Digital Commons Network^™

A Centennial Celebration, December Commencement 2008, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Ngasp - The Nematode Genome Annotation Assessment Project, Avril Coghlan, Tristan J. Fiedler, Sheldon J. Mckay, Paul R. Flicek, Todd W. Harris, Darin Blasiar, Lincoln D. Stein

Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Faculty Publications

While the C. elegans genome is extensively annotated, relatively little information is available for other Caenorhabditis species. The nematode genome annotation assessment project (nGASP) was launched to objectively assess the accuracy of protein-coding gene prediction software in C. elegans, and to apply this knowledge to the annotation of the genomes of four additional Caenorhabditis species and other nematodes. Seventeen groups worldwide participated in nGASP, and submitted 47 prediction sets across 10 Mb of the C. elegans genome. Predictions were compared to reference gene sets consisting of confirmed or manually curated gene models from WormBase. Results: The most accurate gene-finders were …

Winter Commencement: December 19, 2008, University Of North Dakota

UND Commencement Programs

UND Winter Commencement program from December 19, 2008.

12-19-2008 Tickets For Comedian Chelsea Handler Go On Sale January 7th, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

THE BARK ARCHIVE 2008

Tickets for comedian Chelsea Handler’s performance at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford go on sale Wednesday, January 7.

Judd V. State Respondent's Brief Dckt. 34408

Idaho Supreme Court Records & Briefs, All

No abstract provided.

Pepperbox - December 19, 2008, Student Newspaper Of Arcata High School

The Pepperbox

Volume 81, Number 2

Reducing The Public Health Impact Of Bovine Tuberculosis By Controlling Disease Transmission Between Cattle And White-Tailed Deer In Northwestern Minnesota, Barbara Knust

Michigan Bovine Tuberculosis Bibliography and Database

Bovine tuberculosis, caused by infection with Mycobacterium bovis, is a re-emerging zoonotic disease. It has staged a comeback by establishing infections in wildlife and cattle, creating the potential for human disease in locations where it was thought to be under control. In northwestern Minnesota, infected cattle and white-tailed deer were first discovered in 2005. A major bovine tuberculosis eradication campaign is underway in the state, with multiple efforts employed to control M. bovis infection in both cattle and deer populations. In order to effectively eradicate bovine tuberculosis in Minnesota, there is a need for better understanding of the …

Florida Sentinel Bulletin, December 19, 2008, Gwen Hayes

Florida Sentinel Bulletin Collection

The December 19, 2008, issue of the Florida Sentinel Bulletin.

Quality In Education: Perspectives Regarding Baldrige-Based Practices And Instructional Leadership In Middle Schools, Felicia Maria Vaughn Coleman

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

School systems nationwide confront declines in the number of principal applicants while facing increasing student accountability concerns. The idiosyncrasies of adolescent development and the social nature of the educational environment reflect the declines in applicants and impact student accountability. Using a three-tiered case study, the present research inquiry identified perspectives of superintendents, middle school principals, and middle school teachers regarding Baldrige-based practices in the four Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award-winning school districts in the United States. This study's data illuminated how a non-prescriptive framework such as the Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) combined with Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence …

Spring Break: The Economic, Socio-Cultural And Public Governance Impacts Of College Students On Spring Break Host Locations, John Laurie

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Spring Break, which has been transformed from a rather mild mid-winter vacation to a cultural rite over the past seventy-years, allows students to bring their values en masse to the host locations they visit. While only visiting these locales for a short time, college students nonetheless significantly impact the economic, public governance and socio-cultural processes of their Spring Break host locations. This dissertation explores the process of how and why students choose these locations and the impacts that occur as a result. A quantitative approach is used to determine the level of impact on a host location's economic, socio-cultural and …

Reconstructing Textual File Fragments Using Unsupervised Machine Learning Techniques, Brian Roux

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This work is an investigation into reconstructing fragmented ASCII files based on content analysis motivated by a desire to demonstrate machine learning's applicability to Digital Forensics. Using a categorized corpus of Usenet, Bulletin Board Systems, and other assorted documents a series of experiments are conducted using machine learning techniques to train classifiers which are able to identify fragments belonging to the same original file. The primary machine learning method used is the Support Vector Machine with a variety of feature extractions to train from. Additional work is done in training committees of SVMs to boost the classification power over the …

Opposing Viewpoints For Addressing Public Housing In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Harry Richard Yelton Iii

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The decision to close and never reopen four public housing projects in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was a highly contentious issue for people throughout the city and even the nation. This thesis investigates the tensions between those who supported and opposed public housing demolition by highlighting the work and history of two people on either side of the debate, Richard Baron and Bill Quigley. This study of contemporary housing policy draws on the history of public housing in America, and refers to Stacy Seicshnaydre.s assertion that public housing policy has been a consistent struggle between "Taking the Housing Now" …

Assessment Of Ambient Air Particulate Matter In The New Orleans Historic District , Federico Portillo

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Particulate matter in the ambient air of down-town New Orleans, LA, is not currently recorded by any government, state, or private organization. This research quantified particulate matter (PM) and its metal concentration in ambient air of the New Orleans Historic District. Both, PM10 (PM less than 10 micron in size) and PM2.5 (PM less than 2.5 micron in size) were quantified by gravimetric analysis using an Andersen Dichotomous Sampler (Series 240). Posterior to gravimetric analysis, the filters were analyzed with a fluorescent test method using an Innov-X Portable XRF Analyzer (Model A-6500). This study demonstrated that the ambient air of …

The Making And Analysis Of For Justin, Adam Schwartz

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This paper thoroughly examines the production of the thesis film, For Justin. Each area of the film's production is discussed and analyzed, including the writing, directing, production design, cinematography, editing, sound, and workflow. My decisions in these areas will be discussed at length and ultimately the final film will be analyzed in order to determine whether I achieved my goal of challenging myself to create a heartfelt, touching film with high production values for my twin brother, Justin.

Belgium - 2008 Article Iv Consultations: Concluding Statement Of The Mission, International Monetary Fund (Imf)

Documents

No abstract provided.

Indicative Summary Of Terms For [Chrysler] Secured Term Loan Facility, U. S. Department Of The Treasury

Documents

No abstract provided.

Term Sheet: Soffin, Commerzbank Ag

Documents

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Borehole Log Signature For Oceanic Anoxic Events And Its Application To The Gulf Of Mexico, Asani Brewton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Oceanic anoxic events (OAEs) are periods in Earth's history when oceans were depleted in dissolved oxygen and characterized by deposition of organic-rich sediments. The Oceanic Drilling Program (ODP) has drilled through OAEs in a number of areas worldwide, collecting core and borehole log data. This project attempts to identify a characteristic signature from known ODP OAE sections using these data and to apply the signature to identify OAE intervals in Gulf of Mexico wells where cores are lacking. Additionally, pseudo density curves were generated from ODP logs and compared to bulk density logs to determine if the deviation between the …

Beyond Katrina, Designing A Unique Charter School In New Orleans: Community, Pedagogy, Governance, Finance, And Bureaucracy, Patricia Glaser

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This study is a qualitative, autoethnographic study documenting the process of writing and submitting a charter school application in Post-Katrina New Orleans. The focus of the study is my professional journey to this point, and the journey the charter team. The school's mission and curriculum is unique and centered on special needs students who are "at-risk" for learning due to language and learning differences. Particular aspects of curriculum and instruction, climate and culture, professional development, student achievement goals, administration, and operational issues were developed by this team. The aim of the study is for this investigation to contribute to the …

The Impact Of Growth Management Policies On Urban Form: Evidence From U.S. Metropolitan Areas With Growth Management Policies, Muhammed Islam

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The contemporary urban development pattern in the United States is characterized by land consumptive nature of development, such as a sprawled development pattern. Out of concern that the social and environmental costs of this development pattern outweigh their benefits, cities, counties and states have created a wide range of policy instruments designed to manage urban growth and to protect open spaces from development. The present research deals with such strategies in three study areas namely Portland Metropolitan Area, OR; Montgomery County, MD; and Orange County, FL in order to find out if growth management strategies have been able to reduce …

Abrupt Climate Change And Storm Surge Impacts In Coastal Louisiana In 2050, Jay Ratcliff

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The most critical hazards impacting the world today are the affects of climate change and global warming. Scientists have been studying the Earth's climate for centuries and have come to agreement that our climate is changing, and has changed, many times abruptly over the history of our planet. This research focuses on the impacts of global warming related to increased hurricane intensities and their surge responses along the coast of the State of Louisiana. Surge responses are quantified for storms that could potentially occur under present climate but 50 years into the future on a coast subjected to current erosion …

The Alluring And Manipulative "Spider Women" Of The Silver Screen: Femmes Fatales Of The Hard-Boiled Fiction, Classic Noir And Contemporary Noir Periods, Gretchen Brinker

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis delves into three categories of femmes fatales: the ones of hard-boiled fiction/classic noir and contemporary noir. Moreover, it generates several comparisons among those aforementioned categories, and extrapolates on them. Third wave feminism and how it draws relevance/is significant to the Bound and The Last Seduction films is additionally explored in this thesis. This thesis will discuss the similarities of the femmes fatales of the '30s/1940s-50s and contemporary noir (1980s-90s), while delving into differences between them.

Cooperative Jamming In Wireless Networks - Turning Attacks Into Privacy Protection, Jingqi Wu

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Generally, collisions between packets are undesired in wireless networks. We design this scheme, Cooperative Jamming in Wireless Networks (CJWN), to make use of collision to protect secret DATA packets from being sniffed by a nearby eavesdropper. We are intending to greatly increase the Packet Error Rate (PER) at the eavesdropper when the PER at the receiver is maintained at an acceptable level. This scheme is not intended to completely take the place of various encryption/decryption schemes which are working based on successfully received packets. Adding CJWN to the popular CSMA/CA adopted in IEEE 802.11 will add more security even the …

Essays In Corporate Governance: Issues And Evidence From Equity Carve-Outs, Andrew Mulindwa Kayanga

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the relation between corporate governance and firm performance. The theme of this study is that the widely documented long-term underperformance in equity carve-outs can be partly explained by weak corporate governance. The first essay presented in Chapter 2 explores the effect of shareholder-rights protection on the performance of a sample of firms that initiated a carve-out during the period 1983-2004. Using the Gompers, Ishii, and Metrick (2003) index and Bebchuk, Cohen, and Ferrell (2004) entrenchment index, as proxies for the quality of shareholder-rights protection, I provide evidence that firms with better shareholder rights …

The Capacity Of The Black Protestant Church To Provide Social Ministry In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Marshall Truehill Jr.

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This research is an ethnography which investigates the effects of Hurricane Katrina upon the capacity of African American Protestant churches in New Orleans to provide spiritual and social ministry to the city's underprivileged. More than three years after Hurricane Katrina unleashed its fury upon the city, fifty per cent of the churches remain as the hurricane left them. Pre-Katrina, fifty per cent of the population lived at or below the poverty line and depended upon faith-based programs as part of their support network and ladder toward selfsufficiency. Because of the disaster, there was substantive loss of parishioners, financial resources, and …

Securely Consume Web Services Using Php, Sonny Tran-Hai Vo

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor language (PHP) has evolved to a sophisticated mainstream programming language for rapid development of significant Web applications at major sites including Facebook.com, Wikipedia.org and Yahoo.com. Leading software vendors such as Oracle and IBM are rushing in providing tools that bridge their products to PHP. However, we have observed a gap in facilitating PHP to utilize Web services efficiently. This thesis reports our efforts in design and implementation of PHP applications that consume Web services. In doing so, I have proposed a framework facilitating PHP programs to utilize Web services with high performance capability. In addition, a …

Storm Water Management Using A High Density Rainfall Network Along With Long Term Records, Siamak N. Mokhtarnejad

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The United States Weather Bureau had published Technical Paper No. 40 (TP-40) in 1961 which provides a rainfall atlas for the United States. These rainfall frequencies have been used by engineers throughout the United States including Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. Rainfall from Audubon and the New Orleans International Airport rain gauge stations were used with the Log Pearson Method to provide rainfall frequency for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. The results from the frequency rainfall that were developed for this research along with the current Jefferson Parish design storm rainfall were applied to a typical urban development to evaluate the extent of flooding.

Indicative Summary Of Terms For Secured Term Loan Facility (Gm), General Motors Company, United States: Department Of The Treasury

Documents

U.S. Auto Industry Bailout

Parental Hesitation As A Factor In Delayed Childhood Immunization, Karlen E. (Beth) Luthy, Renea L. Beckstrand, Neil E. Peterson

Faculty Publications

Introduction: One reason for lower immunization rates is that some parents hesitate to have their children immunized. A hesitancy questionnaire was developed to identify reasons parents hesitate in having their children immunized.

Methods: The hesitancy questionnaire was distributed from local pediatric and family practice offices and from the area's county health department. To be eligible, participants needed to be present in the clinic with a child needing a minimum of one immunization that was at least 6 months overdue.

Results: When questioned why their child was overdue for immunizations, the most common response was that participants were confused about the …

Methylation-Sensitive Linking Libraries Enhance Gene-Enriched Sequencing Of Complex Genomes And Map Dna Methylation Domains, William Nelson, Meizhong Luo, Jianxin Ma, Matt Estep, James Estill, Ruifeng He, Jayson Talag, Nicholas Sisneros, David Kudrna, Hyeran Kim, Jetty Ss Ammiraju, Kristi Collura, Arvind K. Bharti, Joachim Messing, Rod A. Wing, Phillip Sanmiguel, Jeffrey L. Bennetzen, Carol Soderlund

Department of Horticulture & Landscape Architecture Faculty Publications

Background

Many plant genomes are resistant to whole-genome assembly due to an abundance of repetitive sequence, leading to the development of gene-rich sequencing techniques. Two such techniques are hypomethylated partial restriction (HMPR) and methylation spanning linker libraries (MSLL). These libraries differ from other gene-rich datasets in having larger insert sizes, and the MSLL clones are designed to provide reads localized to "epigenetic boundaries" where methylation begins or ends.

Results

A large-scale study in maize generated 40,299 HMPR sequences and 80,723 MSLL sequences, including MSLL clones exceeding 100 kb. The paired end reads of MSLL and HMPR clones were shown to …