Digital Commons Network^™

Leaf Area, Worker Size, And Number Of Hitchhiking Minima In Atta Cephalotes, November 2010, Daniel Shimek

Monteverde Institute: Tropical Ecology and Conservation

Several species of leaf-cutter ants, including Atta cephalotes, exhibit an interesting behavior of hitchhiking minima. Minima are the smallest of the polymorphic castes of leaf-cutter ants and the function and origin of this hitchhiking behavior is not completely understood. There are several hypotheses for this behavior, and the most popular include defense against parasites and cleaning the leaf fragment of contaminants. Studies have investigated some patterns of hitchhiking behavior including different frequencies during day and night and distance from colony. This study examined the relationship between head width, leaf area and the number of hitchhiking minima in A. cephalotes. Ants …

Technologies Of Mobile Communication, Monika Margilaj

Theses and Dissertations

Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is a new technology recently specified by 3GPP-Third Generation Partnership Project on the way towards fourth-generation mobile. This thesis presents the main technical features of this technology as well as its performances in terms of peak bit rate and average cell throughput, among others. LTE entails a big technological improvement as compared with the previous 3G standards. 1 However, this thesis also demonstrates that LTE performances do not fulfill the technical requirements established by ITU-R to classify one radio access technology as a member of the IMT-Advanced family of standards. Thus, this thesis describes the procedure followed …

Staff Impact On Customer Satisfaction, Besiana Behluli

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to find out what impact has a company’s staff/employees in the customers’ level of overall satisfaction towards the company. Another purpose was to see how employees interrelate with customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The method applied in this thesis was a questionnaire containing 25 questions. All the questions were formulated to examine directly how these respondents feel regarding employees who out to be a company’s most valuable asset. The results indicated that all these respondents valued mostly the employees in a company, and that employees would in most of the cases determine their purchase …

Time Diary Versus Instantaneous Sampling: A Comparison Of Two Behavioral Research Methods, Michael Paolisso, Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The accurate collection of unbiased behavioral data is an important component of theory building and ethnographic research. In this article, the authors review two approaches for the collection of behavioral data: time diary and instantaneous sampling. Time diary requires individuals to recall their behavior at specific time intervals; instantaneous sampling relies on researchers observing and recording the behavior of individuals. Each approach has specific strengths and weaknesses. The authors review recent methodological literature on both approaches, identify particular problems with both approaches, and contrast their respective methodological strengths and weaknesses.

Host Genes Associated With Hiv-1 Replication In Lymphatic Tissue, Anthony J. Smith, Qingsheng Li, Stephen W. Wietgrefe, Timothy W. Schacker, Cavan S. Reilly, Ashley T. Haase

Qingsheng Li Publications

Much effort has been spent recently in identifying host factors required for HIV-1 to effectively replicate in cultured human cells. However, much less is known about the genetic factors in vivo that impact viral replication in lymphatic tissue, the primary anatomical site of virus-host interactions where the bulk of viral replication and pathogenesis occur. In order to identify genetic determinants in lymphatic tissue that critically affect HIV-1 replication, we used microarrays to transcriptionally profile and identify host genes expressed in inguinal lymph nodes that were associated determinants of viral load. Strikingly, ~95% of the transcripts (558) in this data set …

"Why Does Google Scholar Sometimes Ask For Money?" Leveraging The Economics Of Information And Scholarly Communication Processes To Enrich Instruction, Scott Warren, Kim Duckett

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Librarians at North Carolina State University have developed useful techniques for enhancing information literacy instruction through the systematic incorporation of concepts pertaining to scholarly communication and the economics surrounding information. This presentation describes ways to leveraging such concepts as the Deep Web, Google Scholar, the nature of scholarly communication, and the inflated costs of journal subscriptions to contextualize hands-on instruction in the use of library resources. Assessment data from open-ended quizzes and surveys positively reflects students’ attitudes towards this instruction and exposes the impact of such instruction on student understanding about how research is made available on the Web.

The Multicultural Classroom: Plan, Build, Renew - Librarian As Constructivist Architect, Kimberly Davies Hoffman, Susan Preston Norman

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Of New York State’s largest urban school districts, Rochester ranks lowest with an appalling graduation rate of 39%.1 With goals of keeping our poorest children in school and focusing their futures on college, SUNY Geneseo hosted 50 young “CSI candidates” who worked tirelessly to solve fictitious art thefts. Library research, blogging, public speaking, interviewing, forensic science, and digital photography were among the skills incorporated, forming a solid base of critical literacy for these young scholars. Milne Library helped create an educational yet recreational learning environment by offering instructors, classroom space, technology, potential suspects, and ultimately, one of the indicted “criminals.” …

Re-Architecting An Information/Technology Literacy Course: Breaking New Ground And Laying Foundational Pedagogies, Mardi Chalmers

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

The session will be separated into two sections: breaking new ground and foundational pedagogies for new course architecture. The presenter will first describe several models of course redesign and apply them specifically to redesigning an info/tech literacy course. These models go from partial to complete re-architecting, so participants would be able to fit their current information literacy course(s) into one of these models, making this session very valuable to any librarian wishing to improve information literacy (IL) instruction at their institution.

The second section will focus on pedagogies used for over a decade in the sciences, humanities and education for …

New Learning, New Scholarship, New Spaces: Creating Dynamic Physical Environments, Laurie Alexander, Barbara Macadam

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Learning spaces, such as lecture halls, teaching laboratories, and quiet study nooks are still needed, but no longer fulfill the full range of students’ needs. As students choose to learn in dynamic environments, they need spaces that support intellectual curiosity and facilitate critical inquiry. By implementing a full spectrum of learning spaces, the University of Michigan Library reinforced the message that we are the place on campus where emerging information technologies, rich information resources, and user-focused services come together to support learning and scholarship. This presentation will provide critical concepts that are important to consider when transforming library spaces.

Modeling Scholarly Inquiry: One Article At A Time, Anne Marie Gruber, Mary Anne Knefel, Paul Waelchli, Jessica Schreyer

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Librarians and the Director of the Writing Center at the University of Dubuque describe how they teamed with English faculty to create and implement an assignment that incorporates critical thinking, ethical inquiry, and information literacy in a beginning composition and rhetoric class. In the assignment, a team of faculty, librarians, and writing tutors lead student peer groups as they write a research paper using common journal articles in support of a single thesis. Because a recent campus-wide ethics initiative frames this assignment, students examine topics that may challenge their existing beliefs. Librarians will also analyze qualitative data collected during the …

Learning Infused Libraries: Honest Talk About What It Really Takes To Create A Learning Commons, Laura Baker

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

The Learning Commons concept integrates technology, library services, and other academic support to create a more holistic learning environment. In 2006, the ACU Library partnered with eight other academic entities on campus to transform the library’s role in student learning. Using photos, results from user surveys, and honest talk, we will share insights into how we changed our physical space, our educational role, and our self concept.

Our library conducted user surveys to discover how student learn and how faculty teach. We will first present results from these surveys that guided us in understanding what patrons need in a learning …

Learning (2.0) To Be A Social Library, Beverly Simmons

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

What do you do when your faculty and staff are 1.0 people living in a 2.0 world? At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga we realized that many of our librarians and staff were unfamiliar with the Web 2.0 technologies that are so important in our students’ lives. We see students devoting an enormous amount of time and attention to online social networking. In fact, Alexa reports that five social networking sites - YouTube, MySpace, Orkut, Wikipedia and Facebook – all rank in the top 10 global Web sites for usage volume. We figured that if every librarian and staff …

Fantasy Sports: The Road To Information Literacy Championships, Paul Waelchli, Sara Holladay

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

19.4 million fantasy sports players, many college students, rely on information literacy to succeed in fantasy sports leagues, but do not realize it. This session analyzes the connection between fantasy sports and information literacy and how librarians can use fantasy sports to make information literacy meaningful to students. A background on fantasy sports, media and research is provided. One library, University of Dubuque, connected information literacy skills to fantasy football for incoming student athletes. The planning, implementation, and assessment of those instruction sessions are outlined, which included the following steps:

1. Fantasy sports and fantasy football skills were mapped to …

Cn U Hlp? Collaborative Chat Reference And Instruction, Gayatri Singh, Kenneth Furuta

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Not only has the use of chat reference created new learning spaces, studies have shown that instruction regularly occurs during the virtual interactions. However, these studies have focused on a single institution’s experience and do not address the additional challenges faced by a consortium of libraries. Ask a UC Librarian, staffed by seven of the ten University of California campuses, is an example of a consortium exploring this new learning space together. We will present the challenges, rewards, and what we have learned in building a supportive literacy learning environment that provides instruction to students via collaborative chat reference.

Building And Designing Bridges - Enabling Bilingual Academic Learning Experiences, Eileen K. Bosch, Valeria E. Molteni

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Attendees will have an opportunity to learn and discuss with two librarians from California State University System about the challenges and issues experienced in implementing bilingual services in reference and instructional sessions to bilingual speaking students on their campuses. In addition, attendees will be able to learn about a strong partnership developed between both librarians as well as empowering a curriculum relationship with faculty in Foreign and Romance Languages Departments. Presenters will also address how to create an ambiance of support to first generation students who often experience a lack of confidence necessary to be academically successful.

After the presentation, …

Assessing One-Shot Instruction: Using Post-Assignment Evaluations To Build Better Assignments, Jennie E. Callas

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

As instruction librarians, teaching is the focus of our job, and evaluations of our teaching effectiveness should contribute to discussions of our overall performance. Traditional course evaluations are used by faculty who spend full semesters with students, but how can we evaluate teaching effectiveness in one-shot sessions? Freshman English students at R-MC evaluate library instruction AFTER they turn in the annotated bibliography assignment the instruction targets. The evaluation, which was developed in part because the original assignment was unsuited to the library’s resources and tools, enables students to reflect on their completion of the assignment and to evaluate teaching effectiveness …

When The World Grows Smaller: Renewing Instruction Methods For International Students, Merinda Kaye Hensley

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

With globalization diversifying our university culture, American universities are welcoming an increasing population of international students. Librarians are searching for innovative instruction ideas that adapt to international learning styles while crossing cultural and language barriers.

This interactive workshop will engage participants on the topic of renewing instruction methods for ESL students (although many of the ideas could be applied in almost any academic library setting) framed by the Cephalonian Method. Previously used for orientation purposes, the Cephalonian Method is a learner-centered technique designed to facilitate learning through capturing the attention of the audience. Framed by the overhaul of the University …

Function Before Form: Designing The Ideal Library Classroom, Diane Dallis, Carrie Donovan

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

At Indiana University-Bloomington, the libraries house many rooms that are used for instructional purposes, but none represents the characteristics of an ideal learning environment. In order to address the growing instructional needs of the IUB libraries and the lack of appropriate space in which to provide IL instruction, the libraries created a committee that was charged with making recommendations for new library classrooms. The group started this task by conducting a literature review on the concepts of classroom design and best practices. Finding surprisingly little research or practical information published about classroom design with which to guide them, the committee …

Indiana Wildlife Disease News, Vol 5, Issue 3 -- November 2010, Joe N. Caudill, Dean Zimmerman

Indiana Wildlife Disease News

Nasal bots in White-tailed Deer

Recent Changes to the Indiana DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife

Two New Wildlife Health Reporting Tools: 1) The Wildlife Health Event Reporter (WHER) website, created by Researchers in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, and 2) “Outbreaks Near Me,” created by Children’s Hospital Boston researchers Clark Freifeld and John Brownstein

New Contact at National Wildlife Health Center for Central US States - Dr. LeAnn White

Midwest Wildlife Disease Update:
Two Kentucky Cows Test Positive for TB
Ohio Dairy …

A Structured Undergraduate Research Program That Trains And Prepares Students For Post-Graduate Education And Scientific Careers, Dina L. Newman, Leslie Kate Wright, Hyla C. Sweet

Presentations and other scholarship

In this paper we present a model for a structured, rigorous, undergraduate research program which has been developed and successfully implemented for six years at the School of Biological and Medical Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) for students interested in pursuing long-term independent research experiences. The Research Scholars Program (RSP) includes crucial elements of preparation, presentation, and publication into the undergraduate research experience and helps students meet the National Science Foundation’s five “Undergraduate Competencies” that are crucial for scientific literacy.

Since 2005 between five and thirteen students per year have successfully completed RSP (69 to date). Upon …

Factors Influencing Teacher Job Satisfaction And Their Alignment With Current District Practices In A Suburban School District, Kimberly Rae Dickens

Dissertations

School districts across the country make many decisions that impact teachers’ satisfaction both positively and negatively. With statistics reporting a significant number of teachers leaving the profession in the first 5 years of experience, determining the reasons for teacher dissatisfaction are important in shaping district practices to be more supportive and satisfying to teachers. The purpose of this research study was to (a) determine the satisfaction level of teachers in a specific school district, (b) determine the practices school principals have put into place and how they relate to the factors identified in the research as being contributive to teacher …

Social Life Connects The World: Malaysian Youth’S Usage Behaviour Of Social Network Sites, F.M. Wong, M.L. Lean, P.R. Fernandez

Research Publications (2006 to 2010)

The recent trend of using social network sites (SNS) is a globally widespread phenomenon. SNS such as Facebook, Friendster, MySpace and Twitter are popular among millions of users around the globe. SNS are used to build relationships, to communicate and share information, multimedia contents and daily happenings, and to increase their social networks for personal or business purposes. Thus, this study aims to investigate the main reasons for using SNS among Malaysian youth and their usage behaviour. In particular, this study also intends to look into their attitude towards SNS, and their overall usage experience. The investigation for this study …

Genomic Tools Development For Aquilegia: Construction Of A Bac-Based Physical Map, Guang-Chen Fang, Barbara P. Blackmon, David C. Henry, Margaret E. Staton, Christopher Saski, Scott A. Hodges, Jeff P. Tomkins, Hong Luo

Publications

The genus Aquilegia, consisting of approximately 70 taxa, is a member of the basal eudicot lineage, Ranuculales, which is evolutionarily intermediate between monocots and core eudicots, and represents a relatively unstudied clade in the angiosperm phylogenetic tree that bridges the gap between these two major plant groups. Aquilegia species are closely related and their distribution covers highly diverse habitats. These provide rich resources to better understand the genetic basis of adaptation to different pollinators and habitats that in turn leads to rapid speciation. To gain insights into the genome structure and facilitate gene identification, comparative genomics and whole-genome shotgun …

Passion, Protest, Or Just Plain Incivility?: Responding To Bad Behaviors In Public Meetings, Suzanne Mccorkle

Research and Reports

Bad behavior is not new, but the prevalence of incivility seems a rising tide in the public arena. Passionate outbursts at a public input meeting and planned protest to disrupt meetings are captured with increasing frequency on today’s omnipresent electronic media. The negative invective allowed/encouraged during political campaigns seems to carry over to public input meetings and other places intended for the measured, deliberative processes of governance. In the public forum, sometimes it is easy to discern the planned protest from the passionate outburst; sometimes it is not. When a theater group pretending to be audience members broke into song …

Ontology Alignment For Linked Open Data, Prateek Jain, Pascal Hitzler, Amit P. Sheth, Kunal Verma, Peter Z. Yeh

Kno.e.sis Publications

The Web of Data currently coming into existence through the Linked Open Data (LOD) effort is a major milestone in realizing the Semantic Web vision. However, the development of applications based on LOD faces difficulties due to the fact that the different LOD datasets are rather loosely connected pieces of information. In particular, links between LOD datasets are almost exclusively on the level of instances, and schema-level information is being ignored. In this paper, we therefore present a system for finding schema-level links between LOD datasets in the sense of ontology alignment. Our system, called BLOOMS, is based on the …

Affirmative Action In Malaysia And South Africa: Policies And Outcomes In Education And Employment, H.A. Lee

Research Publications (2006 to 2010)

This paper surveys and evaluates affirmative action policies and outcomes in Malaysia and South Africa, two countries with majority-favouring regimes. I outline the historical contingencies and political economy of policy formulation, noting key similarities and differences. Broadly, Malaysia's continuity ofBumiputera political dominance and relatively discretionary policy framework contrasts with South Africa's post-Apartheid transition to democratic majority rule and institutionalization of a more statutory framework. This paper then presents empirical evidence of the progress of affirmative action, focusing on representation of disadvantaged groups in tertiary education and upper-level employment. We consider Malaysia and South Africa separately, followed by analysis of our …

Small-Scale Helicopter System Identification Model Using Recurrent Neural Networks, Z. Taha, A. Deboucha, M. Dahari

Research Publications (2006 to 2010)

Designing a reliable flight control for an autonomous helicopter requires a high performance dynamics model. This paper studies the recurrent neural network nonlinear model identification of a small scale helicopter. We have selected a Nonlinear AutoRegressive with eXogenous Inputs Series- Parallel (NARXSP) network model which identifies the dynamics model of an unmanned aerial helicopter from real flight data. The identification process is conducted by using the well known Levenberg-Marquardt learning algorithm. The obtained dynamics model shows good fitness with the actual data. This accuracy might be used to realize a reliable flight control for an autonomous helicopter.

Medical Malpractice Law, Sean P. Byrne, Lauran G. Stimac

University of Richmond Law Review

Health care reform took center stage on a national level overthe past year. Despite suggestions that medical liability reform might be incorporated into the federal legislation, in the end, it was not. Similarly, this year saw few legislative developments at the state level in medical malpractice law, as the Virginia General Assembly focused its energy primarily on the budget shortfall and other issues. There were, however, several health care legislative and case developments of note which will impact the medical liability landscape in the coming years. Board of Medicine activity and medical malpractice trial results of interest are also highlighted …

Constitutional Specificity, Unwritten Understandings And Constitutional Agreement, Tom Ginsburg

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

No abstract provided.

The Route Less Travelled: Assessment Of Procedural Memory In Dementia. Poster, Nidhi Mahendra, Amanda Scullion, Cassandra Hamerschlag

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.