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Ipulse: December 2008, Lynn University

Student Newspapers

Issues:

• December 1, 2008
• December 2, 2008
• December 3, 2008
• December 4, 2008
• December 5, 2008
• December 8, 2008
• December 9, 2008
• December 10, 2008
• December 11, 2008
• December 12, 2008
• December 13, 2008
• December 17, 2008

Morbidity Pattern Among Males Attending The Primary Care Clinics At A University Hospital In Central Saudi Arabia, Norah A. Al-Rowais, Yousef A. Al-Turki

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Does The Use Of Radiofrequency Ultrasonic Dissector In Tonsillectomy Have A Beneficial Effect Over The Use Of Laser?, Mustafa T. Adnan, Moataz M. Abdel-Fattah, Naeem K. Makhdoom, Atef A. El-Khouly

Saudi Medical Journal

OBJECTIVE: To compare the intra- and post- operative morbidities on the use of radiofrequency ultrasonic dissector (US) with the use of laser during tonsillectomy in the same patients. METHODS: A randomized comparative study was implemented where all patients underwent tonsillectomy at Al-Hada Armed Forces Hospital, Taif, and Aouhod Hospital, Al-Madinah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the period January 2000 to December 2005 were recruited for the study. Radiofrequency US was used in one side, and laser was used in the other side of the same patient. Intra- and post- operative blood losses, and duration of the operation, in addition to …

Maxillary Hyperplasia And Hyperostosis Cranialis. A Rare Manifestation Of Renal Osteodystrophy In A Patient With Hyperparathyroidism Secondary To Chronic Renal Failure., Abdulaziz A. Bakathir, Manjunath V. Margasahayam, Mohammed I. Al-Ismaily

Saudi Medical Journal

This case report describes a 21-year-old female patient with a complex medical condition of end-stage chronic renal failure and secondary hyperparathyroidism presenting with a history of gradual enlargement of the facial bones over a period of one year. The facial enlargement primarily involves the maxilla causing a bizarre facial and dental deformity. Based on the clinical, radiographic, and laboratory investigations the facial deformity was confirmed as a rare manifestation of renal osteodystrophy presenting as maxillary hyperplasia and hyperostosis cranialis.

Lipoid Proteinosis. A Report Of 2 Siblings And A Brief Review Of The Literature., Khalid M. Al-Aboud, Sahar Al-Natour

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Judith Schachter

Pacific Studies

An introduction article to this special issue of the Pacific Studies journal focused on adoption and fosterage.

Adopting Change: Relational Flexibility As Vice And Virtue On Mota Island, Vanuatu, Thorgeir Storesund Kolshus

Pacific Studies

On the island of Mota in the Banks Islands, children and adults frequently have their matrilineal and even matrimoiety affiliation, and consequently kin relations, altered and multiplied through various forms of adoption. Most of the 850 Motese count themselves as belonging to several kin groups. This creates personalized kin inventories for each individual. Consequently, an element of choice concerning which relation to emphasize is intrinsic to the Motese kinship system. In this paper, some of the reasons and motivations for these choices are outlined. The traditional flexibility of social relations, with their associated transfer of rights and obligations, also proves …

Preface, Mac Marshall

Pacific Studies

This article is a preface to this special issue on fosterage and adoption.

Experiments And Models For The Thermal Response Of Railroad Tapered-Roller Bearings, Constantine Tarawneh, Kevin D. Cole, Brent Wilson, Fadi Alnaimat

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The need to understand and quantify the heat transfer paths within tapered-roller bearings is of great importance in the railroad industry since bearing cup temperature measurement is the primary tool utilized in the removal of distressed bearings from service. Experiments were performed to acquire temperature histories at several locations on a stationary bearing subjected to heat sources imbedded in two rollers. The experimental results were compared to zero- and first-order thermal models to estimate overall heat transfer coefficients from the bearing. The results presented here can be used to explain some of the mechanisms that lead to overheating of tapered-roller …

Monogenic Control Of Sex-Limited Colouration In The Honey Gourami, Trichogaster Chuna, Jack Frankel

Department of Biology Faculty Publications

Of the numerous subtropical and tropical freshwater speciesof  fish,  labyrinth  fish  are  among  the  most  varied  in  bodymarkings and colouration patterns. Four taxonomic families(Belontiidae, Anabantidae, Helostomatidae, and Osphrone-midae)  of  the  suborder  Anabantoidei  comprise  the  ‘tradi-tional’  labyrinth  fishes,  a  group  of  about  80  African  andSoutheast Asian species (Linke 1991).  These Anabantoidsare popular with aquarists due to their interesting reproduc-tive behaviours, with males of most species brooding eggs intheir mouths or in floating bubble nests (Vevers 1980; Linke1991; Axelrod and Vorderwinkler 1995; Mills 2000).  Theyhave also been the focus of genetic, environmental, and mor-phological studies (Sommer 1982; Gosline 1985; Klinkhardtet  al.  1995; …

Movements, Resource Selection, And Risk Analyses For Parasitic Disease In An Expanding Moose Population In The Northern Great Plains, James J. Maskey Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Little is known regarding moose ecology in North Dakota, and a decline in moose in northeastern North Dakota may be linked to parasites of white-tailed deer (Parelaphostrongylus tenuis and Fascioloides magna). I investigated the ecology of moose, including the potential effects of parasitic disease. I used global positioning system collars to estimate home ranges and habitat selection and collected fecal samples for diet estimates. I reviewed historical data and examined livers moose for evidence of F. magna infection. I examined 3730 white-tailed deer for P. tenuis and investigated whether prevalence had increased since 1991. I modeled the relationship …

Does Convergence Of Accounting Standards Lead To The Convergence Of Accounting Practices? A Study From China, Songlan Peng, Rasoul H. Tondkar, Joyce Van Der Van Der Laan Smith, David W. Harless

Accounting Faculty Publications

In this empirical study we examine whether China's efforts to converge domestic accounting standards with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) over the past 15 years have resulted in the successful convergence of Chinese listed firms. This study is unique in that we evaluate convergence of firms' accounting practices from three perspectives: (1) the level of compliance with Chinese GAAP and IFRS, (2) the consistency of accounting choices under Chinese GAAP and IFRS, and (3) identification of significant differences in the net incomes produced under Chinese GAAP and IFRS (earnings gap).

Using the 1999 and 2002 annual reports of 79 Chinese …

Awareness And Attitudes Regarding Music Therapy In Jakarta, Indonesia : A Survey Amongst College Students, Liana Hadi

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The purposes of this study are to ascertain the awareness, knowledge levels and the attitudes of college students towards music therapy in order to provide a perspective on the possible development of training and education in Indonesia. This study was completed by performing a random survey of seventy one college students, between the ages of 18-24 years old, over several local universities in Jakarta, Indonesia. The survey has 18 open-ended questions, which would require no more than 10 minutes for completion. The survey opens with some general questions about participants’ age, gender, the highest education and their major education. The …

Toeing, Blurring Or Crossing The Line? How Highly Regulated Organizations View Compliance And Innovation, Marilyn A. Hosea

Student Scholarship

Highly regulated government funded programs are often more rigidly scrutinized than corporate institutions—with rules, regulations and policies filling nearly every nook of nonprofit organizational life. A concern during this era of scarce financial resources and tight regulatory oversight is that the acceptance of public funds will impede the nonprofit’s ability to implement local innovations that build upon and support the expectations of a variety of key stakeholders (governing boards, service consumers, the public-at-large, and government/private funders). This paper examines ways in which federally funded nonprofit organizations continually strive to improve their organizational performance through innovation—employing practices that conceal, screen, or …

Gene Order Phylogeny Of The Genus Prochlorococcus, Haiwei Luo, Jian Shi, William Arndt, Jijun Tang, Robert Friedman

Faculty Publications

Background
Using gene order as a phylogenetic character has the potential to resolve previously unresolved species relationships. This character was used to resolve the evolutionary history within the genus Prochlorococcus, a group of marine cyanobacteria.

Methodology/Principal Findings
Orthologous gene sets and their genomic positions were identified from 12 species of Prochlorococcus and 1 outgroup species of Synechococcus. From this data, inversion and breakpoint distance-based phylogenetic trees were computed by GRAPPA and FastME. Statistical support of the resulting topology was obtained by application of a 50% jackknife resampling technique. The result was consistent and congruent with nucleotide sequence-based and gene-content based …

A Special-Purpose Architecture For Solving The Breakpoint Median Problem, Jason D. Bakos, Panormitis E. Elenis

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we describe the design for a co-processor for whole-genome phylogenetic reconstruction. Our current design performs a parallelized breakpoint median computation, which is an expensive component of the overall application. When implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), our hardware breakpoint median achieves a maximum speedup of 1005times over software. When the coprocessor is used to accelerate the entire reconstruction procedure, we achieve a maximum application speedup of 417times. The results in this paper suggest that FPGA-based acceleration is a promising approach for computationally expensive phylogenetic problems, in spite of the fact that the involved algorithms are based …

Culture Clash - How Socio-Technical Factors Contribute To Enterprise Information Systems Interoperability, Alan Fisk

Student Scholarship

Despite increasing need for interoperable enterprise-level information systems, achieving interoperability is persistently problematical. Our work highlights social factors as a major contributor to good design, development, and operating practices. The research was conducted at a technologically sophisticated Fortune 50 company where design artifacts suggested by the literature were found to be in place yet good interoperability between systems was not consistently achieved. The data suggest boundary spanners can facilitate interoperability by promoting shared meanings and mindsets that advance acculturation among cross-functional groups. Findings contrast with enterprise systems interoperability literature, which has focused mainly on technological factors to ensure good design …

Employee Volunteerism: Social Benefits Trump Altruism, Donna E. Teeague

Student Scholarship

With over 153 million U.S. citizens in the labor force but only about a quarter of them engaged in community volunteer work (Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, 2006), the workplace is clearly an under-tapped source of volunteer labor. As the need for volunteers accelerates and supply remains stagnant, it becomes imperative to understand how to recruit volunteers from the workplace. Interviews with twenty seven employees of six US corporations were conducted to probe how beliefs about outcomes and consequences of volunteerism, the influence of important social referent groups and self perceptions of relevant skills and …

Environmentally Benign Technologies And Financial Performance: Evidence From The Pulp And Paper Industry In Nigeria, Joseph Akinkugbe Adelegan

Student Scholarship

Addressing a paucity of research about industrial adoption of environmentally benign technologies in Africa and, more generally, in tropical developing countries, we examined the Nigerian pulp and paper industry as a case study. Qualitative interviews with twenty upper echelon executives representing five Nigerian firms challenge conventional expectations that energy intensive industries in developing markets operate amid highly pollution-intensive conditions, within weak or non-existent formal environmental regulatory frameworks, and with limited institutional capacity. Our findings suggest a strong positive relationship between cleaner technology use and corporate financial performance of African industrial firms. Our study also suggests the adoption of classical 'win-win' …

Ingos & Ngos: Work And Workarounds In Rwanda, Cheryl A. Baldwin

Student Scholarship

As the number of International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs) operating in developing countries have burgeoned in recent decades, tension between these mainly Western agencies and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has accelerated. This paper examines, from the perspectives of nonprofit executives in Rwanda, how underlying tensions affect the ability of INGOs and NGOs to advance critical social goals. Qualitative research reveals how and to what extent the work is influenced top down by INGO and/or bottom up by local NGO management mindsets and practices and how inventive "workaround" strategies help both organizations manage tensions that challenge individual goals and collective work.

Promises To Keep: Exploring Organizational Trust Repair From A Stakeholder Perspective, Rachel Y. Daniel

Student Scholarship

Organizational trust repair is a burgeoning field of inquiry, due in large part to the ethical and financial failures in U.S. corporations, churches, governments, media outlets, and nonprofit organizations. The subsequent financial, professional, and emotional damage to stakeholders has resulted in a crisis of trust in organizations and their leaders. We explore the trust repair process from a stakeholder's perspective in a qualitative study of executives, employees, and customers of three U.S. institutions: a Fortune 500 corporation, a nonprofit organization, and a government entity. Findings suggest trust repair is not a process-driven phenomenon. The provision of credible reparative information, evidence …

Pro Bono Collaborative E-Newsletter (No. 2) (December 2008), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Pro Bono Collaborative Newsletter

No abstract provided.

National Security Vs. Whales: The Navy And The Natural Resources Defense Counsel Battle Their Way To The Supreme Court, Alicia Schaffner

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

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Piano Study And Gender Associations: A Query Into The Perceptions Of Children Ages Five To Fourteen, Richard C. Winfree

Music Theses & Dissertations

From its inception, male composers and performers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Cliburn, and Kempffhad dominated piano performance. Recent research suggests, however, that the piano has been designated with a feminine gender stereotype. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of public school children ages five to fourteen years old relative to gender association and piano study to determine if a gender stereotype existed and at what age, if any, the stereotype stabilized.

To achieve this purpose, two surveys were created and implemented by the researcher. The first survey was administered to 879 students in …

Calculations Of K-Shell Fluorescence Yields And Photoabsorption Cross Sections For Carbon Ions At The K-Edge, Muhammet Fatih Hasoglu

Dissertations

The advent of new space missions providing high-precision observations has engendered the need for reliable and precise K-shell atomic data in order to interpret these X-ray spectra. In response to this need, we focused on the calculation of K-shell fluorescence yields for 2 nd -row ions. A secondary project was undertaken in order to treat theoretically the K-shell X-ray absorption processes in carbon ions. These calculated fluorescence yields of 2nd -row ions and theX-ray photoabsorption cross sections of carbon are astrophysically important in determining (1) charge-changing probabilities, such as Auger vs. radiative decay, and (2) chemical abundances of the interstellar …

Circumnavigation, Vincent Reusch

Dissertations

This creative work, a novel, set in the late 1980s, tells the story of twenty-seven-year-old Davison Johnson (Davi), as she sails around the world in a solo race. For Davi, sailing is more than a challenge, however; it is an escape. On her previous year-long sail, she sailed away from the guilt of her non-action as her Cambodian student, Chanthavy, was abducted from a market in Siem Reap, where Davi was working as an English teacher. Now, she is sailing away from the uncomfortable reality of her older brother's slow death to AIDS. Her brother, Peter, does not disappear as …

Evaluation Of Electron Donor Materials Used To Create Subsurface Permeable Reactive Barriers For Enhanced Reductive Dechlorination Of Chlorinated Ethenes, Elizabeth S. Semkiw

Dissertations

Chlorinated ethenes (CEs) are widespread ground water contaminants, apparently due to their extensive migration from numerous contamination source points. In this study, a long-term field investigation and aquifer microcosm experiments were combined to evaluate the effectiveness of electron donor materials used to create and maintain subsurface permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) for the enhanced in-situ biodegradation of CEs. The laboratory component includes the first side-by-side comparison of electron donor materials dairy whey, lactate syrup, and Hydrogen Release Compound® (HRC), in which dechlorination rates, fermentation product distributions, and H₂ production were monitored as measures of substrate efficiency. Field study allowed the …

Characterization Of The Ap-1 And Nf-Kappa B Transcription Factors In The U-87 Mg Astrocytoma Cell Line, Denise L. Smith

Dissertations

Growth factors, signaling molecules and transcription factors are frequently mutated in cancer and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) has been shown to be over-expressed in most gliomas. In the astrocytoma cell line U-87 MG, the over-expression of PDGF has been shown to lead to over-expression of transcription factors activator-protein-1 (AP-1) and nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB), and it is believed that the individual subunits of AP-1 (c-Jun, JunB, JunD, c-Fos, FosB, Fra-1, and Fra-2) and NF-κB (c-Rel, p50, p52, p65, and RelB) play different roles in proliferation, survival and differentiation in the U-87 MG cell line.

To assess these different roles, transient …

Metaevaluation By Formal Evaluation Theory Of Aid Evaluation Work, Ryoh Sasaki

Dissertations

This document describes the metaevaluation of aid evaluation reports generated in a single fiscal year (FY 2004). Sample reports (n=102) were chosen basically by stratified random sampling from the pool of evaluation reports (N=1034). The pool consists of ex post evaluation reports (and some extensive midterm and termination evaluation reports) obtained from Web sites.

The Key Aid Evaluation Checklist (KAEC) was developed based on the well-known Key Evaluation Checklist (KEC) (Scriven, 2005, 2006). A supplemental checklist, Subdimensional Checklist (SDC) was also applied for the metaevaluation.

A key conclusion of this metaevaluation is this: Quality of the current aid evaluation reports …

Switch On And Switch Off Nanosensors For The Detection Of Nerve Gas Agents, Shankar Varaganti

Dissertations

The central hypothesis of this research is the development of novel nanosensors by a bottom-up approach for the detection of nerve gas agents. The nanosensor assembly consists of four main parts; nanoparticles (N), Monomer (M), Complex (C) and Receptor (R). Two novel Ru (II)-bipyridyl and zinc complexes with tryptophan receptors either in 4,4' or 5,5' position of the bipyridyl ring have been synthesized and characterized by using ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, mass spectrometry and absorption spectroscopy. Silica nanoparticles or quantum dots are used as a platform for the nanosensors. Highly conjugated stilbene type compounds are used as monomers. …