Digital Commons Network^™

Risk Navigator Srm: An Applied Risk Management Tool, Dana L. K. Hoag, Hat Parsons

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Risk Navigator SRM is a ten-step risk management program for agricultural producers, which is based on the strategic planning process. The ten steps are designed to integrate disparate and difficult risk management concepts into a single system that is easy to use, yet still effective. With the aid of computers and the internet, producers can work through each step toward a final comprehensive plan. The website includes 25 decision tools that help producers accomplish each step and provides links to complementary educational programs, like a national agricultural risk education library, the award-winning risk management simulation program called Ag Survivor, and …

Education Law, Charles J. Crawford, Justin Graham

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Financial Instability, Tax Policy, And The Tax Expenditure Concept, Tim Edgar

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Physical Fitness Test In Relation To Demographics, Academic Achievement, And Students' Physical Fitness Perceptions, Karen Mobilia-Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the overall results of the Physical Fitness Test (PFT) and the six fitness areas of the PFT, academic achievement, demographics and self perceptions and the potential impact on students' performance on the PFT. While academic expectations are increasing, the adolescent obesity rate is also increasing, producing a decline in the fitness levels of adolescents. This study is a two phase non-experimental, quantitative investigation of 2009 - 2010 currently enrolled tenth grade high school students as it relates to their performance on the 2008 - 2009 California Physical Fitness Test. Phase one addresses the analysis of extant data …

A Shortened Synthesis Of Optically Pure Tricarbonyl[Methyl (2e,4e)-6-Oxo-2,4-Hexadienoate]Iron Leading To Improved Yield, Rajesh K. Pandey, Sergey V. Lindeman, William A. Donaldson

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

The (+)- and (–)-enantiomers of tricarbonyl[methyl (2E,4E)-6-oxo-2,4-hexadienoate]iron are prepared in 4 steps from commercially available hexadienal (26% and 25% yields, respectively).

Infrared Spectroelectrochemical Reduction Of Iron Porphyrin Complexes, Zhongcheng Wei, Michael D. Ryan

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

The spectroelectrochemistry of iron porphinones and their nitrosyl complexes were examined by infrared spectroscopy, as well as ferrous octaethylporphyrin nitrosyl. With the use of d₈-THF, the solvent was transparent down to 1200 cm⁻¹. For the porphinones, the reduction of the macrocycle ring could be observed by the changes in the ν_CO band and, for the nitrosyl complex, the changes in the nitrosyl ligand were directly observable from the ν_NO band. Formation of the ferrous complexes led to a small downshift in the ν_CO band. Further reduction to the formal Fe(“I”) complex led to …

Immobilization Of Motile Bacterial Cells Via Dip-Pen Nanolithography, Dorjderem Nyamjav, Sergey Rozhok, Richard C. Holz

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

A strategy to bind bacterial cells to surfaces in a directed fashion via dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) is presented. Cellular attachment to pre-designed DPN generated microarrays was found to be dependent on the shape and size of the surface feature. While this observation is likely due in part to a dense, well formed mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHA) monolayer generated via DPN, it may also simply be due to the physical shape of the surface structure. Motile Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterial cells were observed to bind to DPN generated mercaptohexadecanoic acid/poly-L-lysine (MHA/PLL) line patterns, 'blocks' made up of eight lines with 100 nm spacings, …

Searches For Gravitational Waves From Known Pulsars With Science Run 5 Ligo Data, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, F. Acernese, Teviet Creighton, Matthew Benacquista, Mario C. Diaz, Soumya D. Mohanty, Soma Mukherjee, Malik Rakhmanov, Joseph D. Romano

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

We present a search for gravitational waves from 116 known millisecond and young pulsars using data from the fifth science run of the LIGO detectors. For this search, ephemerides overlapping the run period were obtained for all pulsars using radio and X-ray observations. We demonstrate an updated search method that allows for small uncertainties in the pulsar phase parameters to be included in the search. We report no signal detection from any of the targets and therefore interpret our results as upper limits on the gravitational wave signal strength. The most interesting limits are those for young pulsars. We present …

Assessment Of Total Organic Carbon Concentrations In Two Streams Of Northwest Arkansas: Town Branch And Brush Creek, Abigail N. Washispack, Jason A. Mcginnis, Brian E. Haggard

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Within a stream, changes in flow rate and local environment can affect the total organic content (TOC) concentrations in the stream water and TOC delivery downstream to water supply reservoirs. Disinfection by-products (DBPs) result from various chemical reactions between chlorine, bromine, and organic carbon in raw water during the drinking water treatment process; DBPs are potential carcinogens and are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In this project, we measured the TOC concentrations in two streams in the Beaver Lake Watershed: Town Branch and Brush Creek. We then compared TOC concentrations between the two streams and to that observed …

Possibilities: Kamil Jbeily–The Man And His Vision For The Texas Regional Collaboratives For Excellence In Science And Mathematics Teaching, Martha May Tevis, John Mcbride

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Grammar Of Trademarks, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

How do people talk when they talk about trademarks? If trademarks have
become, as linguist Geoffrey Nunberg suggests, our “new global tongue,”
perhaps we should pay greater attention to the grammar we use when we
talk about them. We use “Coke” to refer to the Coca-Cola beverage in the
North, and “coke” to refer to any kind of soda in the South, yet we still
manage to get the drinks we desire. We use trademarks as verbs—we
“xerox” a document or “tivo” a television program—without losing sight
of the fact that “Xerox” and “TiVo” are brands of particular products.
We …

The Development Of A Semantic Model For The Interpretation Of Mathematics Including The Use Of Technology, Michael Peters

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The semantic model developed in this research was in response to the difficulty a group of mathematics learners had with conventional mathematical language and their interpretation of mathematical constructs. In order to develop the model ideas from linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, formal languages and natural language processing were investigated. This investigation led to the identification of four main processes: the parsing process, syntactic processing, semantic processing and conceptual processing. The model showed the complex interdependency between these four processes and provided a theoretical framework in which the behaviour of the mathematics learner could be analysed. The model was then extended …

Experimental Measurements During Combustion Of Moist Individual Foliage Samples, Brent M. Pickett, Carl Isackson, Rebecca Wunder, Thomas H. Fletcher, Bret Buitler, David R. Weise

Faculty Publications

Individual samples of high moisture fuels from the western and southern United States and humidified aspen excelsior were burned over a flat-flame burner at 987◦ ±12 C and 10±0.5 mol% O2. Time-dependent mass and temperature profiles of these samples were obtained and analysed. It was observed that significant amounts of moisture remained in the individual samples after ignition occurred. Temperature histories showed a plateau at 200◦–300 C at the leaf perimeter rather than at 100 C, with a plateau of 140 C for the leaf interior. Implications are that classical combustion models should be altered to reflect the behaviour of …

Evaluating E-Learning, D D Williams, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

Technological innovations have spurred exponential use of electronic resources for learners of all ages over the last decade. These global developments also require continual advancement of electronic e-learning evaluation. Evaluation is the process of clarifying what should be and comparing that to what is, to facilitate evaluative decisions about success and ways to achieve it. This article outlines a process for doing evaluations of e-learning and identifies common critical-evaluation elements. An extended case vignette of an e-learning evaluation and references to others and related literature illustrate the use of these critical elements and associated emerging results.

One Is The Loneliest Number: The Single Taxpayer In A Joint Return World, Lily Kahng

UC Law Journal

The United States is one of the few developed countries to retain the joint income tax return, available for heterosexual married couples only. Since its adoption in 1948, its underlying assumptions have been challenged on many valid grounds, and yet it remains firmly embedded in mainstream political and policy discourse. In recent years, most of the debate surrounding the joint return has focused on reducing marriage penalties, bonuses, and determining who among the universe of couples ought to be extended the benefit of the marriage bonuses. The treatment of single people has received almost no attention.

The scant attention paid …

Factors Influencing The Decision Of High School Graduating Seniors In Corozal, Puerto Rico, To Pursue University Studies, Aned Yarelis Muñiz Gracia Edd

Dissertations

A university education has become a ticket out of poverty for persons living in highly competitive labor markets. Consequently, access to higher education and the factors that motivate university enrollment have long been studied. However, prior to this study, no noteworthy studies with a focus on high school students and their perceptions about higher education had been conducted in Puerto Rico. This lack of research is surprising because Puerto Rico has one of the world's most competitive job markets where a university degree can mean the difference between dependence on welfare and governmental assistance and a life of self-sufficiency and …

Characterization And Correction Of Dark Current In Compact Consumer Cameras, Justin Charles Dunlap, Erik Bodegom, Ralf Widenhorn

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

A study of dark current in digital imagers within consumer grade digital cameras is presented. Dark current is shown to vary with temperature, exposure time, and ISO setting. Further, dark current is shown to increase in successive images during a series of images. Consumer cameras are often designed to be as compact as possible and therefore the digital imagers within the camera frame are prone to heat generated by nearby elements within the camera body. It is the scope of this work to characterize the dark current in such cameras and to show that the dark current, in part due …

Finite Element Analysis Of A Nose Gear During Landing, Thoai D. Nguyen

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nose gear failure is a high concern in the aviation industries. According to the Federal Aviation Administration reports, 55% of aircraft failures occur during takeoff and landing while 45% of failures occur during flight. The objective of this thesis is to determine the stress behavior and the displacement of a nose gear of an aircraft during landing using structural finite element analysis. The nose gear was first modeled using computer-aided design software and then imported into finite element software. The external forces were determined analytically and the interactions between components were carefully modeled using contact analysis. The tire was modeled …

Understanding Materials, Petros J. Katsioloudis

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The article discusses the importance of understanding the characteristics of materials that will be used for different applications. Through the years, the inventions and innovations in the technology of materials are becoming more technologically complex. Innovations in the materials are divided in different categories, including metals, ceramics, polymers and composites. Example of such innovations in the technology of materials include the ceramic composite applied to the surface of the space shuttle panels to absorb and release high amounts of heat.

On Residual Lifetimes Of K-Out-Of-N Systems With Nonidentical Components, Subhash C. Kochar, Maochao Xu

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, mixture representations of survival functions of residual lifetimes of k-out-of-n systems are obtained when the components are independent but not necessarily identically distributed. Then we stochastically compare the residual lifetimes of k-out-of-n systems in one- and two-sample problems. In particular, the results extend some results in Li and Zhao [14], Khaledi and Shaked [13], Sadegh [17], Gurler and Bairamov [7] and Navarro, Balakrishnan, and Samaniego [16]. Applications in the proportional hazard rates model are presented as well.

A Class Of Discontinuous Petrov–Galerkin Methods. Ii. Optimal Test Functions, Leszek Demkowicz, Jay Gopalakrishnan

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We lay out a program for constructing discontinuous Petrov–Galerkin (DPG) schemes having test function spaces that are automatically computable to guarantee stability. Given a trial space, a DPG discretization using its optimal test space counterpart inherits stability from the well posedness of the undiscretized problem. Although the question of stable test space choice had attracted the attention of many previous authors, the novelty in our approach lies in the fact we identify a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) framework wherein test functions, arbitrarily close to the optimal ones, can be locally computed. The idea is presented abstractly and its feasibility illustrated through …

A Projection-Based Error Analysis Of Hdg Methods, Jay Gopalakrishnan, Bernardo Cockburn, Francisco-Javier Sayas

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We introduce a new technique for the error analysis of hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) methods. The technique relies on the use of a new projection whose design is inspired by the form of the numerical traces of the methods. This renders the analysis of the projections of the discretization errors simple and concise. By showing that these projections of the errors are bounded in terms of the distance between the solution and its projection, our studies of influence of the stabilization parameter are reduced to local analyses of approximation by the projection. We illustrate the technique on a specific HDG …

A Class Of Discontinuous Petrov–Galerkin Methods. Part I: The Transport Equation, Leszek Demkowicz, Jay Gopalakrishnan

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Considering a simple model transport problem, we present a new finite element method. While the new method fits in the class of discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods, it differs from standard DG and streamline diffusion methods, in that it uses a space of discontinuous trial functions tailored for stability. The new method, unlike the older approaches, yields optimal estimates for the primal variable in both the element size h and polynomial degree p, and outperforms the standard upwind DG method.

Investigating Further Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions Of Multidigit Whole Numbers: Refining A Framework, Eva Thanheiser

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study was designed to investigate preservice elementary school teachers’ (PSTs’) responses to written standard place-value-operation tasks (addition and subtraction). Previous research established that PSTs can often perform but not explain algorithms and provided a four-category framework for PSTs’ conceptions, two correct and two incorrect. Previous findings are replicated for PSTs toward the end of their college careers, and two conceptions are further analyzed to yield three categories of incorrect views of regrouped digits: (a) consistently as 1 value (all as 1 or all as 10), (b) consistently within but not across contexts (i.e., all as 10 in addition but …

The Expanding Duties Of Esi And In-House Counsel: Providing Defensible Preservation And Production Efforts After Swofford V. Eslinger, David W. Degnan

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

As a general rule, companies and government agencies should plan for preservation and production before litigation is probable. This means having a document retention program. These programs ensure that documents are retained or deleted in an orderly fashion. If a company properly follows its policies and procedures, this retention program acts as a “shield” against the incomplete preservation of relevant (or “hot”) documents deleted before the proper initiation of a litigation hold. If parties do not follow, or inconsistently follow, such a program, they might have to explain what happened to a missing relevant document. Thus, a retention program might …

Low-Income Health Care Networks: Initial Conditions, Extent, And Intensity Relevant To County Government Participation, Hillary Knepper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary health care systems in the United States are not equitable. Indeed, as the literature indicates, there are substantial differences in the variety and scope of service delivery based on age, income, and other socio-economic indicators. The recent passage of health care reform in the United States illustrates that Americans are seeking to bring balance and equity to health care. However, as learned in this study, county governments across the country have been working in their communities to ensure some balance and equity, by making a safety net available for those citizens who are unable to access health care. Perhaps …

Welcome, Patricia R. Renick Ph.D.

Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education

Welcome to the Spring/Summer 2010 edition of the Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education.

This issue contains research into the planning, communication, and collaboration necessary for successful inclusion efforts.

Dr. Ida Malian provides us with a study that explores Co-Teaching as a means of providing for the needs of exceptional learners.

Dr. Vance Austin also explores this topic of co-teaching in a middle school as a means of including students with special needs.

Dr. Carl Saltarelli discusses the relationship between early college credit and higher achievement with undergraduate students.

Dr. Richard Mehrenberg provides a qualitative investigation into the process of redesigning …

Response To Intervention: Right On Track, Charmion B. Rush, Nicole Dobbins Ph.D., Stephanie A. Kurtts Ph.D.

Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education

The purpose of response to intervention, or RTI, is founded on the premise that, with data-based decision making and evidence- based practices, children who otherwise may have been identified with a mild educational disability will receive early instructional intervention and thus have the opportunity to remain with their peers in general education settings. For RTI to be successful, educational professionals need to have the core building blocks for implementation. A comprehensive RTI plan integrates academic interventions with behavioral supports to catch struggling learners early. Identification models that include RTI may lead to better achievement and behavior outcomes for all students. …

A New Nonlinear Classifier With A Penalized Signed Fuzzy Measure Using Effective Genetic Algorithm, Julia Hua Fang, Maria L. Rizzo, Honggang Wang, Kimberly Espy, Zhenyuan Wang

Mathematics Faculty Publications

This paper proposes a new nonlinear classifier based on a generalized Choquet integral with signed fuzzy measures to enhance the classification accuracy and power by capturing all possible interactions among two or more attributes. This generalized approach was developed to address unsolved Choquet-integral classification issues such as allowing for flexible location of projection lines in n-dimensional space, automatic search for the least misclassification rate based on Choquet distance, and penalty on misclassified points. A special genetic algorithm is designed to implement this classification optimization with fast convergence. Both the numerical experiment and empirical case studies show that this generalized …

A Reasonable Semantic Web, Pascal Hitzler, Frank Van Harmelen

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The realization of Semantic Web reasoning is central to substantiating the Semantic Web vision. However, current mainstream research on this topic faces serious challenges, which forces us to question established lines of research and to rethink the underlying approaches. We argue that reasoning for the Semantic Web should be understood as "shared inference," which is not necessarily based on deductive methods. Model-theoretic semantics (and sound and complete reasoning based on it) functions as a gold standard, but applications dealing with large-scale and noisy data usually cannot afford the required runtimes. Approximate methods, including deductive ones, but also approaches based on …