Digital Commons Network^™

The Veil That Covered France's Eye: The Right To Freedom Of Religion And Equal Treatment In Immigration And Naturalization Proceedings, Kendal Davis

Nevada Law Journal

In June 2008, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny citizenship to a Muslim woman because, essentially, she was ‘not French enough.’ This decision incited both praise and outrage in the international human rights arena regarding considerations such as the right to freedom of religion, gender equality, and citizenship.

This Note examines relevant French domestic law and international human rights instruments, and argues that while immigration and naturalization decisions remain an exercise of broad sovereign powers, the emerging human rights norm to be free from discrimination should apply in naturalization proceedings. Furthermore, despite judicial deference and flexibility to …

Verification Of Synchronous Elastic Pipelined Systems, Koushik Sarker

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The constant shrinking of technology has lead to several design challenges that the synchronous design paradigm is unable to cope with. Elastic design is a novel and promising design paradigm that overcomes many of these challenges by using components that are insensitive to the latencies of its inputs. Verification is a critical problem for any design paradigm. The complexity of elastic designs arises when the system is pipelined. We develop formal verification techniques to verify synchronous elastic pipelined systems. Note that the goal of verification is not to establish the correctness of the algorithm for synthesizing elastic circuits, but instead, …

Joint Compression And Encryption, Ahana Ghosh

Electrical and Computer Engineering

This research work proposes two techniques of joint compression and encryption using Shanon Fano Elias coding and Arithmetic coding respectively. The first scheme proposed is called Adaptive Shannon-Fano-Elias code where it has been observed that the complexity of attacks is exponential in m, where m is the length of the string being compressed. Since mis usually very large (> 220 ), the security of our scheme is very high. The main reason why our scheme's security depends on m is the fact that all attacks require the ciphertext to be scanned from left to right. The algorithm proposed does not …

Phasor Measurement Unit Placements For Complete Observability Using Linear-Time, Quadratic-Time, And Subquadratic-Time Heuristics, Oluwasijibomi Saula

Electrical and Computer Engineering

A phasor measurement unit (PMU) is considered to have the potential to improve the efficiency of electric power systems by monitoring, control, and protection. Through measurements of all bus voltages, incoming and outgoing currents, and by subsequent calculation of all phase angles, employing PMUs on every substation in a power system will allow complete observation of a power system. However, having a PMU on every substation may not be economically feasible. Therefore, methodologies must be devised that can monitor a system with the minimum possible number of PMUs. In this paper, we propose six graph theoretical PMU placement heuristics. The …

Time To Play The Religion Card: Messiah Complexes In Battlestar Galactica, Carissa Noel Wolf

English

In 2003, Battlestar Galactica (BSG) was re-invented from its 1978 roots and updated to a post-apocalyptic narrative that reflects numerous issues in current American culture, including the influence of religious rhetoric in post-9/11 politics. As theorized by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the fictions of a culture reveal the subconscious values and beliefs of that culture, 1 and BSG has proven fertile ground for such investigations. Four major compilations of critical essays on BSG have been published to date, with some articles analyzing the post-9/11 politics and others on the use of religion in the narrative, but few examine these elements in …

"Putting On My Feminist Pants": How Academic Feminists Use Clothing To Construct Professional Identity, Katie Marie Gunter

English

Feminism has traditionally been concerned with issues of women's bodies; however, an examination of women's bodies in clothing has been largely overlooked, especially in relation to feminists themselves. Constructing identity for professional feminists in the context of clothing calls into question the traditional feminist binary of privileging the mind over the body. While many feminist writers discuss a rift between second and third wave feminists concerning views on clothing, no one has produced data to show that these views are still held. This paper investigates how second and third wave professional feminists view clothing in relation to the mind/body binary …

Enculturating Gender: Examining Bestselling Children's Picture Books, Kara Michele Smith

English

This research examines gender depictions in 20 current bestselling children's picture books. I argue that children's picture books, specifically those aimed at children 0-5 years of age, portray gender in a way that potentially limits girls in developing and achieving their goals because of the limited options presented to them based on gender and also constrains boys' emotional growth due to the rigid standards depicted for them. These depictions are especially critical during the Sensorimotor and Preoperational stages in children's development because they are developmentally primed for acquiring and being socialized to gender knowledge. Extending the work of Hamilton et …

Where Is The Learning In Smaller Learning Communities? Academic Press, Social Support For Learning, And Academic Engagement In Smaller Learning Community Classrooms, Christopher Michael Fischer

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

The extent to which Academic Press and strong social relationships impact Academic Engagement in smaller learning communities (SLCs) situated in large comprehensive urban high schools was investigated. Data were collected through classroom observations, student questionnaires and focus groups with teachers and analyzed using descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and content analysis of focus interview transcripts. Findings from the survey data confirm those found in much of the existing literature, namely that students experiencing high levels of Academic Press were more often the most academically engaged. This finding was also confirmed for African American students in high Academic Press …

Active Learning In Introductory Economics: Do Myeconlab And Aplia Make Any Difference?, Trien T. Nguyen, Angela Trimarchi

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

This paper reports experiment results of teaching large classes of introductory economics with modern learning technology such as MyEconLab or Aplia. This new technology emerges partially in response to the enrollment pressure currently facing many institutions of higher education. Among other things, the technology provides an integrated online teaching and learning environment that allows active learning through student direct participation in the learning process as well as interaction with their instructor, peers, and the outside Internet. Our results showed that, for the classes in the experiment, modern learning technology could make a difference in helping students improve their class mark …

Personal Reflection: Sotl And Don't Perish!, Gerald Goh

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

This reflection describes my early encounters with SoTL as I went through a critical period questioning my role and responsibilities as an academic and my journey with a cohort of students who made me realise that there is indeed a dire need for SoTL to bridge the nexus between a university academic’s teaching responsibilities as well as the global ‘publish or perish’ pressure most academics experience today

Management Of A University Satellite Program With Focus On A Refrigerant-Based Propulsion System, Shawn W. Miller

Masters Theses

"The Missouri University of Science and Technology Satellite (M-SAT) design team has established a satellite program to develop a pair of satellites to perform an autonomous formation flight mission. The resulting configuration was assembled for the Air Force Research Lab University Nanosat Program. This document, written by the Program Manager and former member of the Propulsion subsystem, is a description of the management process used by the team to develop a satellite configuration. Included in the document is a discussion of team organization, techniques for managing a program, and lessons learned during the 2007 to 2008 timeframe. The managing techniques …

Applying Cognitively Guided Instruction Through Word Problem Probes, James Jackson Ploen

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Professional development programs have the opportunity to engage educators with new knowledge and pedagogical implications. Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) is a teacher professional development program focused on elementary mathematics instruction (Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Levi, & Empson, 1999). The program's foundation is based upon research of how students learn to solve basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division word problems. Using children's common solutions strategies, CGI leads to teaching practices that support children in generating their own meaningful problem-solving skills while naturally learning mathematics. The paper reviews the literature on CGI and examines the initial findings of interrater reliability of CG I-based …

Electronic Payment System Decision Support With Bloom's Taxonomy, Harika Mattaparthy

Computer Science

The primary goal of this paper is to develop an online course that enables students to learn about electronic payment systems by applying Bloom's taxonomy. There are six levels in Bloom's taxonomy, with knowledge representing the simplest level and evaluation representing the highest and most complex level. These levels of intellectual behavior are vital in learning. To help students understand and analyze the concepts of electronic payment systems, three labs have been developed that map with the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy. The first lab introduces students to the electronic payment system concepts; the second lab helps them understand the …

Design And Implementation Of Social Networking Website Features, Srikanth Goud Aakula

Computer Science

People want to communicate and interact with each other over the internet. There are various websites which are helpful for this kind of socializing. The popularity and adaptability of each website depends on the features it provides to its users. This paper deals with some of features which help users extend their social-networking experience. A social-networking website is designed and developed with features targeting different areas of the social-networking environment like networking, technical support, and profile. This paper focuses on developing features which shall extend the social-networking experience of the user rather than building an entire social-networking website. The website …

Synergy Between Biology And Systems Resilience, Ashik Chandra

Masters Theses

"Resilient systems have the ability to endure and successfully recover from disturbances by identifying problems and mobilizing the available resources to cope with the disturbance. Resiliency lets a system recover from disruptions, variations, and a degradation of expected working conditions. Biological systems are resilient. Immune systems are highly adaptive and scalable, with the ability to cope with multiple data sources, fuse information together, makes decisions, have multiple interacting agents, operate in a distributed manner over a multiple scales, and have a memory structure to facilitate learning. Ecosystems are resilient since they have the capacity to absorb disturbance and are able …

Performance-Based Assessment Of School Psychology Interns : Analysis Of Problem-Solving Skills As Demonstrated In Comprehensive Case Examinations, Kimberly Suzanne Hansen

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

School psychologists are integral partners in the facilitation of the problem solving process, especially when the process is embedded within a tiered service delivery system incorporating response to intervention philosophies. Therefore, it is important that new school psychologists entering the field be competent in the skill areas needed to produce positive student outcomes. It is important for school psychology training programs to assess these competencies to improve individual student competencies as well as to improve the training provided by the program in the future. Comprehensive case studies are performance-based assessments that can be utilized to evaluate individuals, as well as …

Seasonal Patterns Of Arthropod Diversity And Abundance On Big Sagebrush, Artemisia Trientata, M P. Stanford, Nancy J. Huntly

Biology Faculty Publications

The sagebrush biotype is the largest in the western United States. This vast sagebrush community is thought to harbor equally vast and diverse arthropod communities, but these remain little explored. Our objective was to examine the diversity, abundance, and seasonal phenology of arthropod taxa found on the dominant shrub of the sagebrush ecosystem, big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata). We wanted to improve understanding of this little-studied arthropod assemblage that may play significant roles in the dynamics of sagebrush populations and the sagebrush ecosystem. We sampled free-living and gall-forming arthropods from a stratified random sample of sagebrush plants at the Barton Road …

Declaratory Relief After Medimmune, David I. Levine, Charles E. Belle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Indicators Of Linguistic Processing Constraints In The Narratives Of Individuals With High-Functioning Autism, Katherine Michael Belardi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A current model of autism proposes that it is a disorder of information processing. The purpose of this study was to compare the language production of adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) to that of age and Verbal IQ-matched controls with respect to speech disruptions and formulaic expressions, features which indicate linguistic processing challenges. Standard language measures and language samples from the ADOS Telling a Story from a Book and Create a Story tasks were collected and analyzed. No between-group measures were found to be statistically significant. However, 10 of 16 individuals with HFA exhibited speech disruptions consistent with clinically "tangled" …

American Health Care: Justice, Policy, Reform, Carolyn Conti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The American health care system is seriously flawed and in need of reform. American health care is expensive and rationed by the ability to pay. More than forty-five million Americans lack regular access to health care because they have no health insurance and cannot afford to pay for care on their own. An even greater number of Americans have inadequate access to health care because their health insurance provides insufficient coverage. Even well-insured Americans, most of whom get their health insurance through their employers, have problems because their out-of-pocket expenses are escalating while their coverage is shrinking.

Contemporary public discourse …

System Transformation In The Context Of Building An Integrative System In The Child Welfare System In Allegheny County Through Child And Adolescent Needs And Strengths Assessment, Svetlana Doni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the last decade, the Allegheny County constituents could witness the transformation of a widely criticized system of divided services into a single Department of Human Services. As an attempt to improve service planning DHS moved to a common assessment (CANS Comprehensive) shared across the child-serving offices/systems that would lead to a shared service plan and an overall integrated service delivery process. The primary goal of the CANS is to support communication between systems and, in the end, help the integration process within DHS.

This study describes what CANS is and how it became a central point in Human Services …

Rights In Flux: The Rights Of Afghan Women In Different Eras, Kelly Anne Drevitch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Have the lives of Afghan women improved since the U.S. invasion of October of 2001? Historically, the George W. Bush Administration followed past foreign governments, Afghan political parties, and Afghan regimes who also promised to "liberate Afghan women" when making the case for war or violence. Using case study methodology and feminist theory, the research compares the status of Afghan women in three eras: before the Taliban (1973 to 1995), during the Taliban (1996 to October 2001), and since the U.S. invasion (October 2001 to December 2009). By applying gender and cultural essentialism, the research concludes that these theories offer …

An Inquiry Of The Lived Experiences And Contextual Understandings Of Early Childhood Special Educators Related To Children's Trauma, Alison Dubois

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Secondary trauma stress, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma are terms rarely found in educational literature. Studies have shown the significant and lasting ramifications of these constructs within the realm of counseling and psychology. Professionals working in educational settings with high risk populations encounter multiple exposures to children experiencing traumatic events. Despite this phenomenon, teacher and counselor training programs do little to address the issue, thereby matriculating graduates who do not feel confident, well informed, and effective when dealing with trauma material on a daily basis.

This inquiry sought to examine the lived experiences and contextual understandings of early childhood special …

Targeted Lipidomics: Analytical Strategies For Fatty Amides, Kristin Marie Kroniser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are many significant compounds whose resting levels in biological systems are at nanomolar concentrations or below. In order to more effectively study these compounds work is being done to develop a completely automated system on a microchip. Several steps will be taken to start setting up this system because, at these low concentrations, detection is problematic for many current methods of analysis. First, develop a high performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry detection (HPLC/MS) method using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) to detect primary fatty acid amides (PFAMs), one of the lipid classes of interest. Additives such as formic …

Adjustment Experiences And Ethnic Identity Attitudes Among High School Students In Advanced Academic Programs, Tiffany Michelle Hall

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

African American high school students have been historically underrepresented in advanced placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), and dual enrollment (DE) programs. The adoption of more equitable admissions practices has helped many school divisions develop a more ethnically diverse AP, IB, and DE student body. Despite increased African American student enrollment, retaining these students remains an ongoing problem. Equally troubling is the persistent achievement gap that exists between African American and White students in AP, IB, and DE programs African American students do not perform as well as Whites on program exit exams nor do they complete these programs at a …

American And Chinese Personality Traits And Task Load In Simulated Flight Crews: Individual And Team Level Effects, Matthew Edward Loesch

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Understanding the impact of pilot interpersonal dynamics may be crucial for flight team success as well as the prevention of air crash disasters. Achieving optimum performance from flight teams requires limiting unnecessary pilot task load. This study examined American and Chinese simulated flight crews. Factors believed to affect cockpit interpersonal dynamics and subsequent crew task loads were pilot personality and nationality. Pilot personality, team personality elevation, team personality variability, and team nationality were analyzed for their potential impact on task load perceptions. Twenty-four American, 23 Chinese, and 23 mixed nationality two person teams were created and used for comparisons. Increasing …

Transmitter Optimization In Multiuser Wireless Systems With Quality Of Service Constraints, Danda B. Rawat

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, transmitter adaptation for optimal resource allocation in wireless communication systems are investigated. First, a multiple access channel model is considered where many transmitters communicate with a single receiver. This scenario is a basic component of a. wireless network in which multiple users simultaneously access the resources of a wireless service provider. Adaptive algorithms for transmitter optimization to meet Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements in a distributed manner are studied. Second, an interference channel model is considered where multiple interfering transmitter-receiver pairs co-exist such that a given transmitter communicates with its intended receiver in the presence of interference from other …

Organ Donation In Japan: A Longitudinal Study Of Quality Of Life Of Living Liver Donors, Etsuko Soeda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Japan is a highly developed country with a gross national product second only to the United States. Yet in the field of organ transplantation involving organ donation from victims who died from trauma such as automobile accidents and brain hemorrhage, Japan is behind all western countries and many developing countries. Removing organs from deceased donors was prohibited in Japan until 1997.

Currently cadaveric organ donation remains minimal and, as a result, patients in need of heart transplantation must often pay for surgery performed abroad. One of the saddest sights on Japanese streets is a child standing on the street with …

Mothers Behind Bars: The Lived Experience, Annette Weiss

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Purpose

Few research studies have been conducted by nurses that focus on incarcerated women. In fact, there are a limited number of research studies with a focus on the incarcerated female by any individual group of health professionals. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the lived experience of the incarcerated woman as a mother, and to obtain an increased understanding of the meaning of her experience.

Background

The United States has the highest per capita rate of incarcerated persons of all countries. Women are the fastest growing group of inmates and are being incarcerated at double the …

Correct Diagnosis; Wrong Cure: A Response To Professor Suk, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.