Digital Commons Network^™

The Consideration Of Camera Testing For Accurate Color Reproduction Within Museums And Institutions, Natalie Russo

Theses

The need for color accurate digital images for fine art reproduction is a reality faced by art museums and institutions around the world. It is the goal of most institutions to replace old, sometimes used and abused, transparency archives with digital image archives; many institutions have already begun this work. A number of different imaging systems with varied workflows, some idiosyncratic, are being used for this work. There is, therefore, an urgent need for the development and sharing of working methods that will ensure efficient, consistent, and color accurate results. These workflows must use camera systems to their fullest capability. …

Assessing The State Of Web Accessibility, Laura Cook

Theses

People with disabilities continue to be at a disadvantage in terms of opportunities on the Web. Federal laws and state policies help govern website design for federal and state agencies, but their impact thus far is unclear. This thesis addresses the issue of web accessibility and examines the compliance of state websites. A sample of state websites was evaluated for accessibility with two different methods: (1 ) using two automated accessibility validation checkers (Bobby and Entre), and (2) using a process of gradually degrading the web pages down to a text-only page. A survey was developed and administered to web …

Increasing Church Attendance For Families With Young Children Through A Time-Saving Ministry, James Brent Van Hook

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Railroads And The American Industrial Landscape: Ted Rose Paintings And Photographs, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Mainstream Press: Then And Now Has The Prominence Of Sensational News Changed In 100 Years?, Kathleen Marchaesi

Theses

The present research explores the levels of sensational news reporting in three distinct periods of journalism history by examining the largest mainstream newspaper in America, The New York Times, during the yellow journalism, jazz journalism and modern eras. The front pages of a representative sample of the newspaper were analyzed to determine the extent to which prominence of sensational news topics in the modern press differs from that of the yellow and jazz eras. The style of sensational reporting was examined to determine if the treatment of news has changed. The results of a content analysis indicate that readers are …

An Evolutionary Computation Approach To Optimization Of Isoelectric Point Prediction In Proteins, Chris Parkin

Theses

Computational biology has attacked the problem of isoelectric point prediction with little success, achieving a rough accuracy level of only 30%. In 2005, Matthew Conte performed a study focused on the relationship between sequence characteristics and isoelectric point prediction accuracy. Results indicated that charges between adjacent amino acids could have a significant impact on the overall predicted pi for the protein. In this study we introduce an evolutionary computation approach aimed at accounting for these problem dipeptides. For each possible dipeptide involving charged amino acids (7 chargeable groups -> 49 possibilities), the algorithm predicts a pKa value that, when included …

Ligevolver: A Tool For Ligand Formulation Using Genetic Algorithm, Priyadarsini Soundararajan

Theses

Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV - 1) has been found to be the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This virus caused uproar during the 1980's and started a major drug discovery race among the pharmaceutical companies. It also proved to be a milestone in the establishment of the use of computers in rational drug design.

Evolutionary computation is a commonly used computational approach that has been successfully applied to a variety of fields ranging from engineering to life science. The main reason for its effectiveness is that it is driven by the principles of evolution. A genetic …

The Digital Vat (D-Vat), Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

The most sustained U.S. tax policy debate of the past 30 years concerns proposals to replace and/ or supplement the Federal Income Tax with a consumption tax. Public finance economists and legal tax policy scholars challenged and defended the current income tax system on grounds of fairness, efficiency, and simplicity.

This debate over revamping the national taxing scheme has not been argued purely in the academic forum. Concrete legislative proposals have been advanced for a national retail sales tax, a European-style Value Added Tax, as well as a whole host of what David Bradford calls "the two-tiered consumption taxes."

From …

The Endorsement Court, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1986, when William H. Rehnquist was confirmed as the sixteenth Chief Justice of the United States, the Supreme Court has virtually rewritten the entire law regarding the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. With respect to the Free Exercise Clause, the Court, in its 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision, reversed years of jurisprudence and held that the First Amendment does not entitle religious believers to exemptions from neutral laws of general application. On the Establishment Clause side, the Court recently overturned a series of its earlier decisions on its way to creating a body of law quite amenable to the …

Risk Management, Ben J.M. Ale, Phil W.M. Brighton, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Risk management develops as the need arises. Usually after an accident people want “authorities” to do something. On the other hand, industry wants predictable behaviour of authorities to be able to judge the soundness of their investments. This led to an adaptive process involving many decision makers embedded in legal and cultural heritage. It was indeed as struggle to determine who should be responsible and how to have risk management done by competent party (i.e. (1) industry, (2) public (3) authorities).

Kitzmiller And The "Is It Science?" Question, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

When Judge John E. Jones, III, a United States District Court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the Dover school board's intelligent design (ID) policy violated the Establishment Clause, ID opponents were ecstatic. They had good reason to be. The opinion was a comprehensive and complete victory for ID opponents. The decision held that the policy was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion when viewed both from a reasonable Dover student's perspective as well as from the perspective of a reasonable adult in the Dover community. It also held that the policy was adopted for a religious purpose, …

Foreword: Globe-Hopping Pharmaceuticals, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Learning While They Work: The Use Of Student Assistants In Two Academic Law Libraries, Ronald E. Wheeler, Stephanie Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

At the University of New Mexico School of Law Library (UNM), we are effectively using student assistants to help with the completion of faculty research projects. We find that the volume of faculty research that our library is able to complete is far greater due to the effective use of student assistants. During the calendar year 2005, our library completed over 500 research requests for the law school faculty. With only seven professional librarians, without student help, that volume of faculty research would probably not have been feasible.

Gendering The Gentrification Of Public Housing: Hope Vi's Disparate Impact On Lowest-Income African American Women, Danielle Pelfrey Duryea

Faculty Scholarship

HOPE VI must have seemed so promising. When, in 1992, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) introduced the program later dubbed "HOPE VI," replacing the country's worst public housing projects with mixed-income, mixed-use, low-density new developments while providing targeted social services to low-income residents must have seemed like a worthy pursuit indeed. America's most run-down, crime-ridden, and poverty-plagued residential properties could be transformed into "human-scale" New Urbanist streetscapes, aesthetically continuous with surrounding areas, that would inspire pride and community in their residents. Perhaps most importantly, HOPE VI's required social service component might have seemed, at last, to recognize …

Lawyers' Professionalism, Colonialism, State Formation And National Life In Nigeria, 1900-1960: 'The Fighting Brigade Of The People', Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue

All Faculty Publications

This essay explores the role of the organized legal profession in relation to British Imperialism, state formation, and independence in Nigeria. Drawing on recent works in the fields of post-colonial legal studies and cultural histories of legal professions, the paper develops an understanding of lawyering and lawyers' associations as deeply implicated in the myriad cultural projects through which law simultaneously 'civilizes' provincials and mediates between centre and locale. The paper reviews new developments in theories of legal professionalism and surveys secondary literatures of lawyers in colonial processes. It assesses the historical processes linking imperialism, law, and lawyers from the establishment …

Consolidating Pharmaceutical Regulation Down Under: Policy Options And Practical Realities, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

Pharmaceutical regulatory agencies struggle worldwide to maintain public trust these days. Drug safety issues proliferate,' the costs of lharmaceuticals take increasingly larger shares of most countries' health service spending, and conflicts of interest afflicting the drug approval and marketing processes capture more and more public attention. The Australian and New Zealand governments are keenly aware of these problems, and have been attempting to forge a regulatory alliance to combine their respective pharmaceutical regulatory agencies, Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and New Zealand's Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority (Medsafe), into the pending Trans Tasman Therapeutic Products Authority (ANZTPA, or TPA). …

Relationship Of Human Figure Drawing With Executive Functioning And Achievement, Julie M. Miller

Theses

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between aspects of children’s human figure drawings to their executive functioning and academic achievement. Participants consisted of 80 third and fourth graders, ages 8 to 10 years, along with their parents. Correlational analysis showed no relationship between the developmental scoring of the Goodenough-Harris or Koppitz with measures of executive functioning, as measured by the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF; Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000) and the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS; Naglieri & Das, 1997). However, Koppitz’s emotional indicators were significantly correlated with all aspects of BRIEF and …

0747: Robert C. Shank Collection, 1937-1992, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Scrapbooks of activities of the Huntington, W. Va., Community Players; movie posters; some books.

Eliminating Political Maneuvering: A Light In The Tunnel For The Government Attorney-Client Privilege, Patricia E. Salkin, Allyson Phillips

Scholarly Works

The long recognized common-law privilege afforded to certain conversations between attorneys and their clients has been the subject of troubling opinions when the lawyer and client are high ranking government officials. In a series of opinions from the 7th, 8th and D.C. Circuit Courts of Appeals, the courts refused to recognize the existence of the attorney-client privilege for the government actors under the circumstances surrounding the cases. However, recent opinions from the 2nd Circuit state that these other courts were simply wrong, setting the stage perhaps, for the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the issue. Whether this privilege is equally …

Zoning For Home Occupations: Modernizing Zoning Codes To Accommodate Growth In Home-Based Businesses, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This article offers readers ideas and examples of ways to modernize local zoning laws to balance the growing demand by residents to engage in legitimate home-based businesses while protecting community character and the health, safety, and welfare of neighbors in residential zoning districts.

Extraction And Interaction Analysis Of Foreground Objects In Panning Video, Raja Jain

Theses

In this work, moving foreground objects are extracted from video. The video camera can be either stationary or panning. The motion information extracted from consecutive frames of video is used for object segmentation, and an appearance model of the moving object is created. No assumptions are made concerning the object model, resulting in segmented objects of varying shapes and sizes. Finally, relationships between objects in the image are evaluated toward the goal of higher level understanding of videos.

A Biologically Plausible System For Detecting Saliency In Video, David Burlone

Theses

Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists credit the dorsal and ventral pathways for the capability of detecting both still salient and motion salient objects. In this work, a framework is developed to explore potential models of still and motion saliency and is an extension of the original VENUS system. The early visual pathway is modeled by using Independent Component Analysis to learn a set of Gabor-like receptive fields similar to those found in the mammalian visual pathway. These spatial receptive fields form a set of 2D basis feature matrices, which are used to decompose complex visual stimuli into their spatial components. A …

Application Of Shifted Delta Cepstral Features For Gmm Language Identification, Jonathan Lareau

Theses

Spoken language identifcation (LID) in telephone speech signals is an important and difficult classification task. Language identifcation modules can be used as front end signal routers for multilanguage speech recognition or transcription devices. Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM's) can be utilized to effectively model the distribution of feature vectors present in speech signals for classification. Common feature vectors used for speech processing include Linear Prediction (LP-CC), Mel-Frequency (MF-CC), and Perceptual Linear Prediction derived Cepstral coefficients (PLP-CC). This thesis compares and examines the recently proposed type of feature vector called the Shifted Delta Cepstral (SDC) coefficients. Utilization of the Shifted Delta Cepstral …

Implementation Of Image Processing Approach To Translation Of Asl Finger-Spelling To Digital Text, Divya Mandloi

Theses

This thesis describes the ongoing development of an image processing technique for the translation of American Sign Language (ASL) finger-spelling to text. The present analysis is the phase one of a broader project, the Sign2 Project, which is focused on a complete technological approach to the translation of ASL to digital audio and/or text. The methodology adopted in this analysis employs a gray-scale image processing technique to convert the American Sign Language finger-spelling to text. It attempts to process static images of the subject considered, and then matches them to a statistical database of pre-processed images to ultimately recognize the …

Europa: A Framework For Writing Reusable Automated Tests For C# Components, Christian Castillo

Theses

One of the main goals of software construction is reusability. Component-based (CB) development is a new paradigm that promises to facilitate the reuse of software elements. The component-based model attempts to create an analogy with computer hardware. The idea is that software applications should be developed by assembling existing components rather than reinventing solutions to problems that have already been solved. In this paradigm, a component consumer is faced with the problem of determining if a given component meets his expectations. Testing the component can help answer this question. The component consumer may have to apply the same test cases …

Mentoring In The Department Of Access Services At The National Technical Institute For The Deaf, Gayle Macias

Theses

Not provided.

Principles Of Fairness For International Economic Treaties: Constructivism And Contractualism, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

No legal system deserving of continued support can exist without an adequate theory of justice. A world trade constitution cannot credibly exist without a clear notion of justice upon which to base a consensus. This paper examines two accounts of fairness found in moral philosophy, those of John Rawls and Tim Scanlon. The Rawlsian theory of justice is well-known to legal scholars. Scanlon's contractualist account may be less well-known. The aim of the paper is to start the discussion as to how fairness theories can be used to develop the tools for examining international economic policies and institutions. After elaborating …

Acceptability And Outcomes Of The Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (Peg) Tube Placement--Patients' And Care Givers' Perspectives, Muhammad K. Anis, Shahab Abid, Wasim Jafri, Zaigham Abbas, Hasnain A. Shah, Saeed Hamid, Rozina Wasaya

Section of Gastroenterology

Background: Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube has now become a preferred option for the long-term nutritional support device for patients with dysphagia. There is a considerable debate about the health issues related to the quality of life of these patients. Our aim of the study was to assess the outcome and perspectives of patients/care givers, about the acceptability of percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube placement.

Methods: This descriptive analytic study conducted in patients, who have undergone percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube placement during January 1998 till December 2004. Medical records of these patients were evaluated for their demographic characteristics, underlying diagnosis, indications …

Table Of Contents - Issue 1

Journal of Dispute Resolution

No abstract provided.

What We Know And What We Should Know About American Trial Trends, Margo Schlanger

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This brief essay first summarizes some of that knowledge-in particular, the chief features we know about the shrinking civil trial docket in federal district courts. Next, it proposes four areas of future investigation necessary to understand the contours of the trend and to assess its causes. Then, I bring together the causal hypotheses that have already been proposed, none of which has yet been securely tested. Finally, in an appended bibliography, I list data sources, reports, and scholarly analyses that will be useful to those doing future work.