Digital Commons Network^™

Geosciences Newsletter - 2010, Department Of Geosciences

Geological and Environmental Sciences News

Vol. 4, No. 1

• Faculty Updates
• Publications
• MGRRE
• Grants
• Graduate News
• Awards
• Field Trips
• Alumni
• Advisory Board

College Voice Vol. 35 No. 6, Connecticut College

2010-2011

No abstract provided.

Developing A Framework For A Toolkit For Carbon Footprint That Integrates Transit (C-Fit), Cutr

Research Reports

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Tdm Into The Land Development Process, Cutr

Research Reports

No abstract provided.

Newsletter, The Grouper, November 1, 2010, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg. Division Of Student Affairs

Student Life Engagement

The November 1, 2010, issue of "The Grouper," a newsletter for the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's student organizations.

Genealib Archive 2010-11, Genealib

GENEALIB Archive

No abstract provided.

Off To Pennsylvania, Konrad Basler

Swiss American Historical Society Review

After New York, my wife and I traveled on to Bethlehem,

Pennsylvania. We had long been invited to visit John and Nelda Fisher

there, old university friends of ours, and it was now that we finally complied.

'It looks greener and cleaner', was our first response to the town that

had become our second home and our daughter Susan's birthplace. The

fortunate change in the town's appearance seemed due to the 'Bethlehem

Steel Company', which had shrunk to a mere tenth of its original jobs.

Lehigh University, on the other hand, had grown in size-in particular its

research department for …

The Not-So-Quiet Revolution: Cautionary Comments On The Rejection Of Hypothesis Testing In Favor Of A “Causal” Modeling Alternative, Daniel H. Robinson, Joel R. Levin

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications - Archive

Rodgers (2010) recently applauded a revolution involving the increased use of statistical modeling techniques. It is argued that such use may have a downside, citing empirical evidence in educational psychology that modeling techniques are often applied in cross-sectional, correlational studies to produce unjustified causal conclusions and prescriptive statements.

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 …

Abundance And Species Richness Of Seedlings In Proximity To Forest In Windbreaks Of Cañitas, Costa Rica, November 2010, Rebecca Brey

Monteverde Institute: Tropical Ecology and Conservation

Windbreaks are important to agricultural landscapes as well as biodiversity. They may preserve crops and livestock, harbor a diverse seed bank, as well as serve as corridors for forest animals. I examined species richness and density of seedlings within the understory of windbreaks connected to a forest. It was expected that closer proximity to forests would have higher species richness and seedling densities. A total of 220 seedlings were observed spanning across 35 different species and 23 families. The plant families of Lauraceae, Myrtaceae, and Solanaceae were found to have the greatest number of species diversity. Viburnum costaricanum, family Caprifoliaceae, …

Differences In Atta Cephalotes Foraging Rate And Amount Of Substrate Harvested Following The Introduction Of An Antifungal Agent, November 2010, Benjamin Hedin

Monteverde Institute: Tropical Ecology and Conservation

Optimal foraging theory dictates animals will behave in the most energetic favorable fashion, maximizing energy gained while minimizing energy lost. However, exceptions do exist, such as mating behaviors and predator avoidance. I show that oat flakes contaminated with antifungal powder, simulating secondary compounds, are selected less and at a lower rate by a colony of Atta cephalotes. This demonstrates the ability of the colony to recognize and discriminate against the contaminant to protect their symbiotic fungus. It also suggests that leafcutters, to an extent, can detect the amount or toxicity of the secondary compound. The willingness of the ants to …

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 …

Accidental Leaders No More: Challenges Facing Healthcare Leaders Of Today And Tomorrow, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Singapore’s ageing population means healthcare costs are going up at faster than ever. The heavier workload and growing business opportunities within this essential industry also means that on-going tensions between the public and private sectors are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Yet, at the same time, the industry faces multi-dimensional challenges, like rapidly-changing technology and fierce competition for talent. How can healthcare organisations prepare themselves for the challenges ahead? For a start, they could use a pipeline of formally-trained leaders.

"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.

We Built It, They Came, Now What? Lessons Learned From Creating A Successful Course Integrated Information Literacy Program, Margaret Fain, Jamie Graham, Lisa Hartman

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

What happens to an instruction program when it becomes successful; when demand for sessions outstrips available teaching space, technologies and teachers? Much instruction literature focuses on building programs, but there is little on managing a program that has become so popular that there are not enough spaces in the instruction calendar to handle the demand. This session will focus on building and sustaining such a program and the challenges to keep it moving forward. Over the last decade, Coastal’s instruction program has grown 68% and the number of students reached has grown 82%.

This session will focus on the success …

Teaching Web 2.0 To Student 1.5: Effective Methods For Introducing New Information Tools, Robin L. Ewing, Melissa K. Prescott

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Contrary to the perception that undergraduate students are expert users of social networking and other Web 2.0 tools, reference and instruction librarians at St. Cloud State University have discovered that many students are unaware of Web 2.0 tools besides Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Drawing from classroom experiences as well as student feedback, this session will discuss ways to include Web 2.0 information tools such as podcasts, wikis, blogs, video streaming, social bookmarking, and RSS in information literacy instruction. The presenters will discuss techniques for introducing students to new information tools, ways to incorporate these tools into class assignments, and methods …

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.” …

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 (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 …

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 …

Wiki-Ing Your Wat Into Collaborative Learning, Molly Beestrum, Kenneth Orenic

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2008

Information Literacy and Library Instruction literature has touted the benefits of collaborative learning for years. Wikis have added a new dimension to the process of student collaborative learning. This interactive session will demonstrate how quickly and easily librarians can create classroom assignments that engage students, generate immediate results, promote collaboration, and reinforce learning objectives all through the use of a wiki.

Session participants will: * Examine the connection between collaborative or active-learning activities in library instruction and student learning outcomes, * Discuss the ways in which newer technologies, particularly wikis, can facilitate these connections, * Develop practical applications for the …

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 …

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 …

Grinberg's Criterion Applied To Some Non-Planar Graphs, G.L. Chia, C. Thomassen

Research Publications (2006 to 2010)

Robertson ([3]) and independently, Bondy ([1]) proved that the generalized Petersen graph P(n,2) is non-hamiltonian if n == 5 (mod 6), while Thomason ([5]) proved that it has precisely 3 hamiltonian cycles if n == 3 (mod 6). The hamiltonian cycles in the remaining generalized Petersen graphs were enumerated by Schwenk ([4]). In this note we give a short unified proof of these results using Grinberg's theorem.

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 …

Civil Right To Counsel: In Re Marriage Of King And The Continuing Journey, Deborah Perluss

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

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 …