Digital Commons Network^™

A Grounded Theory Approach To Faculty’S Perspective And Patterns Of Online Social Presence, Rebecca A. Cox-Davenport

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this research study was to generate a grounded theory regarding the patterns and perceptions of nursing faculty in the formation of social processes in an online course. Employing a grounded theory approach, this researcher built upon the theoretical concepts of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). The CoI model illustrates the inner workings of the educational experience. The model consists of three main components: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence. These three elements overlap to demonstrate how each factor influences the other forms of presence. This study sought to better understand …

The Integration Of Biomimicry Into A Built Environment Design Process Model: An Alternative Approach Towards Hydro-Infrastructure, Timothy Lee Albertson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Current methods and processes that support the planning, design and construction of a sustainable built environment include ambiguous principles (Roseland 2000), lack feedback loops (Van Bueren and Jong 2007) and lack a common language between disciplines (Brandon et al 1997). As a result of 3.8 billion years of "research and development" (evolution), nature provides a set of design blueprints that may be used to guide us to create elegant, sustainable, and innovative designs for human technologies (Benyus 1997). The field of biomimicry analyzes nature's best ideas and adapts them for human use (Benyus 1997). The built environment could benefit from …

Enhanced Food Marketing To Children On The Internet: A Content Analysis, Sarah A. Ochsner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In light of the continuing epidemic of childhood obesity, aggressive food marketing strategies have come under increased scrutiny as a possible contributing factor. It has been acknowledged in numerous studies, that poor nutrient quality of food and beverages dominate children's programming. The growth in child-specific media envoys has further increased favorable opportunities to market food and beverages to children, notably less regulated and parentally unsupervised. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 65% of children aged 6-11 have home access to the Internet; and today, the majority of food manufacturers operate websites appealing to children. The Institute of Medicine issued a …

At Their Own Deliberate Speed: The Desegregation Of The Public Schools In Beaufort County, South Carolina, Anne Kelsey

All Theses

This project studies public school desegregation in Beaufort County, South Carolina, from 1954-1973. Beaufort County is a community that historians have overlooked in the narrative of southern school desegregation. Just like other southern communities, Beaufort County's school desegregation story must be studied from multiple angles and across time. By focusing on a rural county on the coast of South Carolina, this project asks how school desegregation occurred in areas outside of the `visible South.' Within this narrative, this project approaches Beaufort County's school desegregation from two historiographical angles--one top-down and the other bottom-up. The first explores how federal mandates and …

'Champions Of Contending Armies': The Ancient Rivalry Between Massachusetts And South Carolina, 1829-1856, William Merrell

All Theses

The focus of this work is the 'ancient rivalry' between Massachusetts and South Carolina, as it played out in the antebellum era. Although little attention has been devoted exclusively to the study of this rivalry, it exercised a considerable degree of influence over the nation on its path to civil war. Most notably, this rivalry directly impacted the emergence of an American national identity between 1830 and 1860. The self-perpetuating rivalry between South Carolina and Massachusetts helped define the parameters of American identity, and ensured the eventual exclusion of South Carolina from such an identity. Filtered through three specific episodes, …

Image-Based Modeling Techniques For Artistic Rendering, Bynum Murray Iii

All Theses

This thesis presents various techniques for recreating and enhancing two-dimensional paintings and images in three-dimensional ways. The techniques include camera projection modeling, digital relief sculpture, and digital impasto. We also explore current problems of replicating and enhancing natural media and describe various solutions, along with their relative strengths and weaknesses. The importance of artistic skill in the implementation of these techniques is covered, along with implementation within the current industry applications Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and Pixologic Zbrush. The result is a set of methods for the digital artist to create effects that would not otherwise be possible.

Orientalism In American Cinema: Providing An Historical And Geographical Context For Post-Colonial Theory, Samuel Scurry

All Theses

Of the many criticisms leveled at Edward Said's seminal work, Orientalism (1978), and those of post-colonial theorists following in his wake, from an historian's perspective the most significant is that his argument is utterly lacking in historical context. In fact, post-colonial theorists do tend to mistrust the validity of history and often are suspicious of its complicity in the enterprise of western empires. Despite Said's undeniable ahistoricism, however, most historians agree that the basic tenants of his argument have merit. What is lacking, then, is an examination of orientalism not as an indictment, with all manner of evidence pulled seemingly …

Modeling Phosphate Adsorption For South Carolina Soils, Jesse Cannon

All Theses

Eroded sediment and the pollutants it transports are problems in water bodies in South Carolina (SC) and the United States as a whole. Current regulations and engineering practice attempt to remedy this problem by trapping sediment according to settling velocity, and thus, particle size. However, relatively little is known about most eroded soils. In most cases, little experimental data are available to describe a soil's ability to adsorb a pollutant of interest. More-effective design tools are necessary if design engineers and regulators are to be successful in reducing the amount of sediment and sediment-bound pollutants in water bodies. This study …

Collaboration And Road Safety On Indian Reservations, Leah Sirmin

All Theses

Native Americans, as a group, face many challenges including the highest motor-vehicle fatality rate of any racial or ethnic group in the United States. While national motor-vehicle fatality rates have declined, the fatality rates for Indian reservations have continued to rise. Because addressing road safety requires significant interdisciplinary work, collaboration is an important tool; however, collaborations between tribal entities and non-tribal partners face a number of unique challenges including tense historical relationships, tribal sovereignty, and cultural differences. A variety of strategies can be utilized to address these challenges including methods such as regular face-to-face meetings to build trust, establishing formal …

Handedness As A Predictor Of Success In Far Part 141 Flight Training, Danielle Dracy

Theses and Dissertations

The current study assesses the prevalence of left-, right-, and mixed-handedness and handedness as a predictor of success in flight training. The convenience sample is comprised of students enrolled in or who have previously completed the private pilot course at the University of North Dakota’s Part 141 flight training program. The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory and self-report methods are used to determine subject’s handedness. Success in flight training is assessed using student computerized academic and flight records. Statistical analysis of the data does not show a significant difference between left-, right-, and mixed-handed students with any of the measures used. This …

Sense Of Connection And Learning In Traditional And Online Courses At A Rural-Serving Community College, Jayne M. S. Kiner

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to establish an overall measurement for student sense of classroom community in terms of the theoretical dimensions of emotional connection, and needs fulfillment (learning). Further intent was to determine the nature of differences, if they exist, between delivery method (traditional or online), teaching style cluster (containing formal authority style or facilitator style), course type, student’s residence (on-campus, off-campus commuting, or off-campus not commuting), age, and student major on sense of classroom community in terms of emotional connection and learning.

Quantitative research methods were used with a causal-comparative design and survey instruments. Differences were determined …

Speciation And Reactivity Of Cisplatin In River Water And Seawater., Lisa Curtis, Andrew Turner, Nitin Vyas, Graham Sewell

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The adsorption of the cytostatic anticancer drug, cisplatin (cis-PtCl(2)(NH(3))(2)), has been studied after its addition to suspensions of estuarine sediment in river water and seawater. After a 16 h reaction period, adsorption was significantly greater in river water (sediment-water distribution coefficient, K(D), of 400 mL g(-1)) than that in seawater (K(D) approximately 150 mL g(-1)) because of the ready aquation of cisplatin to the more reactive monoaquacisplatin (cis-PtCl(OH(2))(NH(3))(2)(+)) at low chloride ion concentrations. Adsorption in river water was enhanced (K(D) approximately 2000 mL g(-1)) by a 24 h period of preincubation in the aqueous phase in which aquation proceeded further. …

"You Know How It Works, It Is A Dance, An Art, Not A Science": A Science Study On Decision Making By Public Two-Year College Presidents, Chad M. Coauttee

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the decision making processes of public two-year college presidents. This research examines the factors that influence a public two-year college president's decision to respond or not respond to external stakeholders who request new or improved programming/services from the college. The researcher incorporates the concept of naturalistic decision making to augment Stark and Lattuca's ( 1997) model that illustrates influences on the college educational environment to examine how presidents respond to requests made by external stakeholders.

The researcher found that when presidents make decisions about responding to external stakeholder requests they are not …

April 29-30, 2010 - Board Of Trustees Meeting Minutes, Regular/Special Sessions, Board Of Trustees, Central Washington University

Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes for the Regular/Special Sessions of the Board of Trustees at Central Washington University, April 29-30, 2010.

Editors' Preface, Gene L. Theodori, Douglas H. Constance

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

introduction to Journal of Rural Social Sciences by new editorial team

How Farmers Learn: Implications For Agricultural Educators, Nancy Franz, Fred Piercy, Joseph Donaldson, Robert Richard, Johnnie Westbrook

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

In this participatory action research, guided by a steering committee of farmers and agricultural educators, we examined how farmers learn and identified implications for agricultural educators. Since most educators teach the way they prefer to learn, this research could shape agricultural educators’ practice with farmers. Focus group interviews and surveys with 115 farmers and agricultural educators helped us understand how and why farmers learn and the role of agricultural educators, especially Extension educators, in farmer learning. Farmers articulated a learning process that relies mostly on first-hand experiences motivated by saving time and money, learning about cutting edge research, and engaging …

Wayne Roberts, The No-Nonsense Guide To World Food, Rachel Kelly, Timothy Ledoux

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

Review of The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, by Wayne Roberts

Extending The Concept Of Community Interaction To Explore Regional Community Fields, Courtney G. Flint, A. E. Luloff, Gene L. Theodori

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

Interactional approaches to community development routinely focus on the community field concept at a local level. This paper expands the field concept to a regional level of analysis. It suggests a regional community field emerges through interactions among communities at a regional scale, particularly in rural areas lacking a dominant metropolitan core. Recent contributions by human geographers highlight the emergent characteristics of regions in contrast to the static, bounded regions conceptualized in the past. Such logic is compatible with community field theory. This paper explores the generalizability of the community field concept and assumptions to larger levels of analysis and …

Nonmetropolitan Population Trends: Twenty-First Century Updates, Don E. Albrecht

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

Population trends in the nonmetropolitan counties of the United States continue to be erratic. This study used 2008 population estimates to make comparisons of 2000-2008 population changes with those of the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Findings showed that population changes during the early years of the 21st century were more reminiscent of the 1980s than the 1990s, as overall population growth was minimal and the number of counties losing population exceeded the number of counties with population growth. It appears that the first decade of the 21st century can be labeled as the “Rural Rebound Reversal” decade. The …

Developing A Filter Kit System Database: Procedure And Analysis, He Shi

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science and Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Science by He Shi on April 30, 2010.

Reporter - April 30th 2010, Rit Reporter Staff

University Publications

No abstract provided.

The Significance Of Local Water Resources Captured In Small Reservoirs For Crop Production – A Global-Scale Analysis, Dominik Wisser, Steve Frolking, Ellen M. Douglas, Balazs M. Fekete, Andreas H. Schumann, Charles Vorosmarty

Earth Sciences

Rainwater harvesting, broadly defined as the collection and storage of surface runoff, has a long history in supplying water for agricultural purposes. Despite its significance, rainwater harvesting in small reservoirs has previously been overlooked in large-scale assessments of agricultural water supply and demand. We used a macroscale hydrological model, observed climate data and other physical datasets to explore the potential role of small, localized rainwater harvesting systems in supplying water for irrigated areas. We first estimated the potential contribution of local water harvesting to supply currently irrigated areas. We then explored the potential of supplemental irrigation applied to all cropland …

Daily Eastern News: April 30, 2010, Eastern Illinois University

April

No abstract provided.

Saving Motivations: A Study Of Faith-Based Community Organizing In Pomona, California, Emily Luttrull

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I seek to engage with broad questions regarding religion and its interaction with the secular political world by examining a specific historical trend and a particular case study example of that phenomenon. In the American Christian tradition, religion and social justice have become inseparable entities; indeed, the Christian tradition has a long-standing relationship with justice initiatives in the United States. This relationship has taken many forms over the past two centuries. A current trend in Christian civic engagement in the United States is involvement with community organizing – which itself is a relatively new method of pursuing …

Whalesong 2010-04-30 (V.28 No.16), Randi Spray, Hollis Kitchin, Mallory Millay, Jeremy Hsieh, Kari Dammerman, Ed Flanagan, Pat Race

Whalesong

No abstract provided.

Household Compost In Rock Island, Scott J. Fick

Tredway Library Prize for First-Year Research

No abstract provided.

How Can We Grow If We Destroy Our Roots? An Analysis Of Roots As Metaphor For Growth And Urban Change, Alexis Vaughn

Scripps Senior Theses

Roots: They take hold; they grow, expand and change, creating networks and sub-networks as they start to break above the earth's surface and stretch up higher towards the sky day by day. Roots can be taken out (the stock, stem or trunk removed), but both the memory and the evidence of the roots' existence will continue to remain for a while to come. The idea of "roots" applies to so much: from artists taking inspiration from previous artists, even at times to mirror the change in the world which one artist had previously documented; from the places we establish our …

"Heaven's Last, Worst Gift To White Men": The Quadroons Of Antebellum New Orleans, Erin Elizabeth Mccullugh

Dissertations and Theses

Visitors to Antebellum New Orleans rarely failed to comment on the highly visible population of free persons of color, particularly the women. Light, but not white, the women who collectively became known as Quadroons enjoyed a degree of affluence and liberty largely unknown outside of Southeastern Louisiana. The Quadroons of New Orleans, however, suffered from neglect and misrepresentation in nineteenth and twentieth-century accounts.

Historians of slavery and southern black women, for example, have written at length on the sexual experiences of black women and white men. Most of the research, however, centers on the institutionalized rape, victimization, and exploitation of …

Sneak Peek: The Urbanatomy Shanghai World Expo Guide 2010

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When the Shanghai World Expo officially opens on Saturday, visitors will have to negotiate the largest fairground ever constructed, spanning 1305 acres on both sides of the Huangpu River. Such an expedition requires not just a map, but a guide – and the Urbanatomy team has stepped in to provide one. Hitting shelves at Carrefour and City Shop stores in Shanghai this week, the Urbanatomy Shanghai World Expo Guide 2010 includes maps of the Expo site, in addition to discussions of World’s Fair history and background on Shanghai. Below, two excerpts from the guide’s introduction, written by Nick Land.

Expo …

Human-Wildlife Conflict Across Urbanization Gradients: Spatial, Social, And Ecological Factors, Amanda H. Gilleland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As suburban and exurban residential developments continue to multiply in urban areas, they encroach on wildlife habitats leading to increased human-wildlife interactions. The animals involved in direct conflict with homeowners are often relocated or exterminated by the homeowners. Often the homeowners contact state licensed wildlife trappers to eliminate the problem animal. In this study I examined how landscape, ecological, and social factors influence the incidence of human-wildlife conflict of thirty two residential areas in the Tampa, Florida metropolitan area. These residential areas, totaling over 300 km2, are part of the urban development gradient representing a range of urban land use …