Digital Commons Network^™

Addressing The Evidentiary Sources Of Wrongful Convictions: Categorical Exclusion Of Evidence In Capital Statutes, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of The Effects Of Patient Position And Bladder Volume On Urinary Bladder Pressure, Chad C. Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Urinary bladder pressure (UBP) is an important indicator for a variety of medical conditions. Eighty hospital subjects each had their UBP measured four times at various bladder volumes and lying positions. Positions included 0 degrees supine, 30 degrees supine, 30 degrees right lateral and 30 degrees left lateral, and the volumes included 0mL, 25mL, 50mL and 200mL. For each volume, mean UBP was found to be somewhat lower for subjects measured in non-elevated position (0 degrees supine) than any of the elevated positions (30 degrees), although the sizes of the effect only sometimes reached significance. Additionally, for each position, mean …

The Impact Of Computers On The Legal Profession: Evolution Or Revolution?, Richard L. Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

African American And Latino Relations: A Case Study Of Philadelphia Neighborhoods, Yasmeen Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines African American and Latino relations using Philadelphia as a case study. It analyzes how factors such as the urban landscape's rising Latino population, socioeconomic status, media depictions of African Americans and Latinos, language barriers, and residential segregation affect inter-group relations. The study used interviews to assess the current relationship of African Americans and Latinos in Philadelphia. Seven interviews were conducted with community leaders and government representatives who worked in African American and Latino communities. The study hypothesized that incidences of African American and Latino conflict will rise as the Latino population increases in formerly African American neighborhoods. …

Chihuahuan Desertkangaroo Rats: Nonlinear Effects Of Population Dynamics, Competition, And Rainfall, M. Lima, S.K. Morgan Ernest, J. H. Brown, A. Belgrano, N. C. Stenseth

Biology Faculty Publications

Using long-term data on two kangaroo rats in the Chihuahuan Desert of North America, we fitted logistic models including the exogenous effects of seasonal rainfall patterns. Our aim was to test the effects of intraspecific interactions and seasonal rainfall in explaining and predicting the numerical fluctuations of these two kangaroo rats. We found that logistic models fit both data sets quite well; Dipodomys merriami showed lower maximum per capita growth rates than Dipodomys ordii, and in both cases logistic models were nonlinear. Summer rainfall appears to be the most important exogenous effect for both rodent populations; models including this variable …

Evolution Of Prostatic Acid Phosphatase (Acpp) Expression In Hominoids, Kathryn Hooper-Boyd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hominoids vary in their mating behavior. Levels of sperm competition vary accordingly. Species in which females mate with a large number of males are expected to experience high levels of sperm competition, such as chimpanzee and bonobo, while polygynous gorillas likely have little or no sperm competition. Coding regions of several seminal proteins have been shown to be experiencing positive selection, but little is known about the regulatory regions of these genes. The 1.7 kb upstream promoter region of prostatic acid phosphatase (ACPP) of human, bonobo, gorilla, orangutan, gibbon, and macaque was cloned into a luciferase reporter vector and transiently …

Atrazine And Info-Disruption: Does The Pesticide Atrazine Disrupt The Transfer Of Chemical Information In The Terrestrial Salamander, Plethodon Shermani?, Stephanie Lanzel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Atrazine is a commonly used herbicide in the United States and is a potential info-disruptor. Atrazine acts as an info-disruptor in fish, by dampening olfactory responses to pheromones, and atrazine has been linked to endocrine disruption in frogs. By interfering with chemoreception, atrazine may potentially impact foraging and reproductive success in various species. I hypothesized that in the terrestrial salamander, Plethodon shermani, in which chemical communication is important in social and foraging behaviors; atrazine would act as an odorant and/or interfere with chemosensation. I predicted that both acute and chronic exposure to atrazine would decrease chemoinvestigative behaviors, pheromone detection by …

Discussion And Analysis Of Missile Igc Design, Michael W. Dancer, S. N. Balakrishnan, Ernest J. Ohlmeyer

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Missile intercept systems used in the next generation missile defense system will require extremely accurate performance of all component systems. Such systems will need to guarantee successful intercept of highly maneuvering targets. as a result, such interceptor systems require much greater performance in its guidance, control, and estimation subsystems. in order to develop systems that meet the required accuracies, integrated guidance and control (IGC) systems are currently being studied. These IGC architectures infuse the guidance and control systems into a single framework thereby promoting natural synergy among the missile subsystems. Previous work in this area has relied on missile body-Based …

A Phonological Description Of Wichí: The Dialect Of Misión La Paz, Salta, Argentina, Megan Leigh Zdrojkowski Avram

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The Wichí language, a member of the Matacoan language family, is spoken in parts of South America’s Chaco region. Specifically, Wichí is found in the Salta, Chaco, and Formosa provinces of Argentina, as well as in southeastern Bolivia. Wichí is an endangered language, with speakers numbering c. 25,000 (although estimates vary greatly). This study aims to contribute to the documentation of Wichí and to our understanding of human language in general by providing insight into the phonetics and phonology of the dialect of Wichí spoken in the remote village of Misión La Paz, Salta, Argentina. The data for this study …

Perceived Value Of Faculty-Developed Course Websites: A Student-Faculty Comparison, Donald W. Southwell

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study is a case-study examination of faculty-developed course websites and their usage within a single mid-western community college environment. Its purpose is to develop an understanding of the perceived value of selected course websites from both student and faculty perspectives based on website design and use. The study analyzes course websites from instructional and technological theoretical perspectives, drawing from literature in the fields of education and technology studies.

To understand course websites within the context of their usage, three selected course websites were paired with the instructor and a subset of students to form a case study unit. The …

Special Education Reading Instructional Strategies In One Midwestern Intermediate School District, Marliese Temme

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Reading is one of the most important skills needed throughout life. Recent national studies combined with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Law and the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act have heightened the educational community’s awareness of the broken link between research-based instructional strategies and actual implementation. This study sought to determine to what extent research-based instructional strategies were integrated into the teaching of students with reading difficulties, and to what extent sustainability factors were evidenced in service delivery models. From the original 46 survey participants, a subset of thirteen special education teachers participated in …

Poisoners, Larcenists, And The Mad Chambermaid: Villainy In Late Victorian Detective Fiction, Jennifer Filion

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis seeks to identify patterns of villainy in late nineteenth-century detective fiction in order to examine middle class conceptions of criminality and the way those models reflect the values of Victorian society. Through a study of more than sixty pieces of short detective fiction, this study identifies and focuses on six primary categories: the visual depiction of the criminal, the criminal class, the jewelry heist, the colonial subject, the violent female offender, and the domestic villain. The creation of each criminal category and the reinforcement of that “type” in popular literature functions to establish order and to support beliefs …

Synthesis And Dye Leakage Assay Of Human And Rat Islet Amyloid Polypeptide 10-19 And Insulin 14-18, Andrew William Gray

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Islet amylin polypeptide (IAPP) is co-secreted along with insulin in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. During type 2 diabetes mellitus, human IAPP (hIAPP) fibrilizes to form amyloid deposits that are found post-mortem in more than 95% of people with the disease. Rodents do not suffer from type 2 diabetes mellitus as their IAPP (rIAPP) does not undergo self-aggregation. Although the amyloid deposit is found in those with the disease, the actual cause of the disease is the cytotoxicity of the mechanism that forms those amyloid deposits. The self-aggregation of IAPP to form amyloid deposits is inhibited by insulin due to …

An Analysis Of Beginning Counselor Education Master's Degree Candidate's Ability To Make Ethical Decisions Based On The American Counseling Association's Ethical Standards After Having Completed A Course In Professional Ethics, Richard Joseph Behun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are many arguments on the best methods to instruct the professional counseling candidate on the ethical implications they are most likely to encounter. This study examined a professional counselor candidate's ability to apply the information in a course in professional and ethical practices and their ability to make ethical decisions based on the American Counseling Association's Code of Ethics

Crafting True Immigration Reform, Richard A. Boswell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Design Of A High-Speed Architecture For Stabilization Of Video Captured Under Non-Uniform Lighting Conditions, Ming Zhu Zhang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Video captured in shaky conditions may lead to vibrations. A robust algorithm to immobilize the video by compensating for the vibrations from physical settings of the camera is presented in this dissertation. A very high performance hardware architecture on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology is also developed for the implementation of the stabilization system. Stabilization of video sequences captured under non-uniform lighting conditions begins with a nonlinear enhancement process. This improves the visibility of the scene captured from physical sensing devices which have limited dynamic range. This physical limitation causes the saturated region of the image to shadow out …

Ex Aequo Et Bono: Demystifying An Ancient Concept, Leon Trakman

Chicago Journal of International Law

This Article argues that the concept has a valuable and emerging significance in modern law. It is ideally suited to resolving disputes between parties who are engaged in complex and long-term relationships or in emerging fields in which the law is either inadequately developed or unsuitable to resolve complex disputes. The Article evaluates the negative conceptualization of ex aequo et bono. It argues against the overly artificial divide between equitable decisions, which accord with law, and ex aequo et bono decisions, which by inference do not. Tracing the evolution of the concept historically through the Medieval Law Merchant to modern …

Maximizing Special Education Teacher Retention: Teacher's Perceptions Of Administrative Support In Pre K-12 Public Schools As Implications For Improvement, Dawn R. Showers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of special education teachers regarding administrative support provided by their building principals as related to teacher retention, gender, and disability category taught. Research over the course of the past decade indicates that teachers are more likely to leave the teaching profession when they fail to receive an adequate amount of administrative support. A survey questionnaire was used to collect 125 responses from special education teachers working in South Central Pennsylvania public schools. The population sample consisted of teachers from four special education teacher certification categories including classroom and itinerant staff. …

Towards A Hermeneutical Understanding Of The Listening Process, Molly Mae Stoltz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an alternative to the behaviorist understanding of the listening process inherent in the models developed by scholars such as Brownell, Wolvin and Coakley. Using mostly close-text analysis to examine the trends of the literature to date, this dissertation introduces the ideas of Gadamer on philosophical hermeneutics and Fuimara on the connections between listening and hermeneutics to the current discussion. This dissertation argues that the process actually starts when one makes the choice to listen. It distinguishes the choice to listen from the behaviorist concepts of willingness and attention and connects it to Gadamer's understanding of tradition and …

The Synthesis And Physicochemical Characterization Of New Monothiophosphate Materials, Nathan Takas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation focuses on the chemistry of materials incorporating the monothiophosphate anion. The monothiophosphate anion is a member of the oxythiophosphates, a family of compounds in which phosphorus is bound to both oxygen and sulfur. This chemical characteristic places the metal oxythiophosphates between the well known families of the metal phosphates and thiophosphates. While both the metal phosphates and thiophosphates have been reported numerous times in the literature, the oxythiophosphates are rare, with only 29 compounds reported prior to this dissertation. Three new monothiophosphate materials are presented in this work, as well a new polymorph of a previously known …

Transatlantic Acts: Nation, Self-Narration, And Celebrity In Victorian And Modernist Women's Autobiography, Kristianne Kalata Vaccaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines select Victorian and Modernist women writers' autobiographical narratives with attention to how the presence of transatlantic travel' bodily and textual, between Europe and America' links private processes of self-narration to public critiques of nation-specific systems, customs, and traditions. Exploring how these writers' audience-aware narratives reflect a kind of dual (body/text) performance at home and/or abroad, this project complicates traditional notions of women's autobiography as private and apolitical. I argue that autobiographical texts by Harriet Martineau, Fanny Kemble, Gertrude Stein, and Sylvia Townsend Warner manipulate their authors' celebrity status and relish the presence of their transatlantic public, shrewdly …

The Effects Of The Toyota Production System On Student Academic Performance, Danny Ray Webb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Can schools use relevant data to enhance student test scores and teacher efficacy by using the Toyota Production System model? Components of this study evaluated fifth-grade student math Pennsylvania System of School Assessment scores, 4Sight Benchmark Assessment scores, and changes in teacher efficacy, as indicated by the Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale. The independent variables used to stimulate change are the Toyota Production System design for instruction and teacher training using Toyota Production System principles. Results did not indicate significant statistical changes in the Toyota Production System group's Pennsylvania Systems of School Assessment scores, or 4Sight scores, as compared to …

The Relationships Among Age, Physical Activity, And Working Memory, Ellen M. Carpenter

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

As our population ages, determining exogenous factors that may offset cognitive decline become increasingly important. The primary goal of the present study was to determine whether older individuals who engage in regular physical activity demonstrate superior working memory performance relative to older sedentary individuals. Forty young (20 active, 20 sedentary) and forty older (20 active, 20 sedentary) individuals engaged in cognitive measures of information processing speed, inhibitory function, and verbal and visuospatial working memory. Age differences in recall were found for verbal and visuospatial span tasks, as well as for recall reaction time on verbal and visuospatial n-back tasks, and …

Hypersonic Boundary Layer Receptivity To Acoustic Disturbances Over Cones, Kursat Kara

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The receptivity mechanisms of hypersonic boundary layers to free stream acoustic disturbances are studied using both linear stability theory (LST) and direct numerical simulations (DNS). A computational code is developed for numerical simulation of steady and unsteady hypersonic flow over cones by combining a fifth-order weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme with third-order total-variation-diminishing (TVD) Runge-Kutta method. Hypersonic boundary layer receptivity to free-stream acoustic disturbances in slow and fast modes over 5-degree, half-angle blunt cones and wedges are numerically investigated. The free-stream Mach number is 6.0, and the unit Reynolds number is 7.8×106/ft. Both the steady and unsteady solutions are obtained …

The Relationship Between Rural Middle School Student Mathematics Achievement And Classroom Sense Of Community, John E. Donlan

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

This study addressed the need for more information about academic growth and achievement in mathematics, and how it relates to sense of community in middle school settings. This was accomplished by applying the Classroom and School Community Inventory (CSCI) construct (Rovai, Wighting, & Lucking, 2004) to all three middle schools in one rural county. The CSCI was utilized to measure sense of community in mathematics classes to determine if differences existed between grades six, seven, and eight, including gender subgroups, among the three middle schools in the same rural county. This study examined academic growth in the subject of mathematics …

Appreciating Mandatory Rules: A Reply To Critics, Scott Dodson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Neuroethics Of Neuromarketing, Emily Murphy, Judy Iles, Peter B. Reiner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Signature Identification In The Light Of Science And Experience, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Darwinist View Of The Living Constitution, Scott Dodson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Anecdotal Forensics, Phrenology, And Other Abject Lessons From The History Of Science, David L. Faigman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.