Digital Commons Network^™

The Right To Reparations In International Human Rights Law And The Case Of Bahrain, Jared L. Watkins

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Development Of International Norms For Insurance Regulation, Elizabeth F. Brown

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Patenting Human Embryonic Stem Cells: What Is So Immoral?, Joshua Whitehill

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Sovereign Wealth Funds And The Problem Of Asymmetric Information: The Santiago Principles And International Regulations, Anthony Wong

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Exporting Morality With Trade Restrictions: The Wrong Path To Animal Rights, Gary Miller

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Inclusion And Adaptation Resources For General Music Teachers, Judy A. Doughty

Masters Theses

A majority of music teachers are faced with the responsibility to educate students with special needs in the public school system. As the emphasis on special education becomes more and more important in today's society, music teachers are required to meet the needs of all students. The purpose of this study is to provide resources and share ideas from research as a help to in-service music teachers who are experiencing the inclusion of children with special needs into their music classrooms and programs. The study will discuss the increase in the involvement of music teachers with children who have special …

Distributed Learning In Designing Curriculum In A One-To-One Computing Environment, Ronald H. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the access to, and use of, online resources, such as primary sources, lesson plans linked to standards, and participation in professional organizations and communities. The goal of this study was to examine how teachers have taken up the task of designing curriculum for delivery in classes where students have their own computers 24/7. It queried teachers about their theory of change linked to the implementation of one to one computing, the methods used to create and apply their own curriculum, and their orientation in general towards the use of technology in learning. It examined teachers' views …

Exploring The Television Portrayal Of Older People In Hong Kong : A Study Of Two Public Affairs Documentary Series, Caillie Tam

Lingnan Theses

Adopting the contextual social constructionist perspective on social problems, the present study investigates how older people are portrayed in two public affairs television documentaries in Hong Kong over a period of two decades. There were The Hong Kong Connection (produced by the public service broadcaster, Radio Television Hong Kong); and Chasing Current Affairs (produced by a commercial broadcaster, Asia Television Limited). A mixture of research designs was employed in the analysis, namely: (1) content analysis on the documentary episodes, (2) reviews of government documents and (3) in-depth interviews with social workers and the staff engaged in documentary episode productions. A …

Older Persons' Perceptions Of Their Future : A Qualitative Study In Hong Kong, Shuk Ching, Crystal So

Lingnan Theses

This study examines older persons’ hopes, fears and expectations for the future, a topic little explored in Hong Kong. The study of twenty-five people aged 65-85 years adopts a qualitative approach to explore the experiences that shape older persons’ views of their future lives. Three models emerged from the empirical study, namely The Model of Resignation, The Model of Predestination and The Model of Adaptation.

The findings suggest that respondents who had and still have little social support from friends tend to live very much in the present; they do not look forward to the future nor do they have …

Risk Culture Of Late Modernity? : Mass Tutoring Enrolment Of Hong Kong's Senior Secondary Students, Cheuk Wai, Jeffrey Cheung

Lingnan Theses

Mass tutoring on senior secondary curricula, with specific focus on examination syllabi and techniques, has expanded rapidly in Hong Kong in the recent decade. Through semi-structured in-depth interviews, conducted in summer 2007, with 20 certificate level (Secondary 4 and 5) and 21 advanced level (Secondary 6 and 7) students with various level of involvement in mass tutoring, this study discovered:

(1) Risk awareness and future-oriented mentality: Students expected that mass tutoring could help improve their performance in public examinations, and could secure good grades. To them, better grades mean higher chance to get a recognized qualification, fulfil their career aspiration, …

Prediction Markets And Law: A Skeptical Account, Rebecca Haw Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Enthusiasm for "many minds" arguments has infected legal academia. Scholars now champion the virtues of groupthink, something once thought to have only vices. It turns out that groups often outperform individuals in aggregating information, weighing alternatives, and making decisions. And although some of our legal institutions, such as Congress and juries, already harness the power of the crowd, others could be improved by multiplying the number of minds at work. "Multiplying" implies a simple mathematical formula for improving decisionmaking; modern many minds arguments are more sophisticated than that. They use incentive analyses, game theory, and statistics to study how and …

Antibiotics, Herbs, And Magic: Health Practices In Contemporary St. Petersburg, Christine Shu

Honors Theses

In St. Petersburg, Russia, two seemingly conflicting health doctrines, western medicine and alternative medicine, play significant roles in residents' health culture. I define alternative medicine as all health practices that use such natural products as herbs, natural honey, water, seeds, berries, and even animal products, and as such unobtrusive body therapies as acupuncture, massage, yoga, or animal therapies. I define western medicine as all treatments that involve the manipulation of ingredients in a chemistry laboratory (such as antibiotics, antiviral drugs, antihistamines. or pain killers) and all body therapies intrusive to the body (such as operations). Through interviews with St. Petersburg …

Putting The Law Back In Constitutional Law, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Taking a cue from Professor Laurence Tribe's decision to abandon the third edition of his constitutional law treatise, the organizers of this symposium have asked us to address whether constitutional law is in crisis. I am agnostic on that question, although I think that there has been a turn in the wrong direction. But if there is a crisis, I know who to blame. If constitutional law is in crisis, it is our fault. The legal academy has erased the distinction between law and politics, used its expertise for political advantage rather than for elucidation, and mis-educated a generation of …

Serendipity, Sean B. Seymore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Serendipity, the process of finding something of value initially unsought, has played a prominent role in modern science and technology. These "happy accidents" have spawned new fields of science, broken intellectual and technological barriers, and furnished countless products that have altered the course of human history. In the realm of patent law, one curious aspect of accidental discoveries that has received little attention in the academic literature and the courts is how they mesh with the substantive law of invention. This Essay shows that applying conventional doctrines to accidental inventions is theoretically untenable and, in certain circumstances, may result in …

Reelin Signaling Promotes Radial Glia Maturation And Neurogenesis, Serene Keilani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The end of neurogenesis in the human brain is marked by the transformation of the neural progenitors, the radial glial cells, into astrocytes. This event coincides with the reduction of Reelin expression, a glycoprotein that regulates neuronal migration in the cerebral cortex and cerebellum. A recent study showed that the dentate gyrus of the adult reeler mice, with homozygous mutation in the RELIN gene, have reduced neurogenesis relative to the wild type. Based on the above findings, our first hypothesis states that Reelin expression is important for the formation of radial glia and the generation of neurons from the neural …

Beyond Public Health : The Cultural Politics Of Tobacco Control In Hong Kong, Wai Yin Chan

Lingnan Theses

This work provides cultural and political explanations on how and why cigarette smoking has increasingly become an object of intolerance and control in Hong Kong. Since the 1980s, the smoking population has been falling. Smoking behavior, sales and promotion of cigarette products have been under close surveillance by the government, medical experts and society at large. Cigarette smoking, as well as smokers, has increasingly been rejected and demonized in the public discourse. What are the conditions that make the growing intolerant discourses and practices against cigarette smoking possible and dominant? Why and how has the tobacco control campaign become prevalent …

Queering Sex Machines : The Re-Articulation Of Non-Normative Sexualities And Technosexual Bodies, Hok Bun, Isaac Leung

Lingnan Theses

From the simple electronic vibrator to the complex assemblages of cybersex, sex and technology have always intersected. The dynamic relations between sexuality and technology are constantly changing along with the ways in which human beings achieve psychological and bodily pleasure through these devices. Sex machine, a term that denotes an automated device that can assist human in the pursuits of sex, has been broadly defined as therapeutic and pleasure machines in the West. Large numbers of sex machines have been documented in Europe and America starting from the nineteenth century, and were widely produced and utilized by medical practitioners, sex …

Pubs, Punters, And Pints: Anthropological Reflections On Pub Life In Ireland, Jason Cucchiara

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ireland is a country with a rich and unique cultural heritage. It is difficult to imagine that certain facets of Irish culture (e.g. Saint Patrick's Day, the Blarney Stone, or the Ring of Kerry) can ever be taken for granted since they are so widely recognized internationally. One common feature of Irish life that possibly warrants more scholarly attention is the public house or pub. Much has been written about pubs as quaint institutions in popular literature and fiction. Curiously, they remain largely overlooked as vital aspects of Irish culture by anthropologists and others in the social sciences. In many …

Categorical Perception Of Stop Consonants In Children With Autism, Laura Bourdeau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine whether children with autism recognize the same perceptual voicing boundaries of stop consonants as normally developing children of the same age group. This was explored using three groups of participants: ten children with autism between the ages of 8-14, five typically developing children between the ages of 8-14, and five typically developing seven-year-old children. Children in all groups listened to initial stop consonant syllables with voicing contrasts, with voiced and voiceless cognates presented. The initial consonants were altered along a voice onset time continuum within the typically perceived boundaries of each consonant. …

Selling Sunshine: How Cypress Gardens Defined Florida, 1935-2004, David Dinocola

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between Cypress Gardens and the state of Florida. Specifically, it focuses on how the creator of the park, Dick Pope, created his park after his own idealized vision of the state, and how he then promoted both his park and Florida as one and the same. The growth and later decline of Cypress Gardens follows trends in Florida's growth patterns and shifts in tourism. This study primarily uses a combination of newspaper sources and promotional pictures and other media from the park to explain how Pope attempted to make Cypress Gardens synonymous with Florida. In …

Web-Based, Gendered Recruitment Of Women By Organized White Supremacist Groups, Angela King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to the hate group watchdog organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the United States rose 54 percent since 2000 (SPLC 2009 a & b). Literature on organized white supremacist groups suggests that women have become increasingly more important to such groups for a variety of reasons, many of which are not always agreed upon by and within said groups. In addition, it is believed by many in the hate monitoring world that the World Wide Web has become progressively more dynamic as a medium of recruitment, as a tool of communication among members, …

The Effectiveness Of Post-Secondary Web Based Communication In The University Of Central Florida's Online Educational Settin, Brandon Hinchman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While technology continues to advance, so do methods of learning. In post-secondary education during the twentieth century, the traditional classroom setting was geared toward auditory instruction and face-to-face peer interaction. Not only was this the most efficient means of instruction for the time period but the only means. Along with the advent of communication technology came the concept of Web courses. Web courses have expanded the means by which students can experience course lectures and have beckoned the use of updated media by which such lectures can take place. Such media include threaded discussions, chat rooms and e-mail. At the …

Standing Waves Of Spatially Discrete Fitzhugh-Nagumo Equations, Joseph Segal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We study a system of spatially discrete FitzHugh-Nagumo equations, which are nonlinear differential-difference equations on an infinite one-dimensional lattice. These equations are used as a model of impulse propagation in nerve cells. We employ McKean's caricature of the cubic as our nonlinearity, which allows us to reduce the nonlinear problem into a linear inhomogeneous problem. We find exact solutions for standing waves, which are steady states of the system. We derive formulas for all 1-pulse solutions. We determine the range of parameter values that allow for the existence of standing waves. We use numerical methods to demonstrate the stability of …

Role Of Revolutionary Leadership In Iran To Its Foreign Policy, Aida Latorre

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the role of different leadership styles within Iran and how such leadership changes influenced Iranian foreign policy. The study utilized event-data analysis of Iranian history and current events and discussed the role of realist and idealist to the development of Iran into the regional power it is today as well as how Western relations played a role in developing Iranian foreign policy, particularly with regard to its nuclear development. The main body of the study drew from the dynamics within Iran, its relations with the West, relations with Israel, and relations with other foreign powers. The event-data …

The News Media And Public Opinion: The Press Coverage Of U.S. International Conflicts And Its Effect On Presidental Approval, Kristen Mccullough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A standing phenomenon exists in the fields of both political science and communication studies regarding the impact that the news media have on public opinion. This study recognizes the average American citizens' reliance on the press to gain information about international conflicts. Hence, it is theorized that news reports on a political occurrence could very well influence the mass-level opinion of an event such that positive news stories generate positive public opinion, and vice versa. Since foreign crises define a presidency in the public's minds, presidential approval ratings determine the degree to which the news media manipulate public opinion. Specifically, …

Globalization And Identity: A Cross-National Study Among Chinese, Indian, Colombian, And American College Students, Min Cheng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arnett (2002) has suggested the development of a typology similar to one that has become popular in the ethnic identity literature (Berry, 1993; Phinney, 1990) whereby people are surveyed in terms of strength of identification with both the dominant national culture and their particular sub-group minority culture. Based on this typology, we have developed a paper and pencil measure, the Global Identity Survey (GIS), which asks participants about the degree to which they identify with either the local or global culture. A new typology is proposed, with behaviors and attitudes falling into one of the four following categories: "locally encapsulated" …

Have You Heard? Predictors Of Hpv Awareness Among A Random Sample Of College Students, Meagan Arrastia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

College students have been identified as at high risk for contracting Human Papillomavirus (HPV) due to engaging in risky behaviors, such as binge drinking and unprotected sex. Before preventative measures like vaccination and condom usage can be promoted, awareness must be evaluated. A random sample of 438 college students was surveyed on their awareness of HPV using both paper and online surveying methods. Using binary logistic regression, HPV awareness was predicted using demographic measures. The majority of the sample reported having heard of HPV before. Sexually active respondents and females were significantly more likely to report awareness. Non-whites and first-generation …

Hurricane Katrina And The Perception Of Risk: Incorporating The Local Context, Nnenia Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper identifies social conditions that shape perceptions of risk to environmental toxins among residents in the Gulf Coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina. Demographic information from a randomly selected sample of 2,548 residents was used to explore the concept of the "White male effect" as discussed in previous literature, which has found that white males are particularly risk accepting compared to all other race and gender groups. This analysis also evaluated the influence of trust in government and beliefs about environmental justice on perceived exposure and compared responses from residents within and outside the City of New …

Defended Neighborhoods And Organized Crime: Does Organized Crime Lower Street Crime?, Hollianne Marshall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The literature suggests that neighborhoods with organized criminal networks would have lower crime rates than other neighborhoods or communities, because of the social control their organization exerts on residents and visitors. The strictly organized Italian-American Mafia seems to have characteristics that would translate throughout the neighborhood: People will not participate in overt illegal behaviors because they do not know who is watching, and the fear of what the Mafia might do keeps residents and visitors to the neighborhood relatively well-behaved. Using crime statistics from the NYPD and census data for neighborhood characteristics, four linear regressions were calculated. The results indicate …

Science Inquiry Kits And Teacher Preparedness To Teach Science As Inquiry In Elementary Classrooms, Angela Clayton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The National Science Education Standards (1996) indicate that science education should include inquiry instruction. Many teachers still struggle with how to implement inquiry in their classrooms and a lack of high quality inquiry-based instructional materials has been posited as a hindrance. The purpose of this qualitative study was to observe the instructional practices of three elementary teachers when using an inquiry-based science kit program in their fourth grade classrooms. Teacher practices and their attitudes towards their preparedness to teach science with the support of the curricular program were examined. Data were collected through pre/post survey comparisons, observations, and a focus …