Digital Commons Network^™

Mechanics Of Dump Truck Vibrations In High-Impact Shovel Loading Operations, Nassib Aouad

Doctoral Dissertations

"The deployment of large machinery for low cost, bulk surface mine production operations has resulted in high-impact shovel loading operations (HISLO). In extreme cases, shovels load large dump trucks with 100-ton (or more) passes generating high-impact forces under gravity. HISLO generates high-frequency shockwaves that cause severe truck vibrations exposing operators to whole body vibrations (WBV). This WBV levels may exceed the recommended International Standards Organization (ISO) limits resulting in longterm lower-back disorders and other health problems. There is a need for fundamental and applied research to determine HISLO vibration levels for heavy mining machinery, their comparisons to ISO 2631 limits …

Perspectives Of Change: Municipal Park And Recreation Directors Perceptions Of The Importance Of Specified Organizational Goals 1983–2008, Daniel Archie Wheeler

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study examines specified goals park and recreation directors have previously determined are important for their organizations, and how those goals rank in importance in their present estimations, and how those goals rank in future importance. It compares a similar study of goals from 1983, and reports on changes in levels of importance from 1983 to 2008.

Directors' perceptions of goal importance of 2008 present levels and 2008 future levels were determined to be significantly different in 23 of 26 cases. Goals were grouped in four categories, (a) management/adaptation,/positional, having to do with management tasks, (b) groups served, those targeted …

Does Content Knowledge Matter In Scoring Teacher Work Samples?: A Study Of Rater Differences, Yana A. Cornish

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The study examines the role of rater characteristics in the assessment of teacher practice as presented in Renaissance Teacher Work Samples (RTWS). The study analyzed ratings of 10 teacher work samples submitted by teacher candidates at the University of Northern Iowa between Fall 2000 and Spring 2004. These teacher work samples, created in the area of Spanish language learning at 7-11 grade levels, were analyzed to determine the impact of content expertise, amount of teaching experience, and previous RTWS rating experience on reviewer's ratings. Three study questions form the foundation for the investigation:

(1) Is there a significant difference between …

A Journey Of Advising: Experiences Of Doctoral International Students And Faculty Advisors In The College Of Education At A Midwestern University, Madalina Florentina Tincu

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In the last five decades, higher education in the United States has faced a large influx of international students (Institute of International Education, 2004). However, a review of selected literature showed a paucity of research on faculty advising graduate international students. The literature pointed out that not all institutions were prepared to work with the international student population (Adrian-Taylor, Noels, & Tischler, 2007; Khabiri, 1985; Seeger, 1993) and that further investigation was needed in the area of faculty advising related to international students (Adrian-Taylor, et al.; Trice, 2003). Therefore, this study focused on the following research question: How do selected …

Now Have We Gotten It Right?: Exploring The Special Education Referral Process, Janine Sue Wahl

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This qualitative inquiry explored the special education referral process as understood and implemented by two first grade teachers in a rural school. Both were interviewed and their classes observed; team meetings about their referrals were attended and recorded. The results of these observations were examined through the beliefs and assumptions about teaching and learning by the two teachers.

Each teacher referred two students into the process during this study, but none of the four students was found eligible for special education services during first grade. Through a cross-case analysis of the teachers and these students, distinct differences and commonalities were …

Disability And Difference: Adolescents' Interpretations Based On Television Viewing, Paula Anne Schmidt

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study was conducted in order to decipher adolescent interpretations of disability that were portrayed on television. Employing qualitative methodology and methods, I conducted focus groups with adolescents during which they viewed television programs containing portrayals of characters with disabilities, or otherwise defining differences. The sixth grade participants freely shared their perspectives of the programs and characters in addition to their thoughts about the nature of difference in general.

Although I originally intended to interpret adolescents' reactions toward characters with disabilities, I found that it was not only characters with disabilities that they viewed in a judgmental manner. As the …

The Reflexivity Of Pain And Privilege: An Autoethnography Of (Mestizo) Identity And Other Mestizo Voices, Ellis Hurd

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Approximately 20 million Latinos living in the United States identify as Mestizos. A Mestizo is a person of mixed heritage. Almost half of these Mestizos racially or culturally identify as White, while the other half identify as Hispanic or racially mixed. These racial and cultural identifications have vast effects on educational performance: those identifying themselves as Hispanic or mixed experience lower academic achievement whereas those identifying as White do not. Many communities have experienced an influx of Mestizo-Latinos, but are ill prepared for the educational challenges due to the language and cultural differences Mestizos bring. This researcher himself has experienced …

Civil Wrongs, Louise Cainkar

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

The Bush administration promised not to "single out" Arabs and Muslims with measures, but in practice it did exactly that. These measures signaled to and non-citizens alike, that American legal protections did not really apply little in the way of fighting

Control, Counter-Examples, And Reasons-Reluctance, Nicolas Michaud

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work considers the soundness of Henry Frankfurt's argument that the principle of alternative possibilities is false and the implications of his argument for holding agents responsible in a causally determined universe. Frankfurt does seem to be pointing clearly to the fact that many of us do continue to hold agents responsible despite a lack of alternative possibilities. What Frankfurt may be lacking is an adequate account of control which is taken up by John Martin Fischer. What Fischer presents us with is the possibility that the reason why we continue to hold Jones responsible is because of the kind …

Substance Use And Barriers To Treatment Across Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders And Asian Americans, Lauren Michelle Levine

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that Asian Americans have lower rates of substance abuse treatment utilization than Caucasians. However, investigators have recently begun to separate Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders (NH/PI) from Asian Americans. Thus, it remains unclear whether disparities in barriers to treatment utilization differ across NH/Pis and Asian Americans. Data (N = 43,093) from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), a large, nationally representative survey was used in this study. A chi-square analysis examined whether disparities in barriers and utilization differed between NH/Pis (n = 300) and Asian Americans (n = 1,334). We found that NH/Pis who thought …

Parenting In Filipino Transnational Families, Amethyst Reyes Taylor

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study analyzed the experience of parenting within Filipino Overseas families as perceived by adult children. The impact of overseas workers is invaluable to the Philippine economy. The current study explored the dimensions of having a parent, mother or father, who is an overseas worker, acknowledging that there are clear challenges of parenting children with the barriers of geographical distance. International long distance telephone interviews were conducted with adult children of Filipino overseas workers. Results from consensual qualitative research analysis (C. E. Hill et al., 2005; C. E. Hill, B. J. Thompson, & E. N. Williams, 1997) indicated two …

The Significance Of Trust For Ethics Critical And Applied: A Critical Account Of Watsuji's Metaethics, Sean Patrick Smith

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Watsuji Tetsuro's philosophy in the early 20th Century presented a view of ethics that was markedly different from the more common theories of the Western philosophical tradition. He viewed ethics as a natural outgrowth of our essential nature as human beings. By investigating what it means to be human, Watsuji argued, one could develop a stronger understanding of our reasons and methods for being ethical. One of his ideas involved trust's importance and inevitability in our ethical palette. Developed by Watsuji, this connection between trust and our nature as human beings was interesting.

It is my claim that how we …

Tests For Correlation On Bivariate Nonnormal Distributions, Louanne Margaret Beversdorf

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many samples in the real world are very small in size and often do not follow a normal distribution. Existing tests for correlation have restrictions on the distribution of data and sample sizes, therefore the current tests cannot be used in some real world situations.

In this thesis, two tests are considered to test hypotheses about the population correlation coefficient. The tests are based on statistics transformed by a saddlepoint approximation and by Fisher's Z-transformation. The tests are conducted on small samples of bivariate nonnormal data and found to perfom well.

Simulations were run in order to compare the type …

Routing Protocol Performance Evaluation For Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, Pedro A. Lopez-Fernandez

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently, MANETs are a very active area of research, due to their great potential to provide networking capabilities when it is not feasible to have a fixed infrastructure in place, or to provide a complement to the existing infrastructure. Routing in this kind of network is much more challenging than in conventional networks, due to its mobile nature and limited power and hardware resources.

The most practical way to conduct routing studies of MANETs is by means of simulators such as GloMoSim. GloMoSim was utilized in this research to investigate various performance statistics and draw comparisons among different MANET routing …

Investigation Of Social Connectedness In A College Population And Its Relationship To Perceived Stress And Health Symptoms, Sanya Sholetta Whittaker

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated factors related to social connectedness and social support in a college population. Participants in the study were 486 volunteer students at the University of North Florida. All data were collected through a world wide web surveying program that allowed each participant to complete surveys on computers from any location. The surveys administered were the Social Connectedness Scale, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), the Perceived Stress Scale 10, the Patient Health Questionnaire 15 (PHQ15), and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale- Revised (CESD-R) along with a demographics questionnaire. Results show that participants in …

Factors Associated With Successful Hispanic Students In Higher Education, Ana G. Linares

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Hispanic population in the United States already constitutes the fastest growing minority group in the United States and by the year 2050 this group will constitute 24% of the total population and one fourth of the national workforce. Because this is a very young population whose median age is 27.2 years old, the education of this group is pivotal to the future of this nation. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived importance of personal and external factors found in the literature as significant in Hispanic college success for a sample of 137 Hispanic college seniors …

Enterprise Resource Planning In Higher Education: A Comparative Case Study, Aaron Charles Marterer

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Case study research on enterprise systems in higher education organizations has shown that the challenges associated with implementing enterprise systems in higher education occur when unique organizational characteristics found in universities do not align with the standard characteristics built into the software programs. Based on such findings, the purpose of this study was to further explore the interaction between higher education organizations and enterprise systems during Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations in order to gain insight into the effects of ERP implementations in higher education. Through the theoretical lens of actor-network theory, the purposes of this comparative case study at …

The Problem Of Religious Learning, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

The problem of religious learning is that religion-including the teaching about religion-must be separated from liberal public education, but that the two cannot be entirely separated if the aims of liberal public education are to be realized. It is a problem that has gone largely unexamined by courts, constitutional scholars, and other legal theorists. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has offered a few terse statements about the permissibility of teaching about religion in its Establishment Clause jurisprudence, and scholars frequently urge policies for or against such controversial subjects as Intelligent Design or graduation prayers, insuffi- cient attention has been paid …

Generalization Of The Hybrid Logistic Model For More Than One Rare Risk Factor, Mamunur Rashid

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Logistic models are commonly used to analyze case-control data. For case-control studies, if there tends be rare disease in the control group with the risk factors, then the estimation procedure using logistic regression model for such factors becomes difficult. To overcome such situation, Chen et. al. (2003) proposed a hybrid logistic model in which they first estimate the problematic risk factor assuming that proportions having disease of such risk factor are treated equal for all permissible strata of the other risk factors, and then the residual of the risk factors are modeled by using logistic regression model. The purpose of …

The American Presidency, The 2008 Election, And The Constitution's Natural Born Citizenship Proviso, Sarah Helene Duggin, Mary Beth Collins

Scholarly Articles

The following discussion describes the historical context of the natural born citizenship clause; explores some of the issues the proviso raises in contemporary American society, particularly its impact on Senator McCain and future presidential hopefuls; and offers a brief reflection on why the United States needs to amend Article II to eliminate natural born citizenship as a qualification for the presidency and vice presidency.

Does Motor Skill Level Affect Physical Activity-Related Self-Efficacy And Enjoyment In Third Grade Students?, Rachel Kautzky-Braley

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Childhood obesity has nearly tripled in the past three decades. Because of these alarming numbers, government health officials are highly concerned with causes of this trend. It has been shown that poor diet, certain behaviors such as television viewing, and a lack of physical activity are some of the causes of this increase. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between self-efficacy and enjoyment and a child's motor skill level. The study participants included 80 third grade students (43 girls and 37 boys). The sample was split into an intervention group (n=43) and a control group (n=37). …

The Heart Rate Response Of 5th Grade Students To Various Physical Education Activities, Mark Jungmann

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In an effort to make future curricular choices, the primary purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of participation in various activities on 5th grade students' heart rates. It was hypothesized that different activities would influence students' mean heart rates and time in target heart rate zone (THRZ) differently. Heart rate measurements were obtained through the use of Polar E600 heart rate monitors (HRM) during the 2006-2007 school year at Grundy Center, Iowa Elementary School. The data from the heart rate monitors were downloaded into Polar PE Manager Software to gather necessary information for this study. Subjects of …

Season Long Evaluation Of Relationships Between Several Variables And Hitting Efficiency In Four Division I Volleyball Players, Patricia Raelyn Dietz

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Throughout a collegiate volleyball season game performance fluctuates game to game and even match to match. The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between several anthropometric and independent variables and hitting efficiency in four Division I athletes. Subjects were four female Division I volleyball players who participate in a hitting position. Subjects were tested weekly on vertical jump approach height (VJ), reactive strength index (RSI) using an AMTI force plate, BM (BM), and body composition (BF%). Pearson product moment correlations showed no significant correlations between hitting efficiency and each of the indpendent [sic] variables for each individual or …

Mother-Daughter Communication And Media Influence On Self-Esteem And Body Image, Tori Austin

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Societal norms based on media venues influence the perception young females have of themselves; however, some literature indicates the mother daughter relationship can help minimize the possible negative effects. Young women are more susceptible to desire distorted media images of glamorous and thin women. As they make social comparisons with mediated images of womanhood, they may become disappointed in their own body image and possess lower self-esteem. The previous research has gaps when discussing mother daughter relationships, media's influence, and the impact on adolescent girls' self-esteem and body image. To determine predictors to young women's self-esteem and body image, 119 …

Corpulent Counter-Publics: Radical Cheerleading And Resignification Of The Fat Body, Emily Dianne Cram

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This thesis investigates the power of language, discourse, and symbols in the dominant construction of corpulence, and how it simultaneously constricts subjectivity and offers avenues of resistance and revolt. I focus my analysis on the public protest actions of San Francisco's radical cheerleading troupe The Bod Squad. I argue that The Bod Squad's protest constitutes a counter-public sphere in its rhetorical functions of positive self-representation and public confrontation. Through their protest actions, The Bod Squad stretches dominant ideologies of corpulence to create discursive space for alternative articulations of identities, interests, and needs. This thesis challenges traditional counter-public sphere theory and …

Academic Success: A Qualitative Case Study Of Student Perspectives, Heather Marie Bentley

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Over the past eight years of teaching high school, I have noticed more and more high school students seem to be apathetic about their school work and academic success. I wanted to explore why students appeared to care less about their academic success. After consulting the literature, I realized the student voice was missing from most of the current studies; therefore, I wanted my qualitative study to focus on student views. In order to do so, I created two surveys: one for students and another for teachers, and I also interviewed a small sample of students after completion of the …

Virtual Prototyping With Surface Reconstruction And Freeform Geometric Modeling Using Level-Set Method, Weihan Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

"More and more products with complex geometries are being designed and manufactured by computer aided design (CAD) and rapid prototyping (RP) technologies. Freeform surface is a geometrical feature widely used in modern products like car bodies, airfoils and turbine blades as well as in aesthetic artifacts. How to efficiently design and generate digital prototypes with freeform surfaces is an important issue in CAD. This paper presents the development of a Virtual Sculpting system and addresses the issues of surface reconstruction from dexel data structures and freeform geometric modeling using the level-set method from distance field structure. Our virtual sculpting method …

Characterization And Synthesis Of Nanoscale Materials, Jinfeng Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation focuses on the systematic study of techniques for characterization and synthesis of nanoscale materials. We have achieved several goals. Firstly, high number density uniform zinc oxide nanostructure growth has been achieved using thermal evaporation, through control of experimental parameters that include source material temperature, substrate temperature, substrate material, gas flow rate, and choice of catalyst. Aligned zinc oxide nanowires, randomly oriented zinc oxide nanowires, zinc oxide container-shaped structures, and zinc oxide nanobelts have been synthesized with high yield. Secondly, using a one parameter family of lattice fringe geometry curves, we show how to examine the epitaxial relationship between …

Design And Evaluation Of A Virtual Reality Training System For New Underground Rockbolters, David Nutakor

Doctoral Dissertations

"The need for development of better training techniques for underground rock bolters is signified by the fact that a large number of experienced miners (Baby Boomers) will be retiring soon. This means that there will be very little interface time between the new miners and the experienced miners, which could have been used for training the new inexperienced miners. A new generation of workers (Nexters), who have grown up with computers and video games will replace the Baby Boomers, and the most efficient way to introduce them to the safety and health issues of the mining industry is to use …

Synthesis And Characterization Of New Luminescent Late Transition Metal Complexes Containing The Tridentate 1,3-Di(N-Pyrazolyl)-4,6-Dimethyl Benzene Ligand, Brian Christopher Gruver

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The tridentate 1,3-di(N-pyrazolyl) benzene L 1 was synthesized from dibromobenzene and pyrazole. When reacted with K2PtC14 and IrCl3 the asymmetric complexes (µ-Cl)2(PtL1 )2 and (µ-Cl)2[lr L12]2 were obtained. The tridentate l ,3- dimethyl-4,6-(di-N-pyrazolyl) benzene ligand L2 , was synthesized from di-bromo-mxylene and pyrazole. The ligand was reacted with K2PtC14 to give L2 PtCl. Further reaction with phenylacetylene led to the air sensitive acetylide complex L2 PtC=C(C6H5). L2 PtCl could also be reacted with AgOTf in acetonitrile to give [L2 PtN=CCH3] OTf. Reaction with other late transition metals led to the di-chloro bridged iridium dimer (µ-Cl)2[L 2IrCl]2 and the square planar …