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Governing Certain Things: The Regulation Of Street Trees In Four North American Cities, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

Most sociolegal studies of the urban street focus on the human element. By focusing on the tree, my Article offers a unique perspective on the interrelations between various actors within the public spaces of modern North American cities. Situated at the intersection of legal geography, anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies, this Article demonstrates how natural artifacts function as technologies of governance, thereby masking crucial political interventions behind a natural facade. The tensions between nature and the city, as embedded in both the construction and the regulation of street trees, provide an unusual perspective on the management of urban populations …

Robot Controller Architecture: Layered Mode Selection Logic With Fuzzy Sensor Fusion Network, Traig E.B. Born

Theses and Dissertations

A behavior based robot controller was implemented using Layered Mode Selection Logic as a behavior coordination mechanism and a Fuzzy Sensor Fusion Network to provide perception. A series of collision experiments were conducted to create a Fuzzy Sensor Fusion Network capable of detecting collisions using acceleration readings from wheel encoders. An obstacle avoidance behavior was created, and it was demonstrated that the robot could be constrained by movable obstacles. The avoidance behavior was modified to create an obstacle manipulation behavior. This behavior allowed the robot to escape when enclosed by movable obstacles. The fuzzy sensor fusion network was enhanced to …

Self-Reported Listening Strategies By Students In An Intensive English Language Program, Holly Montgomery

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to add to knowledge about cognitive and metacognitive listening strategies by second language learners. A survey was developed and administered in which questions solicited a retrospective self-report of students' listening habits. The listening strategies used for this study are limited to main idea identification and translation, because they succinctly exemplify the broad groups of strategies to which they belong. Respective sections of the questionnaire address academic, authentic, and informal listening contexts, in order to isolate and differentiate between the strategies' reported use in each, revealing discrepancies and similarities between reports of strategy use in …

A Correlational Study Of Standardized Test For The Assessment Of Reading (Star) With The Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (Tcap) On Third Grade Reading/Language Arts, Terri Kay Pike

Theses and Dissertations

Two school districts in rural Tennessee utilizing the Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading (STAR Reading) assessment were studied to determine the correlation of STAR with Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) with 469 third grade students. The STAR Reading Assessment is marketed by Renaissance Learning as a formative assessment measure. A total of 26 teachers were surveyed in order to determine the adjustment of classroom instruction based on the district-mandated curriculum. Results indicated a high level of correlation between STAR Reading and TCAP; however of the 17 teachers who returned the teacher survey, teachers indicated infrequent administration of the …

Network Security In Two-Year Colleges, Tamya Jean Stallings

Theses and Dissertations

Network security has become a growing challenge in industry and education. With the increase of viruses, spam, hackers, and identity theft, organizations are beginning to look at areas to improve the protection of their Information Technology structure. Higher Education has the highest vulnerability to network security threats especially the two-year institutions. Two-year institutions are known for open access admission. Open labs, limited staff and resources hinder security measures for these institutions. This thesis focuses on the two-year institution delving into the Information Technology Departments and how security is handled. What challenges have these institutions faced trying to protect data and …

Demonstration Or Dbae? Using Each Approach In The Fourth Grade To Find Which Works Best, Christine Anne Nixon

Theses and Dissertations

There are many ways to teach art effectively, but which way reaches all levels of learning successfully? A study was conducted using two fourth grade classes in a parochial school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Class 4A was taught by using the demonstration approach, while Class 4B was taught using the Discipline-Based Art Education (or DBAE) approach. A Native American unit was developed and three lessons were taught to each class. All students were successful creating works of art, but Class 4B was engaged in additional activities such as writing, debating, critiquing, reflecting, and small group discussions. In the end, Class …

International Trade, Pablo M. Bentes, Stacy J. Ettinger, Gregory Husisian, Stacie B. Lieberman, Valentin A. Povarchuk, Amy J. Stanley

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Comorbidity In Prevention Of Adolescent Depressive Symptoms., Patrick Pössel, Simone Seemann, Martin Hautzinger

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Despite the well-known relevance of comorbidity, few studies have examined the impact of comorbid anxiety or externalizing symptoms on the prevention of depressive symptoms in adolescents. To replicate earlier positive effects of a cognitive-behavioral prevention program of depressive symptoms and to test the hypothesis that the prevention program would be less effective in adolescents with comorbid anxiety and externalizing symptoms, a study was conducted involving 301 8th-grade students, randomly divided into an intervention group and a non-intervention control group. The randomized design included baseline, post-intervention, and 6-month follow-up. The prevention program included 10 sessions held in a regular school setting. …

What Is The Opposite Of Bullshit? Possibilities Of Intellectual Engagement, Since Sartre: An Interview With Bill Martin - Part 1, Joseph G. Ramsey

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[from Introduction]

Bill Martin is Professor of Philosophy, at DePaul University in Chicago. There, he has been an active supporter of Norman Finkelstein in his widely publicized tenure fight. Martin's work encompasses a wide range of topics from ethics, imperialism, and animal rights, to actually existing revolutionary movements, to philosophies of science and secularism. He engages seriously with figures from Sartre, Lenin, Marx, and Mao, to Plato, Aristotle, Derrida, Kant, Marcuse, Habermas, and Jameson in books including: Matrix and Line: Derrida and the possibilities of postmodern social theory (1992), Politics and the Impasse: Explorations in postsecular social theory (1996), and …

Tillie Olsen (1912-2007), Anthony Dawahare

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

On January 1, 2007, Tillie Olsen, one of the most respected working-class American writers, died. In her 94 years, pulled in often-conflicting directions by parenting, writing, political activism, literary events, and wage labor, she managed to write three books and several poems, pieces of journalism, essays, and short stories. Her most revered literary works are an unfinished novel she wrote during the Great Depression, Yonnondio: From the Thirties (published in 1974), Tell Me a Riddle (1961), and Silences (1978). Tillie is also greatly admired as a social activist who fought throughout her life for the working-class and, therefore, …

Hungry Realism: Style And Subjecthood In Meridel Le Sueur's The Girl, Amy Gentry

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Meridel Le Sueur's 1939 novel The Girl occupies a troubled place within the history of American genres. Situated within several different subgenres—at once proletarian literature, feminist complaint, and sentimental melodrama—the novel sits comfortably in none. Written in 1939 but only published in 1978, it entered the public sphere almost forty years out of context, in a moment of radical feminism which, while it often resonated with Le Sueur's politics, could not but offer important dissonances as well. This long silence and late revision have partially obscured the book's original depiction of hunger as a force that destabilizes subjectivity …

Space And Capital In Richard Wright's Native Son And Twelve Million Black Voices, Bill V. Mullen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

David Harvey has challenged Marxist criticism after Marx to think more about space. Harvey reminds us that "through the development of explicit bourgeois strategies of divide and control . . . all manner of class, gender, and other social divisions" are implanted into the "geographical landscape of capitalism" (40). "Divisions such as those between cities and suburbs, between regions as well as between nations cannot be understood as residuals from some ancient order," he writes. "They are actively produced through the differentiating powers of capital accumulation and market structures" (40). Harvey is one of a number of Marxist …

Dirty Industrial Dawn: Alienation And Its Discontents In Harvey Swados' On The Line, Robert Niemi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Rankled by mid-Fifties media cant that characterized American blue-collar workers as essentially and happily middle class in situation and outlook, radical novelist/labor journalist Harvey Swados wrote an angry retort entitled "The Myth of the Happy Worker" (The Nation, August 17, 1957). Therein Swados sardonically noted that "there is one thing the worker doesn't do like the middle class: he works like a worker. The steel mill puddler does not yet sort memos; the coal miner does not yet sit in conferences; the cotton mill-hand does not yet sip martinis from his lunch box. The worker's attitude …

The Outsider: A Review Of Ronald Aronson's Camus & Sartre: The Story Of A Friendship And The Quarrel That Ended It, Carl Grey Martin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

On 11 December 2007, the fiftieth anniversary of Camus's notorious press conference after winning the Nobel Prize, when the author told students that he would choose his mother before justice, five scholars (Tom Conley, Stanley Hoffman, Jeffrey Mehlman, Hazel Rowley, and Susan Suleiman) gathered at Harvard to discuss and debate before a packed crowd the political, aesthetic, and ethical issues that continue to rise from the "Camus/Sartre" conflict. Avoiding partisanship, Homi Bhaba introduced the conversation with the (self-admittedly) lame pronouncement, "We need them both."

"God Sent Me To Piss The World Off": Eminem, 'Psycho'-Machia, And The Morality Vice, James Keller

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The term psychomachia, drawn from the title of Prudentius' fourth century work, dramatizes the "struggle for the soul of man by the personified forces of good and evil" (Bevington 117). In morality plays such as The Castle of Perseverance (circa 1400-1425), the embodiments of vice and virtue engage in a mock military conflict to win the allegiance of humanity. However, the difficulties of staging mock battles in limited space with a limited cast resulted in the evolution of the psychomachia intrigue plot where the figure of wickedness tempts the representation of humanity to embrace evil and reject …

Exploring The Interaction Between Asymmetric Phosphonates And Acetylcholinesterase. Probing The Gorge And P-Site Via Customized Covalent Modification, Lilu Guo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Organophosphates (OPs) react with acetylcholinesterases (AChEs) to form a covalent bond at a specific serine residue in the active gorge, thereby providing a highly precise modification of this enzyme and an opportunity to explore protein structure, function and mechanism. The goal of this study is: 1) to show how covalent modification of AChEs by chromophore-linked OPs can be used to probe the active and peripheral sites of the protein and its local environment; 2) to differentiate AChE stereoselectivity with asymmetric phosphonothiolates.

Click chemistry was used as a key transformation method to prepare an array of chromophores linked to a reactive …

Implementation Of An Xml-Based User Interface With Applications In Ice Sheet Modeling, Daniel Ross Lande

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The scientific domain presents unique challenges to software developers. This thesis describes the application of design patterns to the problem of dynamically changing interfaces to scientific application software (GLIMMER, which performs ice sheet modeling). In its present form, GLIMMER uses a text configuration file to define model behavior, set parameters, and structure model input/output (I/O). The creation of the configuration file presents a significant problem to users due to its format and complexity. GLIMMER is still under development, and the number of changes to configuration parameters, parameter types, and parameter dependencies makes devel-opment of any single interface of use only …

Independent Internationalism And Nationalistic Pragmatism: The United States And Mexico Relations During The 1920s, Rodolfo Villarreal-Rios

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Villarreal Ríos, Rodolfo, M.A., Autumn 2008 History Independent Internationalism and Nationalistic Pragmatism: The United States and México Relations during the 1920s. Chairperson: Michael S. Mayer During the 1920s, relations between the United States and Mexico revealed the extent to which the U.S. actively engaged in foreign affairs and demonstrated the process by which México defined a new era of its international relations while facing a reconstruction in internal politics. Decades ago, William Appleman Williams refuted the stereotype of American isolationism, arguing that the administrations of Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover engaged in diplomacy, even where they conducted diplomacy through public …

Development Of The Secondary Conditions Among Adolescents With Disabilities (Scaad) Instrument: An Exploratory Study, Marie Middleton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this study was to develop a measure of secondary conditions, explore the reliability and validity of the measure, and explore the relationship between secondary conditions and participation among adolescents with disabilities. This research collected ratings of limitation due to secondary conditions, and ratings of participation for 24 adolescents with Intellectual/Developmental Disability. Data show that the participants experience an average of 11 secondary conditions during a three-month period as reported by families. The inter-rater agreement between parents and Family Support Specialists was .73 on a point-by-point comparison, and .85 when comparing whether or not limitation was a concern. …

Understanding Parental Motivation To Home School: A Qualitative Case Study, Nolen Ben Olsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Comparatively little educational research has focused on home schooling. Since most students are educated in public schools, parents’ choice of other educational alternatives is often perceived as a deviation from the societal norm. Friends and neighbors of parents who home school rarely understand their motivation for doing so. This study addresses the following question: why do parents remove their children from traditional, public school programs to initiate home schooling, and how well do public school personnel understand this motivation? Using qualitative case study methodology, the researcher confined the study to a specific concentrated population of home schooling families. Phenomenological data …

Le Laboratoire Épistolaire Dans Les Oeuvres Scientifiques De La Marquise Du Châtelet, Arianne Nicole Margolin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the eighteenth century, three camps of scientific thought appeared within the French scientific community: the Cartesians, the Newtonians, and the Leibnizians. According to the accepted physics argued by Fontenelle, Descartes, Malebranche, and Mairan, momentum, not force, was the essential quantity of motion. While Newtonians and Leibnizians agreed upon the significance of gravity and force, they bitterly disagreed with respect to momentum as the essential measurement of force. According to Newton, momentum and gravity were the main type of forces essential to movement; as with Cartesian mechanics, Newtonian momentum was given by the product of the mass and velocity. For …

Mistaken In The Man: The Life, Death, And Estate Trial Of John Mcclellan, Peter Nels Olsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

John McClellan was among the original founders of the Sioux Falls town site in Dakota Territory in the year 1857. During his lifetime, McClellan never spoke much about his family or his origins. After amassing considerable wealth selling land in the 1870s and 1880s, McClellan died in an elevator accident in 1899. His death left open the question of who would inherit his money and property. Three groups of claimants came before the local courts with the belief that John McClellan was, in some way, their relative. After eighteen years of litigation, none of the claimant parties could prove that …

Rights And Remedies Post Ebay V. Mercexchange - Deep Waters Stirred, Robert I. Reis

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Competitive Supragovernmental Regulation: How Could It Be Democratic?, Errol E. Meidinger

Journal Articles

This paper explores the possibility that a developing form of regulatory governance is also sketching out a new form of anticipatory regulatory democracy. 'Competitive supra-governmental regulation' is largely driven by non-state actors and is therefore commonly viewed as suffering a democracy deficit. However, because it stresses broad participation, intensive deliberative procedures, responsiveness to state law and widely accepted norms, and competition among regulatory programs to achieve effective implementation and widespread public acceptance, this form of regulation appears to stand up relatively well under generally understood criteria for democratic governance. Nonetheless, a more satisfactory evaluation will require a much better understanding …

Eighteen Or Thirty, But Not Twenty-Two, John Henry Schlegel

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Drawing Back From The Abyss, Or Lessons Learned From Count Von Count, John Henry Schlegel

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of Child Advocacy Laws In Abuse And Neglect Cases In England And The United States, Pamela Newell

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A New Look At Neo-Liberal Economic Policies And The Criminalization Of Undocumented Migration, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

This paper situates the current “crisis” surrounding the arrival and continued presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States within penological trends that have taken root in American law over the past thirty years. It positions the shift from more benevolent to the increasingly harsh legal treatment of undocumented immigrants as the continuation of a succession of legal reforms criminalizing immigrants, and governing immigration through crime. By charting the increasing salience of crime in public perceptions of undocumented immigrants, and comparing the immediately preceding criminal stigmatization of so-called “criminal aliens”, this paper exposes current severity toward undocumented immigrants as consistent …

Just Back From The Human Rights Council, Makau Mutua

Journal Articles

The piece critically looks at the transition from the UN Commission on Human Rights to the UN Human Rights Council in 2006 and questions whether the change is one of substance or form. It argues that the same paralysis that dogged the Commission will continue to afflict the Council because power politics and regional blocs - fueled by the global asymmetries of power - will not go away. The piece also contends that the charge by the West that the Commission was utterly compromised by the Third World was without merit because it was the one forum where developing could …

Information The Transformation Of Public Administrations: The Case Of E-Housekeeper In Taiwan, Su Houn Liu, Tsang Yao Chen, Hsiu Li Liao

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Many researchers have explored how to better deploy public services over the Internet. Starting year 2006, the Taiwan government has initiated a new generation of its e-Government public service information infrastructure—the i-Government project. In May 2007, e-Housekeeper, the first application of i-Government implementation is deployed. Current survey results show that e-Housekeeper has drastically increased the willingness of use and satisfaction rate of the online public service users. With the integrated, standardized, and active online public services, the i-Government project is seen to have the potential to transform public administrations in Taiwan.