Digital Commons Network^™

Mariage Et La Maternitâe Chez Marie De France, Palazzolo Danielle Firmino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

Twelfth century French feudal culture witnesses the codification of new marriage laws and a rapid rise in popularity of the Cult of the Virgin Mary, with correspondingly renewed attention being paid to women by ecclesiastical intellectuals of all sects. Of particular interest to these churchmen was the duty of the medieval wife to bear children. The Lais of Marie de France, a late twelfth-century text, often focus explicitly on motherhood (both biological and symbolic) and therefore allow a deeper examination of the new cultural representations of women in the dual role of spouse and mother. The Lais further highlight the …

Methodology To Assess The Feasibility For Light Rail Transit In A Low To Medium Density Environment Via Geographic Information Systems And Image Interpretation, Dylan. Kennard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

The world currently has more people living in cities than in rural areas. In the United States this is no exception, and as a result government policy is focusing on the supply of 'green' jobs that help repair and expand its infrastructure in an attempt to help curb non-renewable resource use. The expansion of public transportation throughout the country is one facet of the multi-pronged US government policy. In the tri-county area of South Florida (Palm Beach County, Broward County, and Miami-Dade County) a research study known as the South Florida East Coast Corridor Transit Analysis (SFECCTA) entered Phase 2 …

Matters Of Life And Death: A Comparative Analysis Of Content In Maori Traditional And Contemporary Art And Dance As A Reflection Of Fundamental Maori Cultural Issues And The Formation And Perpetuation Of Maori And Non-Maori Cultural Identity In New Zealan, Cynthia Louise Zaitz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

Maori art forms are replete with symbolism entrenched in Maori cosmogony, as well as with political issues arising from the relationship of colonizer to colonized. This interdisciplinary project examined the core symbols, issues and stories present in Maori traditional and contemporary art and dance to determine the way in which the content present in these art forms acts as an active agent in the formation and perpetuation of Maori cultural identity in New Zealand. A secondary aim of the project was to examine the relationship of Maori to the greater Aotearoa/New Zealand culture thereby identifying common and contrasting themes and …

Numerical Performance Prediction For Fau's First Generation Ocean Current Turbine, Nicolas. Vanrietvelde

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

This thesis presents the analytically predicted position, motion, attitude, power output and forces on Florida Atlantic University's (FAU) first generation ocean current turbine for a wide range of operating conditions. These values are calculated using a 7- DOF dynamics simulation of the turbine and the cable that attaches it to the mooring system. The numerical simulation modifications and upgrades completed in this work include developing a wave model including the effects of waves into the simulation, upgrading the rotor model to specify the number of blades and upgrading the cable model to specify the number of cable elements. This enhanced …

Object Detection In Low Resolution Video Sequences, Diego F. Pava

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

With augmenting security concerns and decreasing costs of surveillance and computing equipment, research on automated systems for object detection has been increasing, but the majority of the studies focus their attention on sequences where high resolution objects are present. The main objective of this work is the detection and extraction of information of low resolution objects (e.g. objects that are so far away from the camera that they occupy only tens of pixels) in order to provide a base for higher level information operations such as classification and behavioral analysis. The system proposed is composed of four stages (preprocessing, background …

Novel Molecular Targets For Genistein In Prostate Cancer Cells, Kendra T. Merchant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

Prostate cancer is the most common form of non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths within the United States. The five year survival rate has increased from 69% to 99% over the last 25 years for the local and regional disease, but has remained fairly low (approximately 34%) for the advanced disease. Therefore, current research is aimed at finding complementary or alternative treatments that will specifically target components of the signal transduction, cell-cycle and apoptosis pathways to induce cell death, with little or no toxic side effects to the patient. In this study we investigated the effect …

Pedometers In The Curriculum, Henry J. Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of a pedometer-based intervention on physical activity and self-efficacy among community college students in wellness classes (N = 154). The intervention included a pretest/posttest physical activity questionnaire, pedometer use, weekly goal setting and self-report of step data via the web. The experimental group wore pedometers daily for ten weeks; the control group wore pedometers for one week at baseline and week ten. Average weekday physical activity increased 29% for the experimental group and decreased 16% for the control group. Data analysis demonstrated a statistically significant difference due to the treatment …

Opposition Politics And Populism, Morgan Alissa Weiss

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

This thesis examines the relationship between the political opposition and populism. The goal is to identify when, how, and under what circumstances an opposition to a populist leader affects change to the political system. A comparative historical analysis is employed as five case studies from South America are examined. The evidence presented in these case studies demonstrates that the political oppositions in each country were unsuccessful in affecting change to their respective political systems. They were unable to demobilize the support base that the populist leaders had created. Change came to the political systems in four out of the five …

Philosophy Of The Animal In 20th Century Literature, Jamie Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

The following dissertation examines the philosophy of the animal as it appears in twentieth-century British and American literature. I argue that evolutionary theory, along with the Romantic emphasis on sympathy, creates an historical shift in our perception of humans and nonhumans. Beginning with Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby-Dick, the whale represents what I call a transitional animal figure in that the whale not only shows the traditionally symbolic literary animal but also the beginnings of the twentieth century shift toward the literal animal-as-subject. My proposed comparative analysis consists of a return to classic existential and phenomenological philosophers with animal studies …

Principals' Attitudes Toward The Use Of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy And Culturally Responsive Leadership In Predominantely [Sic] African American Schools, Tressey. Weaver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

The purpose of this study was to determine principals' attitudes toward the use of culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally responsive leadership in predominately African American schools. Culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, culturally responsive urban leadership, and ethnohumanist leadership are the study's theoretical underpinnings. The research question was as follows: To what extent, if any, do principals of predominately African American schools promote culturally relevant pedagogy and utilize culturally responsive leadership? The sample for this mixed methods study was secondary school principals and teachers in predominately African American schools. Seven principals and 43 teachers participated in the study. The research …

Power, Instability And Regulatory Focus, Noel Jm Trew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

This thesis applies Higgins (1997) Regulatory Focus Theory to the study of conflict by exploring the relationship between power and promotion vs. prevention orientation. After considering the earlier work of Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson (2003) that established the considerable effect that power has on approach and avoidance behaviors, the present research shows that this link also applies to regulatory focus. In this study, participants had their sense of power experimentally manipulated by a set of vignettes and then answered follow-up questions to determine what effect this had on their regulatory focus orientation. Results indicated that high power is associated with …

Progress Towards Push Button Verification For Business Process Execution Language Artifacts, Augusto. Vargas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

Web Service Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) has become a standard language in the world of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for specifying interactions between internet services. This standard frees developers from low-level concerns involving platform, implementation, and versioning. These freedoms risk development of less robust artifacts that may even become part of a mission-critical system. Model checking a BPEL artifact for correctness with respect to temporal logic properties is computationally complex, since it requires enumerating all communication and synchronization amongst various services with itself. This entails modeling BPEL features such as concurrency, hierarchy, interleaving, and non-deterministic choice. The thesis will …

Prehistoric Trade Routes In The Lake Okeechobee Region, Gregory J. Mount

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

During pre-Columbian times, the Lake Okeechobee Region was home to people of the Belle Glade culture. The lake provided an area rich in resources that facilitated not only the hunter-gatherer-fisher lifestyle of the people but also supported increased cultural complexity. Over time, people participated in an exchange network, trading materials with cultural groups from a variety of locations. This thesis provides an analysis of those non-local artifacts, their probable points of origins and the type of exchange that facilitated the movement of these goods into the region.

Probabilistic Predictor-Based Routing In Disruption-Tolerant Networks, Quan. Yuan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

Disruption-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are the networks comprised of a set of wireless nodes, and they experience unstable connectivity and frequent connection disruption because of the limitations of radio range, power, network density, device failure, and noise. DTNs are characterized by their lack of infrastructure, device limitation, and intermittent connectivity. Such characteristics make conventional wireless network routing protocols fail, as they are designed with the assumption the network stays connected. Thus, routing in DTNs becomes a challenging problem, due to the temporal scheduling element in a dynamic topology. One of the solutions is prediction-based, where nodes mobility is estimated with a …

Raise It Overhead, Alison Amato

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

This is a collection of poetry that deals with contradiction, generation, and degeneration. It also confronts ideals embedded in culture and society that have become points of emotional conflict for many. This collection often focuses on successfully communicating feelings and ideas through the brevity of language. However. at some points it is necessary to set aside the practice of brevity and lengthen the works in order go beyond restrictive bounda ries and enter a realm of continuation, control, and repetition. Many of the poems begin without beginnings and end without resolutions both allowing the reader to draw from it personal …

Sanctuary Policies & Immigration Federalism: A Dialectic Analysis, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Rose Cuison Villazor

Publications

No abstract provided.

If It Is Broken, Then Fix It: Needed Reforms To Employment Discrimination Law: 2009 Annual Meeting Of The Association Of American Law Schools Section On Employment Discrimination Law, Melissa Hart, Minna Kotkin, Roberto Corrada, Deborah Widiss

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Matter Of Context: Social Framework Evidence In Employment Discrimination Class Actions, Melissa Hart, Paul M. Secunda

Publications

In litigation disputes over the certification of employment discrimination class actions, social scientists have come to play a central, yet controversial, role. Organizational behavioralists and social psychologists regularly testify for the plaintiffs, offering what is commonly referred to as social framework testimony. These experts explain the general social science research on the operation of stereotyping and bias in decision making and examine the challenged workplace to identify those policies and practices that research has shown will tend to increase and those that will tend to limit the likely impact of these factors. Defendants fight hard against the admission of social …

Institutional Design, Fcc Reform, And The Hidden Side Of The Administrative State, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

Legal scholars have long recognized the importance of the modern administrative state, focusing intently both on the substance of regulatory law and the process of administrative law. Neither focus, however, recognizes the importance of institutional design and institutional processes as determinants of the nature and shape of administrative regulation. The era of neglect towards institutional analysis by both scholars and policymakers may well be on its last legs, as it is increasingly clear that the institutional processes used by regulatory agencies - including when to act by rulemaking as opposed to by adjudication, how to engage the public, and how …

Land Resources Series No 21 - Tambellup-Borden Area Land Resources Survey, Angela Stuart-Street, Rohan Marold

Natural resources published reports

AGDEX 526

Land Resources Series No. 21

This report presents results from soil-landscape mapping at a scale of 1: 100,000 in the Tambellup- Borden area of Western Australia. It is accompanied by a soil-landscape map covering almost 511,000 hectares.

Most of the survey occurs within the upper Frankland-Gordon, Kent, North Stirlings Basin and upper reaches of the Pallinup and Kalgan River catchments. The survey falls within the Katanning and Albany Department of Agriculture and Food advisory districts.

Seventeen soil-landscape systems have been identified and are represented on the map on the accompanying CD-ROM. These systems have been further divided into …

A Retrospective Study Of Dust Storms And Respiratory Hospitalizations In El Paso, Texas Using A Case-Crossover Study Design, Yanlei Peng

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Dust storms frequently occur in El Paso, Texas, but little is known about their respiratory health effects. The association between dust storm and hospitalization for respiratory illness will be studied through a case-crossover study design. The goal is to ascertain the effect of dust storms, adjusted for weather and other pollutants, and to explore the potential harmfulness for different subgroups of residents. A case-crossover study allows patients to serve as their own controls, in order to reduce confounding. The history, relationship, and application of the case-control and case-crossover study designs are reviewed in this thesis. The estimating equations for conditional …

Revision Of The Ant Genus Procryptocerus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Myrmicinae: Cephalotini), Francisco Serna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ants of the genus Procryptocerus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) are characterized by the protrusion of the clypeus forming a broad nasus and antennal scrobes over the eyes. The toruli are located directly posterior to the flanks of the nasus opposite to each other. The vertex is deflexed in most species. I present an in-group comparison of the external morphology focusing on the workers. I also present a general morphology for gynes and males. I analize previously mentioned characters as well as new ones, and clarify their character states in different species. For the metasoma I propose a new system of ant metasomal …

In Defense Of The Value Of Visual Arts In Public Education:An Examination Of Scholarly Arguments For Functionary Pedagogy And Intrinsic Fulfillment, Monica Lynn Seymore

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A descriptive study sought to find answers to an ongoing dichotomous argument about Visual Arts education in public schools: should Visual Arts function in support of core academic courses or should Visual Arts be taught primarily for their intrinsic value? Multiple sources as well as personal experience teaching art have influenced and contributed to resultant opinion in this study . Two main arguments clarified in detail and delineated in points of their disparate issues, function to defend visual arts in public schools. Conclusion maintain that arguments and support of the intrinsic values students experience through visual arts.

A Comparative Analysis Of Attitudes Toward And Responses To Email And Postal Direct Mail Advertising, Caroline Staub Staub Garland

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Over the past decade, we have seen significant increases in Internet activity and the adoption of new digital technology for sending and receiving communications. According to numerous reports, email now accounts for over 70% of Internet activity. As Internet usage has increased, Internet advertising, and in particular email advertising, has evolved from simple-text, untargeted mass mailings to visually sophisticated highly-targeted interactive communication.

This study sought to compare and examine attitudes toward and responses to two forms of permission-based direct advertising - online direct mail campaigns to traditional, postal direct mail

campaigns to determine what are the qualities peculiar to email …

Exploring Poly(Ethylene Glycol) As A Suitable Material For Peripheral Nerve Regeneration Scaffolds Manufactured By Stereolithography, Nubia Zuverza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

One of the challenges in tissue engineering is to have spatial and temporal control over the biological elements within a scaffold used to guide regeneration for example of transected nerves. Some of the physical and chemical characteristics to regulate include incorporation of bioactive domains and release of chemical signals. This study presents the use of stereolithography (SL) to incorporate localized domains for cell adhesion in addition to include releasable nerve growth factor (NGF) in the process of building poly(ethylene glycol)diacrylate (PEGda) hydrogel scaffolds. Besides providing sites for cell attachment, an ideal nerve guidance conduit (NGC) should be able to release …

The Tower Clock 2009, Tower Clock

Tower Clock Yearbooks

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Attitudes Of Teachers And Principals Concerning Supervisory Methods And Procedures In Selected Minnesota Schools, Donald J. Gornowich

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Multi-Objective Network Reliability Optimization Using Evolutionary Algorithms, Franciso Oswaldo Aguirre

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This work presents a new multiple objective evolutionary algorithm to solve three well known network reliability allocation problems considering different conflicting objectives to be optimized simultaneously. The new algorithm is applied in the design of a telecommunication network that is formed for several stations or nodes interconnected by telecommunication links or paths. The problem presented in this work involves finding which links to activate in order to obtain connectivity in the nodes. The number of nodes that need to be connected depends of the case that is being evaluated. The three network reliability problems considered are: all-terminal, k-terminal, and two-terminal. …

Effect Of Air Addition On Plasma-Based Reforming Of Methane And Propane, Atul Vitthalrao Ambhore

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Supporting Novice Application Users In Learning By Trial And Error And Using Help, Oscar Daniel Andrade

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines three related topics in analyzing user preferences for troubleshooting application usability problems and the kinds of issues that influence such preferences. The goal of this thesis is to propose (1) ways in which users can be supported to learn to use applications and (2) a model to rewrite help such that users are able to adapt its contents dynamically.

The consensus of documentation research is that users rarely use help, usually preferring to muddle through. To increase use of help, tutorials for novice users could be changed from guided presentations toward using the application's help system. To …