Digital Commons Network^™

Orality And The Land: The Impact Of Colonialism On Lmaa Narratives In Kenya, Michael L. Lolwerikoi

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Transnational Migration And The Reverse Mission Of Nigerian-Led Pentecostal Churches In The U.S.A.: A Case Study Of Selected Churches In Metro Atlanta, William E. Udotong

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Leading A Polytheistic Faith To The Monotheistic God: A Study In Identifying Barriers To The Gospel In A Chinese Buddhist Community And Ways To Overcome Those Barriers, Agnes N.A. Woo

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Toward Addressing Split-Level Christianity : A Study Of The Interaction Between Christianity And Folk Religions In Romania, Florin Paul Botica

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Barriers In Conversion (Missional And Indigenous Barriers) : Identifying The Potential Barriers Contributing To The Stagnant Progress Of Evangelistic Work Among The Burman Buddhists, Zam Sian Khai

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Foot Washing : A Way To Transform Pastors' Service To God Within The United Methodist Church, Peter W. Vermeulen

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Does Nighttime Television Influence Attitudes Toward Drinking?, Mike Mchone

Master's Theses

Alcoholism is a problem in the United States. Television portrays individuals drinking alcohol. Is television influencing attitudes toward drinking? An experiment was performed with students from San Josè State University in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications to discover if television would indeed influence them to drink.

Two groups, both Mass Communication classes, participated in an initial survey, and then the test group class viewed a dramatized program in which the main character was depicted drinking glamorously. Both classes then took the same survey again. Results were analyzed via a t-test. Although there was a change in attitude regarding …

Aircraft Deconfliction Responsibility Across En Route Sectors In Nextgen Separation Assurance, Christopher Donald Douglas Cabrall

Master's Theses

The subject of the current research is a Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) concept that involves automated separation assurance developed to enable controllers to provide both safe and efficient air traffic services at much higher traffic densities than possible today. The study investigated the issue of how responsibility should be handled between controllers for the resolution of a conflict that is predicted to occur in a sector other than where it was detected. Two possibilities, a De-Conflicting AirPlanes procedure (DCAP) versus a De-Conflicting AirSpace procedure (DCAS), were examined under human-in-the-loop simulations with scripted aircraft conflicts. Results showed that the …

Cooperative Symbol-Based Signaling For Networks With Multiple Relays, Yuanyuan Quan

Master's Theses

Wireless channels suffer from severe inherent impairments and hence

reliable and high data rate wireless transmission is particularly challenging to

achieve. Fortunately, using multiple antennae improves performance in wireless

transmission by providing space diversity, spatial multiplexing, and power gains.

However, in wireless ad-hoc networks multiple antennae may not be acceptable

due to limitations in size, cost, and hardware complexity. As a result, cooperative

relaying strategies have attracted considerable attention because of their abilities

to take advantage of multi-antenna by using multiple single-antenna relays.

This study is to explore cooperative signaling for different relay networks,

such as multi-hop relay networks formed …

Undergraduate Music Student Stress And Burnout, Helen Jane Orzel

Master's Theses

Burnout is fatigue and diminished interest caused by long-term stress. It is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment. In the university music atmosphere, stress and burnout are prevalent and accepted as part of the culture. Symptoms and causes of general stress and burnout have been well researched, but much less has been presented on college musicians' burnout, let alone how to deal with it. This study examines the sources of stress, burnout, and ways of coping for undergraduate music students.

A questionnaire with both quantitative and open-ended questions was administered during the 2009 spring semester. Participants …

Study Of The Lasting Effects Of Attending A Leadershape Program, Daniel J. Stoker

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This exploratory study investigated the long-term learning resulting from participation in a LeaderShape program. The research examined LeaderShape graduates' current practices and definitions of leadership to see if they remain consistent with the program's learning goals. Graduates with five or more years since attendance were studied to provide a separation of time for the social experience to dissipate and to allow for possible application of the material beyond a collegiate setting. An electronic survey was distributed to 1,399 LeaderShape graduates who attended a national session between 1986 and 2004, resulting in 207 (14.8%) responses. Quantitative questions were analyzed utilizing SPSS …

Paying The Price For Too Big To Fail, Cornelius K. Hurley

Faculty Scholarship

We find ourselves in an economic crisis, the severity of which few persons living today have witnessed. Fear, the natural accompaniment of such crises, arises from our uncertainty about the depth and duration of the crisis. The consensus is that a restoration of confidence is fundamental to a recovery. From the eye of the storm, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of attempts at quelling its ravages. Yet, we may have little choice but to begin making those assessments as the architecture of the new order is being designed now.

The origins of the current crisis are well recorded. …

Principles Of The Law Of Software Contracts, Robert A. Hillman, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

An overview of a new set of legal principles for software contracts developed by the American Law Institute.

Social Media Marketing In Performing Art Centers, Natalia V. Ryzhkova

Theses

In the reality of an economic recession and increasing competition in all sectors of economy, companies strive to find more effective and efficient ways to increase brand awareness and market their services. This study investigates one such effort used in the entertainment side of the tourism sector – social media marketing. Specifically this research looks at how Performing Art Centers are developing social media marketing. Developing an effective viral marketing strategy within the social media landscape requires being aware of the current usage of social media by Performing Art Centers in their attempt to market the services to their target …

Addressing The Gender Gap: Teaching Preadolescent Girls Computer Networking Concepts, Cynthia Strong

Theses

Due to the decline in the number of professional women entering labor markets in the area of computing and technology, there is a need for intervention. Focus should be given to improving these numbers by creating an early interest in women in computing and technology. This thesis focuses on developing educational modules that will create interest in networking concepts in preadolescent girls. Educational best practices, fundamentals of how people learn, assessments of pedagogy effectiveness, observations, and personal experiences frame the modules. Research such as this in the area of creating early interest will help address the issue of equal opportunity …

Relationships, The Rules Of Professional Conduct And Land Use: Ethical Quagmires For Land Use Attorneys, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This article begins to fill the void by introducing the application of the various Rules of Professional Conduct, as adopted by the specific opining jurisdiction, through a review of the relevant reported opinions of the various committees and sometimes courts, in the land use context. Part I discusses the challenges that arise for lawyers vis-à-vis their clients in the land use context. This is followed by a discussion in Part II of the ethics and professionalism issues that confront lawyers who serve on local boards.

Dynamic Fault Tolerant Grid Workflow In The Water Threat Management Project, Young Suk Moon

Theses

Achieving fault tolerance is an inevitable problem in distributed systems, with it becoming more challenging in decentralized, heterogeneous, and dynamic-environment systems such as a Grid. When deploying applications requires time-criticality, how to allocate resources for jobs in a fault-tolerant manner is an important issue for the delivery of the services. The Water Threat Management project is a research to find solutions for the contamination incidents problems in urban water distribution systems, and it involves the development of the cyberinfrastructure in a Grid environment. To handle such urgent events properly, the deployment of the system demands real-time processing without the failure. …

Creating Local Networks In The Cloud, José R. Sánchez E.

Theses

The resources and services offered by cloud computing platforms have been opening new alternatives of expansion to several research areas. The cloud computing platform applications to the educative area have been creating interest in different educative organizations. This thesis proposes the use of the Amazon EC2 cloud computing platform to build networking laboratories for the computational and networking educative areas. Within this paper, several options are evaluated in order to fulfill this objective. The final proposed design introduces a practical scenario for networking laboratories. Future enhancements of the final design are proposed.

Students’ Satisfaction When Using A Remote Virtual Lab Based On Amazon Ec2 For Networking Courses At Pucmm, Kenny Díaz Jorge

Theses

This thesis compared the students' level of satisfaction when using a remote virtual lab based on Amazon EC2 for networking courses at PUCMM, versus using the existing traditional laboratories. For this study junior and senior students were chosen from Systems Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering programs at PUCMM from two laboratories subjects: Operating Systems Lab I and Data Switching Lab. These lab subjects include certain number of laboratory practices during the whole class period. For this research, only one laboratory practice was evaluated (physically vs. virtually) in each subject. The rest of the laboratory practices were done as usual (physically) in …

How Does The Power Crisis Problem Affect Data Management In The Dominican Republic, José Raúl Vélez Díaz

Theses

In the last decade, the Dominican Republic has been affected by a power crisis nation wide. In 2008, the crisis reached a deficit of 40% in the generation of power; and the problem seems to go on as no agreement is executed to solve it. The problem is originated from the lack of efficiency of many generators, and debts with the generators companies. An important aspect of the power crisis is the challenge to provide power quality to electronic equipment. Data management can be affected by this problem whenever there is data corruption or lost, and devices are damaged. Data …

Evaluation Of Privacy Assurance Methods And Guideline Development: Implications For Dr’S Higher Education Institutions, Noe Luzon

Theses

This project evaluates the actual mechanism of privacy assurance in the Dominican Republic's Higher Education institutions towards a standardization process. International regulations and type codes such as U.S Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and Spain Castilla's University de La-Mancha conduct code for personal data protection have been examined in order to obtain a ground for comparing and evaluating Dominican Republic's higher education privacy assurance methods. The evaluation of the Dominican Republic's actual higher education was developed through investigation of the different processes and procedures that people who are responsible of the students personal data, follow to achieve their …

Feasibility Of Backing Up Server Information In A Distributed Storage Using Client Workstations Hard Drives, Raúl Rafael Acevedo Cárdenas

Theses

As a consequence of nowadays large hard disk capacities, we can frequently find many networks in corporate environment with a considerable amount of unused hard disk storage space dispersed among all its computers. In an immediate future, the purpose of this unused space is unclearly defined and represents a waste of resource. Several studies suggest and evaluate numerous ways to take advantages of workstation unused hard disk space in a network. However, there are no evidences of studies that consider disk-based backup, distributed storage, and the unused workstation storage aiming at backing up server information in small business network. Determining …

Security Practices: A Mixed Approach, Sourabh Dass

Theses

Consistency of information is ideally maintained by adhering to the best practices and policies. However, statistics show trends of rising threats in information security in global landscape. It leads us to believe that there may be scope for improvement in transforming a good policy on paper into a better practice. This thesis research identifies various points of failure that arise out of improper implementation of a good policy. This research provides basic guidelines for implementation of usable security policies.

Control Of Self-Reconfigurable Robot Teams For Sensor Placement, Jacob Hays

Theses

"Self Reconfigurable Robots (SRRs) are a system of many simple modules that can rearrange themselves to work together and better perform complicated tasks. They are in theory more extensible then traditional robotics. We investigate the particular problem of using SRRs to both explore and survey an unknown environment. The environment is explored by using the Robots internal sensors, and surveyed by placing a limited number of static sensors at ideal locations. The advantage of SRRs is that they can adapt to terrain difficulty by adjusting the number of individual robots on the field by reorganizing its modules. We test a …

Efficient Object Tracking In Waas Data Streams, Trevor Clarke

Theses

Wide area airborne surveillance (WAAS) systems are a new class of remote sensing imagers which have many military and civilian applications. These systems are characterized by long loiter times (extended imaging time over fixed target areas) and large footprint target areas. These characteristics complicate moving object detection and tracking due to the large image size and high number of moving objects. This thesis evaluates existing object detection and tracking algorithms with WAAS data and provides enhancements to the processing chain which decrease processing time and increase tracking accuracy. Decreases in processing time are needed to perform real-time or near real-time …

Investigating Attributes - From Technologist To Business Leader, Christopher Kronenthal

Theses

As technology matures, its proliferation within an organization is ever more evident, providing a myriad of opportunities for career advancement and visibility for those specialized in the field. Taking advantage of this environment requires certain skill sets and personality traits. This thesis attempts to synthesize two disparate categories of professional aptitude (technologist and executive/business leader) by utilizing the common psychological profile platform known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and then, apply that synthesis to an analysis of whether or not a correlation exists between the two groups. The key denoting factor amongst the two demographics in the supporting studies …

Unified Communications: The Search For Roi Through Tomorrow’S Business Communication Solutions, Vincent Puglia

Theses

The traditional workplace is evolving; the way in which businesses communicate today is different than it was in the past and yet is likely to change again in the future. The current state of the economy and globalization has forced every organization to review its future business plans and cut costs everywhere including communications. Organizations are seeking out technology in hopes of finding new ways to reduce their bottom-line communication costs. Today, many enterprise business infrastructures are comprised of separate networks - voice, data, and mobile - yet most of the time these networks never interact. The ability to link …

An Analytic Investigation Into Self Organizing Maps And Their Network Topologies, Renee Baltimore

Theses

This paper details master's thesis work involving research and investigation into the approach of self-organizing maps for clustering of data, more specifically, clustering of image data, and how this can be used in understanding image composition. This work will build upon ideas which have previously been explored, such as using self organizing maps for identifying and grouping different regions of an image which may possess similar features. A large part of this research is based upon experimentation with a variety of topological models of the self-organizing map network and investigation into what advantages these different topologies afford the network in …

The Accidental Clinician And The Experienced Director: A Conversation On The Value Of Externships, Marjorie A. Silver, Mary Jo Eyster

Scholarly Works

In the summer of 2010, Mary Jo Eyster and Marjorie Silver conversed, via email, about the ways in which externship programs add unique value to the student’s education, separate and apart from their cost-effectiveness as compared to the in-house clinic. The result is this paper, a dialogue between a stand-up teacher who chose to teach the externship seminar and a seasoned clinician.

Mary Jo and Marjorie agree that the well-designed, well-executed program should drive the design, teaching and administration of externships and their accompanying seminars. They share the goals that each of them privilege in the programs they have designed, …

The Quasi-Class Action Method Of Managing Multi-District Litigations: Problems And A Proposal, Charles Silver, Geoffrey P. Miller

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article uses three recent multi-district litigations ("MDLs") that produced massive settlements-Guidant ($240 million), Vioxx ($4.85 billion), and Zyprexa ($700 million)-to study the emerging quasi-class action approach to MDL management. This approach has four components: (1) judicial selection of lead attorneys, (2) judicial control of lead attorneys' compensation, (3) forced fee transfers from non-lead lawyers to cover lead attorneys' fees, and (4) judicial reduction of non-lead lawyers' fees to save claimants money. These procedures have serious downsides. They make lawyers financially dependent on judges and, therefore, loyal to judges rather than clients. They compromise judges' independence by involving them heavily …