror that of King Arthur. This research focused on one series of King Arthur books written by Howard Pyle and the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. A content analysis chart was created and implemented to compare the two series of books. A content analysis chart was completed, first of the King Arthur series and then of the Harry Potter series. This archetypal chart was used to map the characters, themes, …

Reading Comprehension Strategies For Students With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Susan Reese

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this paper was to describe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), its possible causes, characteristics, treatment options, and instructional strategies used for teaching reading comprehension to people with this disorder. ADHD is characterized by inattentiveness, hyperactivity, or impulsiveness to a degree beyond what is considered normal for the person's age.

While the exact causes are unknown, research is beginning to reveal that the disorder is brain based and genetic in disposition. Presently there is no cure for ADHD, but treatment options are available which include medications and/or therapies. Reading comprehension strategies to assist people with ADHD include chunking, …

Incorporating Interactive Writing Throughout The Day In A Kindergarten Classroom, Amy Sobaski

Graduate Research Papers

This study examined the use of interactive writing in a kindergarten classroom. Interactive writing and related terms were explained, and connections were made between interactive writing and learning standards. Possible problems and solutions were discussed, and a case study was conducted in a kindergarten classroom. Guidelines were presented for successful integration of interactive writing into a balanced literacy program. Also, conclusions were drawn from the case study and reviewed literature, and recommendations were made for the use of interactive writing in the classroom and for future research in this area.