Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring School Engagement As A Protective Factor For Youth At Risk Of Joining Gangs, Lorraine M. Escribano

Dissertations and Theses

Research on gangs has traditionally focused on identifying the risk factors associated with youth gang membership in multiple developmental domains with limited attention on examining the protective factors that may buffer youth from joining gangs (Howell & Egley, 2005). Educational and psychological research have found robust evidence that school engagement protects youth from a host of risky activities and negative outcomes (e.g., substance use, dropping out of school) and may hold promise in also protecting youth from gang involvement. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is three-fold: (1) to identify students who are at risk for gangs; (2) to …

La Palabra Es Salud: A Comparative Study Of The Effectiveness Of Popular Education Vs. Traditional Education For Enhancing Health Knowledge And Skills And Increasing Empowerment Among Parish-Based Community Health Workers (Chws), Noelle Wiggins

Dissertations and Theses

Popular education is a mode of teaching and learning which seeks to bring about more equitable social conditions by creating settings in which people can identify and solve their own problems. While the public health literature offers evidence to suggest that popular education is an effective strategy for increasing empowerment and improving health, there have been no systematic attempts to compare the outcomes of popular education to those of traditional education. The goal of La Palabra es Salud was to conduct such a comparison among Latino, parish-based Community Health Workers (CHWs). The study employed a quasi-experimental design, mixed methods, and …

A Cross Sectional Exploratory Study Of The New York State Global History/ Geography Regents, 2001-2007, Patrick J. Darfler-Sweeney

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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An Historical Analysis Of The Virtual Va Program, Linda G. Reviea

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Attachment To God: Its Impact On The Psychological Wellbeing Of Persons With Religious Vocation, Innocent F. Okozi

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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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 …

An Empirical Assessment Of The Can Spam Act, Alex Conrad Kigerl

Dissertations and Theses

In January 2004, the United States Congress passed and put into effect the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN SPAM). The Act was set forth to regulate bulk commercial email (spam) and set the limits for what was acceptable. Various sources have since investigated and speculated on the efficacy of the CAN SPAM Act, few of which report a desirable outcome for users of electronic mail. Despite the apparent consensus of anti-spam firms and the community of email users that the Act was less than effective, there is little to no research on the efficacy of …

Somatization And Engagement In Mental Health Treatment, Teresa Chianello

Dissertations and Theses

Somatization, the presentation of physical symptoms without an identifiable cause, is among the most common problems in primary medical care. Treatment approaches are typically offered within the medical consultation interview once the medical provider distinguishes between physical and emotional etiology. This dualistic strategy is especially troublesome for patients whose physical complaints cannot be validated and who are recommended for only mental health therapy. The aim of this study was to examine how medical practitioners can instead motivate patients to consider both physical and emotional treatment. An analogue intervention consisting of an enhanced consultation interview was compared to a care as …

Initiation Zone Characterization Of Debris Flows In November, 2006, Mount Hood, Oregon, Rachel Pirot

Dissertations and Theses

In November, 2006, a storm generated a minimum of 34 cm of precipitation in six days, triggering debris flows in many of the drainages on all sides of Mount Hood, Oregon. Of the eleven drainages surveyed, seven experienced debris flows; these include the White River, Salmon River, Clark Creek, Newton Creek, Eliot Creek, Ladd Creek and Sandy River basins. Flows in the White River, Eliot Creek, and Newton Creek, caused major damage to bridges and roadways. Initiation elevations averaged around 1,860 meters. Initiation zone material was predominantly sand (45-82%) with gravel (15-49%) and had few fines (3-5%). Four debris flows …

Drought Analysis Under Climate Change By Application Of Drought Indices And Copulas, Wen Yang

Dissertations and Theses

Drought is a recurrent extreme climate event with tremendous hazard for every specter of natural environment and human lives. Drought analysis usually involves characterizing drought severity, duration and intensity. Similar to most of the hydrological problems, such characteristic variables are usually not independent. Copula, as a model of multivariate distribution, widely used in finance, actuarial analysis, has won increasingly popularity in hydrological study. Here, the study has two major focuses: (1) fit drought characteristics from Streamflow Drought Index (SDI) or Standardized Runoff Index (SRI) to appropriate copulas, then using fitted copulas to estimate conditional drought severity distribution and joint return …

Occurrence And Concentrations Of Caffeine In Seawater From The Oregon Coast And Potential Effects On The Dominant Mussel, Mytilus Californianus, Zoe Rodriguez Del Rey

Dissertations and Theses

Caffeine, a biologically active drug with many known molecular targets, is recognized as a contaminant of aquatic systems including marine systems. Although the concentrations of caffeine reported from aquatic systems are low (ng/L to μ/L), harmful ecological effects not detected by traditional toxicity tests could occur as a result of caffeine contamination. The goals of this thesis project were to: 1) quantify concentrations of caffeine occurring in the coastal ocean off of the Oregon Coast and to determine if higher levels were correlated with proximity to caffeine pollution sources; and 2) investigate the sub-lethal cellular toxicity of environmentally relevant concentrations …

Who Am I? Well, It Depends: How Frame-Of-Reference Imposes Context In Non-Contextualized Personality Inventories, Elizabeth Anne Mccune

Dissertations and Theses

The frame-of-reference (FOR) effect refers to the finding that validities for personality measures can be improved by asking respondents to consider how they behave in a particular context (e.g., "at work"). Recently, Lievens, De Corte, and Schollaert (2008) demonstrated that a FOR serves to reduce within-person inconsistencies in responding, which then improves the reliability and validity of personality measures. Despite this important step forward in FOR research, Lievens et al. note that there is still very little known with regard to how respondents complete non-contextualized personality inventories (i.e., inventories where no FOR is provided). The present studies sought to fill …

Numerical Modeling Of Electromagnetic Scattering In Explosive Granular Media, Garth Sundberg

Dissertations and Theses

Terahertz (THz) reflection and transmission spectroscopy is a promising new field with applications in imaging and illicit material detection. One particularly useful application is for the detection of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which is a favorite weapon of global terrorists. Explosive materials have been shown to have a unique spectral signature in the THz band which can be used to identify the explosives. However, the initial measurements performed on the explosive samples do not account for the modulation of the spectral features by random scattering that will be prevalent with actual samples encountered in applications. The intent of this work …

Radiative Transfer Theory Applied To Ocean Bottom Modeling, Jorge Quijano

Dissertations and Theses

Research on the propagation of acoustic waves in ocean bottom sediment is of interest for active sonar applications such as target detection and remote sensing. Currently, all seabed scattering models available in the literature are based on the full solution of the wave equation, which sometimes leads to mathematically intractable problems. In the electromagnetics community, an alternative formulation that overcomes some of this complexity is radiative transfer theory, which has established itself as an important technique for remote sensing. In this work, radiative transfer (RT) theory is proposed for the first time as a tool for the study of seabed …

Panacea Or Pathetic Fallacy? The Swiss Ban On Minarets, Lorenz Langer

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

On November 29, 2009, Swiss voters adopted a ballot initiative introducing a constitutional ban on the construction of minarets. This Article provides a thick description of the minaret vote's context. A legal analysis addresses the implications of the ban under national, regional, and international normative frameworks. The Article argues that the ban is irreconcilable with the Swiss constitutional bill of rights and several international human right provisions. In Switzerland, however, respect for the vox populi potentially trumps any concern over conflicting international obligations, and there is no effective judicial review of initiatives. This lack of judicial review is partly a …

Civilians In Cyberwarfare: Conscripts, Susan W. Brenner, Leo L. Clarke

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Civilian-owned and -operated entities will almost certainly be a target in cyberwarfare because cyberattackers are likely to be more focused on undermining the viability of the targeted state than on invading its territory. Cyberattackers will probably target military computer systems, at least to some extent, but in a departure from traditional warfare, they will also target companies that operate aspects of the victim nation's infrastructure. Cyberwarfare, in other words, will penetrate the territorial borders of the attacked state and target high-value civilian businesses. Nation-states will therefore need to integrate the civilian employees of these (and perhaps other) companies into their …

One New President, One New Patriarch, And A Generous Disregard For The Constitution:, Robert C. Blitt

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The government of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)--the country's predominant religious group--recently underwent back-to-back changes in each institution's respective leadership. This coincidence of timing affords a unique opportunity to reassess the status of constitutional secularism and church-state relations in the Russian Federation. Following a discussion of the presidential and patriarchal elections that occurred between March 2008 and January 2009, the Article surveys recent developments in Russia as they relate to the nation's constitutional obligations. In the face of this analysis, the Article argues that the government and the ROC alike continue to willfully undermine the constitutional principles of …

Exploring The Depths: Inquiry To Apply And Deepen Students’ Understanding Of Density, James M. Sleep, Lee Johnson

Iowa Science Teachers Journal

This activity is designed to deepen students' understanding of the concept of density through scientific inquiry. Students devise procedures to determine the relative and absolute (qualitative and quantitative) densities of several solutions of salt water, and establish a class consensus on their results. Students then apply their findings to estimate the density of an unknown solution. The targeted grade-level for this activity is 8 grade physical science. However, because we know students at all grade levels struggle to understand density, this activity could also be useful in high school Earth science and chemistry. This activity promotes National Science Education Content …

Environmental Barriers Contributing To Dental Caries Among Diverse And Underserved Children: Meeting The Challenge In The United States And Iowa, Venus Hernandez

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this literature review of secondary data is to 1) Identify environmental factors such as oral health education, water fluoridation and sealant programs, access to dental insurance, and dental health workforce issues, that may contribute to poor oral health, and 2) Provide recommendations to reduce these barriers that are linked with oral health disparities among children in the United States and Iowa. This literature review concludes that there is a need to consider comprehensive, multiple approaches to address family and community determinants of oral health. Some of these strategies include simultaneous efforts, such as increasing the number of …

A Defensible Defense?: Reexamining Castle Doctrine Statutes, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Recent years have seen a proliferation of so-called “castle doctrine” statutes – laws that provide home dwellers with more expansive self-defense protections if they resort to lethal force in confrontations with intruders. The passage of such laws and subsequent uses of the defense have captured the public imagination, prompting significant media attention, as well as skeptical and critical scholarship from the legal academic community. Considering the current prevalence of castle laws and the often polarized nature of the debate concerning their application, this Article argues that it is important to excavate the doctrine from the culture wars rhetoric in which …

New Media Globalization In Asia: The Online Game Industries Of South Korea, Singapore, And China, Peichi Chung

Iowa Journal of Communication

This paper examines the emerging media flow in the new media economy of Asia by focusing on the networking of media exchange among three growing production centers. It argues that the nation-state has come to play an increasingly important role in the development of a pan-Asian cultural economy in the online gaming industries of Asia. New cultural production centers have created a rising regional growth corridor between South Korea, Singapore and China. This paper concludes that this emerging growth corridor in Asia redefines the power relationship between core and periphery in the global media industry in ways that affect the …

Iowa Journal Of Communication, Volume 42, Number 1, Fall 2010 [Download Entire Issue]

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

The Game Of Being Social: Web 2.0, Social Media, And Online Games, Larissa Hjorth

Iowa Journal of Communication

As the Internet confluences into the creative social networking potentialities of Web 2.0 localities, the techno-social fabric of online gaming dramatically shifts. Once the preoccupation of 'hardcore' gamers, MMOGs (massively multi-player online games) have now become casualized (Juul 2009) and part of the daily diet of many millions of social networking sites (SNS) users. This is particularly apparent in the Asia-Pacific region in locations such as China and Singapore. In this paper I will explore the rise of 'Web 2.0' and its types of social labour (i.e., playbour and produsers), epitomized by SNS, that have led to the growth of …

Mental Toughness In High School Wrestlers Before And After A Competitive Wrestling Season, Mandi Jo Drees

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Very little research has examined mental toughness abilities of high school sport participants. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to assess the mental toughness abilities of high school wrestlers as well as determine if an entire competitive season results in a change in mental toughness in wrestlers. A total of 63 high school male wrestlers participated in this study. They were asked to complete the MeBTough Questionnaire and a demographic questionnaire at the beginning of the regular competitive wrestling season and again at the end of the competitive wrestling season. Data was collected over a 3 month period at …

Steamboat Bill : William J. Peterson: Iowa's River Historian, Nathan J. Gruber

Undergraduate Student Work

A biography of William J. Petersen, a superintendent of the State Historical Society of Iowa.

First-Year College Student Beliefs About Writing Embedded In Online Discourse: An Analysis And Its Implications For Literacy Learning, Gina Burkart

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Online discourse has become a common mode of communication for the Twenty- First Century. Many businesses now use electronic networking sites such as Facebook to communicate with customers through online posts and electronic updates through Twitter. With these recent trends in electronic communication, some educators have begun implementing electronic discourse into the classroom through online discussion boards. Discussion boards available through course technology such as WebCT and eLearning offer educators opportunities to channel this heightened interest in online communication. By building electronic course sites, educators can further classroom discussions on online discussion boards, which allow students to discuss course material …

User Satisfaction With Electronic Reference: A Systematic Review, Elaine M. Lasda Bergman, Irina I. Holden

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Purpose – The paper aims to systematically review research that analyzes satisfaction with electronic reference services, paying particular attention to how user satisfaction is measured. The application and value of evidence‐based methodologies for library and information science (LIS) research are explored.

Design/methodology/approach – Database searches identified research concerned with electronic reference. Articles with a variable of user satisfaction were extracted and subjected to a critical appraisal. The remaining research was analyzed for similarities, differences, and consistency.

Findings – A wide variety of methods are used to measure user satisfaction. There was almost no overlap in specific questions considered although there …

A Beer Party And Watermelon: The Archaeology Of Community And Resistance At Ccc Camp Zigzag, Company 928, Zigzag, Oregon, 1933-1942, Janna Beth Tuck

Dissertations and Theses

In March 1933, the administration of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a national relief program aimed at alleviating the disastrous effects ofthe Great Depression. The Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) began as one of these programs designed to employ young men from all over the country and put them "back to work". The CCC provided these young men with training, a monthly stipend, and basic supplies such as food, clothing, and accommodations. After 1942, CCC camps were closed and many of these sites were abandoned or destroyed, leaving little historical documentation as to the experiences ofthe people involved. This …

"Real Americanism" : Resistance To The Oregon Compulsory School Bill, 1920-1925, Catherine Marie Saks

Dissertations and Theses

The early 1920s are generally described as a period of transition for American society. Many forces of change collided to create an unsettled atmosphere that appeared to threaten traditional American ideas and values. After World War I, the United States fostered a climate of anti-Catholicism and nativism out of fear that foreign ideas spelled the demise of traditional American values. These ideas were certainly not new to American culture as anti-Catholic sentiments figured prominently throughout the founding of the nation. During the early 1920s, however, a resurrected Ku Klux Klan promoted itself as the protector of American institutions. It won …

Public Opinion And Public Engagement With Genetically Modified Foods : A Qualitative Study, Celeste Laurana Moser

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the current study was to understand public opinion formation by determining what factors influence opinion leaders in the organic food community to engage in the genetically modified food debate, and how opinion leaders describe American lay publics' engagement in the debate.