Digital Commons Network^™

Communication Deficits In Babies With Autism And Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified (Pdd-Nos), Max Horovitz

LSU Master's Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are characterized by pervasive impairments in communication, socialization, and repetitive behaviors or interests. While there is a growing interest in early ASDs, very few studies have looked at the nature of these impairments before age 3. In order to better strengthen early assessment and intervention for ASDs, more knowledge is needed in this area. The current studies aimed to determine if, and in what ways, communication impairments are present in infants and toddlers (17-37 months) diagnosed with autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). In the first study, infants with autism and PDD-NOS …

Public Perception Of Wildfire Risk And Prescribed Burning In The Wildland/Urban Interface Of The Louisiana Florida Parishes, Charlotte Ann Gerald

LSU Master's Theses

Wildfire has been suppressed in the nation’s forests for over a hundred years. The accumulation of forest fuels over time has created an urgent need to reduce fuel loads to prevent catastrophic wildfires from occurring, not only in our wildlands, but also in our Wildland/Urban Interfaces (WUI’s). The residents who live within the WUI are particularly vulnerable to extreme wildfire events. As cities become more densely populated, increasing numbers of people are moving beyond the suburbs into the WUI. A complex matrix of structures and forested land, developing communities, and impinging forests exists within the WUI. This study utilized a …

The Transnational Networks Of Cultural Commodities: Peruvian Food In San Francisco, Kelsey Ann Brain

Dissertations and Theses

In a setting of increased movement, communication, and flows across space, commodity chain networks bring valued cultural commodities to transnational communities. This research examines the networks bringing foreign cuisine ingredients to Peruvian transnational communities in San Francisco, California. It seeks to answer three inter-related questions: 1) What are the origins and transportation networks bringing Peruvian food items to San Francisco; 2) Who controls and benefits from the movement of this food and resulting capital; and 3) How do networks vary for different classes of end consumers?

Chefs of ten Peruvian restaurants and ten Peruvian migrants in the San Francisco area …

It's The Principal Of The Thing: Guiding A Rural School Has Its Own Trials, Susan Wilson, Tim France

Metroscape

The difficulties of K-12 education have become familiar to citizens of the metroscape, but they are usually viewed through the lens of urban and suburban schools, with their problems of multi-ethnic populations, crowded classrooms, strained budgets, and the like. Metroscape® was curious about the struggles and triumphs of the schools in the rural areas of the region, so we sent our interviewer, Susan Wilson, a Portland freelance writer, to Willamina to talk to a small town education leader in hopes of glimpsing the realities of schooling kids in that often overlooked setting.

A small-town principal is a versatile member of …

The Role Of Old-Fashioned Racism: Disaggregating Symbolic Racism In The United States, Leslie Curtis Cox

LSU Master's Theses

Old-fashioned, biological, or "Jim Crow" racism is viewed by many in the political science and psychology literature to be largely a relic of the past. In the post-segregation era it has been replaced as a political force by symbolic racism, although its residual effect still operates within symbolic racism as negative racial affect. Symbolic racism is thought of as a coherent belief system that describes whites‘ attitudes not only in the United States, but in some European democracies as well. This conceptualization of symbolic racism ignores the differences in the historical legacy of racism across different regional and demographic contexts. …

Solid-Liquid Separation Technologies In The Conversion Of Bagasse To Liquid Fuel, Keith Miller

LSU Master's Theses

Development of liquid biofuels has entered a new phase of large scale pilot demonstrations. A number of plants in operation or under construction face the engineering challenges of creating a viable plant design, scaling up, and optimizing various unit operations. It is well-known that separation technologies account for 50-70% of both capital and operating costs. Processes vary in terms of selection of unit operations; however, solid-liquid separations are likely to be a major contributor to the overall project costs. A typical process for ethanol production from biomass includes several solid-liquid separation steps. The nature of biomass derived materials makes it …

The Blame Is In The Frame: Inter-Reality Comparisons Of Crime Reports And Local News Crime Coverage On The Internet, Dana Marie Tumblin

LSU Master's Theses

Research of crime news suggests that Blacks are over represented as criminals when compared to crime reports; study of race and crime judgments reveals that viewers with heavy amounts of television news viewing associate Blacks with crime more often than viewers who watch lower amounts of television news. Further complicating the perception of Blacks is their lack of diversified coverage in the news. Most coverage of Blacks frames them as liabilities to their communities, while offering few positive depictions to counter the Black criminality frame. The Internet may aid in exacerbating stereotypes of Blacks by allowing users to selectively expose …

Caged Morpholino Oligonucleotide For Control Of Gene Expression In Zebrafish, Chad Michael Jarreau

LSU Master's Theses

To control gene expression in vivo with spatial and temporal precision remains a significant hurdle in laboratory studies of development as well as clinical genetic therapies. Here we demonstrate such control over gene expression by use of photochemistry to reversibly inactivate the hybridization of a nucleic acid analog used for specific protein knockdown. A morpholino oligonucleotide, commonly used for knockdown of protein expression in developmental studies, was “caged” using carbodiimide conjugate chemistry which yielded photocleavable adducts that can be removed with light exposure. Photochemical inactivation approaches to produce caged molecules have been used to control the spatiotemporal activity of biomolecules …

Communicating Conservation: Public Relations Practitioners' Communication Efforts To Inform The Public Of The Detriments Of Coastal Erosion And Wetlands Loss, Stephanie Ellene Shaddock

LSU Master's Theses

Coastal erosion is a serious problem that directly affects Louisiana and indirectly affects the entire United States. Between 1990 and 2000, Louisiana lost 24 square miles of land per year, which equals an approximate football field lost every 38 minutes (Barras, Bourgeois, & Handley, 1994). Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 accelerated this land loss by transforming 217 square miles of marsh into open water (United States Geological Survey, 2006). As a leader in seafood, oil, and gas production, and shipping state, Louisiana and the nation have much at stake with continued land loss. To inform Louisiana’s citizens and a …

"Unspottyd Lambs Of The Lord": Presbyterianism And The People In Elizabethan London, Katherine E. Sawyer

LSU Master's Theses

The official English church in the mid-sixteenth century vacillated back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism, the two rivals of European Christianity. As these changes engendered a broad array of disagreements over issues such as liturgical practices, clerical attire, and church ornamentation, this thesis focuses on the most provocative of these debates-presbyterianism-and its proliferation among the men and women of Elizabethan London. Despite the propagation of presbyterian-style nonconformity in several regions of Elizabeth's realm, London functioned as the epicenter of this challenge to religious orthodoxy. From their location at the economic, religious, and cultural heart of the nation, Elizabethan Londoners …

Staying Objective: The Effect Of Corporate Public Relations On Video Game Journalists, Benjamin Jenkins

LSU Master's Theses

The video game industry makes more than $10 billion a year in the United States alone. It is a young and booming medium. Growing alongside the video game business is the video game media, a niche form of journalism comprised mostly of gaming websites and a few reporters in traditional media. This thesis examines the young gaming news industry through in-depth interviews conducted with six journalists from various news outlets. The research focused on two things: if game journalists followed the same norms and routines as news journalists and if game companies were able to influence what game journalists wrote …

Getting Off The Ground With Ap Calculus, David Frank Woods

LSU Master's Theses

“The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.” – Charles Caleb Colton Caught in a downward spiral, American mathematical students continue to be outperformed by their international peers as reported by the TIMSS. This has left educators scrambling to find an instructional strategy that will slow this decline in mathematical literacy. This thesis reports on the framework that a new teacher could use to develop and establish a successful AP Calculus program, while increasing mathematical literacy, equity in the classroom, and student achievement through the integration of educational technology into current instructional trends. This …

A New Focus For A University: Designing A Web Site To Feature Community Service, Andrea Louise Clesi

LSU Master's Theses

This research used focus groups and usability testing to determine how a major land-grant university should design a Web site that would feature the community service work of faculty and staff, students and alumni, also referred to as stakeholders. University public relations professionals planned to launch an interactive Web site as part of the university’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2010, but had concerns that the Web site would not attract stakeholders. The research sought to answer the following questions based on uses and gratifications and impression management theories: What uses and gratifications, if any, do social networking sites provide stakeholders? Does …

The Role Of Race In Television News Coverage Of Shortcomings In U.S. Secondary Education, Jasmine Elise Haynes

LSU Master's Theses

Scholars and news media alike acknowledge that one of the main problems in education today is the minority achievement gaps in national testing. Although many education scholars have compiled several in-depth reasons as to why minorities, particularly African-American students, seem to generally lag behind their white counterparts, television news fails to give it’s audiences a comprehensive view of why minority achievement gaps are so prevalent in United States secondary public education. The purpose of this study was to examine where news consumers perceive television news places blame for problems in public education with regards to race. Studying how people perceive …

14-3-3 Sigma Interacts With Liver X Receptor Beta, Emily Ann Jackson

LSU Master's Theses

Atherosclerosis is the leading cause of mortality in developed countries accounting for 50% of all deaths. Atherosclerosis develops when macrophages in the artery wall accumulate large amounts of cholesterol via uptake of oxidized low density lipoproteins (LDL), causing a negative effect on cholesterol metabolism. Thus, the development of atherosclerosis can be inhibited by increasing cholesterol efflux, which can be achieved by activating ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters in macrophages. In particular, ABCA1 mediates reverse cholesterol transport to the liver via high density lipoproteins (HDL) and therefore is an attractive molecular target for raising HDL levels and protecting against atherosclerosis. ABCA1 …

"Everybody Goes Down": Metaphors, Stories, And Simulations In Conversations, L. David Ritchie

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent work has shown that many problematic aspects of metaphor use and comprehension can be resolved through an account that includes both relevance and perceptual simulation. It has also been shown that metaphors often imply stories, and that stories are often metaphorical. Previous research on narratives has focused primarily on stories that appear either in formal literature or in structured interviews; this essay focuses on stories that occur as an integral part of conversation. It extends recent work on metaphor comprehension to show how use and comprehension of stories in natural, informal conversations can be usefully analyzed in terms of …

Democratic Triumph, Scholarly Pessimism, Bruce Gilley

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article discusses how the democratic form of government has gone from an oddity to the most common form of government in the world. The written works on democracy in the past twenty years have dealt primarily with the writers' growing sense of insecurity, the belief that history runs in cycles, and the belief that democracy will run its course and the world will find itself returned to an authoritarian existence. Samuel P. Huntington expressed his pessimism with democracy in his book "The Third Wave." Huntington believes that only countries with a substantial Western influence will be able to sustain …

Pathos, Winter 2010, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editors: Joel Eisenhower and Richard Hernandez

Issue 11

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: Tito Capobianco, internationally renowned state director, returns for the fifth time to direct opera students; Middle East Studies graduate Peter Bechtold '61 brings his expertise back to Portland State; every year senior students work with hundreds of partners to solve—not just to study—community need; and more.

Book Review Of, The Politics And History Of Aids Treatment In Brazil In Latin American Politics And Society, Shawn Smallman

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the book "The Politics and History of AIDS Treatment in Brazil," by Amy Nunn

School Choice At The Crossroads Of Race, Class, And Accountability: An Analysis Of The Effects Of Voluntary School Choice On Elementary Schools In A Large District In The Southeastern United States, Teresa Craig Evans

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the responsibility for the desegregation of American public schools has transitioned from federal court mandates to school board programs and policies. There is widespread belief that this has resulted in the resegregation of schools across the country. One popular policy that is purported to provide the opportunity for voluntary integration, along with accountability for academic quality, is school choice. The purpose of this study was to consider the implications of such a policy in one large school district. There is an extensive body of research exploring who participates in school choice, how they make their choices, and …

Growing Zenger Farm, Turhan Sonmez, Elizabeth Milner, Stacey Glenewinkel, Kate Carone

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Zenger Farm is a working urban farm in outer southeast Portland, Oregon, that promotes sustainable food systems, environmental stewardship and local economic development. Currently operating on 6 acres of farmland and 10 acres of wetland, the farm has an opportunity to expand onto 4 additional acres of adjacent land, and has asked Ecotone to help maximize the potential of that expansion. Growing Zenger Farm is a unique opportunity to learn how urban agriculture can best address the needs of communities. Food security, community development, education, economic development and environmental stewardship are components of Zenger's stated mission and goals and are …

Willamette Park Assessment And Recommendations, Julia Babcock, Bernadette Le, Maren Murphy, Amy Rossa

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The vision of the project was to prioritize park improvements that balance the long-term sustainability and viability of the park with growing user demands. As a hybrid park, Willamette Park has a unique set of challenges related to its operations and management, as it is managed for both recreation and natural areas. The final report documents the process QPG undertook to explore opportunities and constraints in Willamette Park, and provides recommendations to guide the future planning of the park.

This project was conducted under the supervision of Sumner Sharpe and Ellen Bassett.

Heard On The Net: Top Five Things To Watch In 2010, Jill Emery

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

This column identifies the top five things to watch for in 2010.

Technology In Practice. Brand Perception 2.0, Meredith G. Farkas

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

The article discusses the importance of a good online identity that will have an impact on young adults' future job prospects, as well as an organization's brand consciousness. It cites the efforts done by many librarians to teach the young adults on how to develop social networking sites and the importance of maintaining a good online identity. It presents the bad effects of having derogatory posts and other things such as compromising photographs. It also offers suggestions on what libraries can do when faced by bad publicity online.

Institutional Grey Literature In The University Environment, Gretta E. Siegel

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Historically, attention to grey literature in the academic library was focused on external collections – documents produced by government agencies or research centers. Little, if any, systematic attention was paid to the grey literature that was produced on university campuses. The advent of the Web, while bringing more interest to grey literature in general did not change this situation much. However, the trend toward the creation of institutional repositories has caused a considerable shift in interest. The formalization of collecting, processing, and integrating academic institutional grey literature should be critical to the mission of the University, regardless of format, and …

Brew To Bikes: Portland's Artisan Economy, Charles H. Heying

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Brew to Bikes: Portland's Artisan Economy explains how post-industrial economic transformations have created a space for artisan enterprises to flourish. Dissatisfied with passive consumption, many residents of Portland, OR take matters into their own hands. Associate Professor of Urban Studies Charles Heying noticed these local artisans prospering all over the city and set out to study their thriving economy. Profiling hundreds of local businesses, and with an eye on Portland's unique penchant for sustainability and urban development, Brew to Bikes is about everything from bike manufacturers to microbreweries, from do-it-yourself to traditional crafts. A treatise to local, ethical business practices, …

Manufactured Home Parks: Norcs Awaiting Discovery, Andrée Tremoulet

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines manufactured home parks as a type of naturally occurring retirement community and considers the potential for adding social service programs (NORC-SSP) to enable further aging in place. An analysis of six focus group interviews with 48 residents found that the physical and social environment promoted a sense of safety and community, and that this housing option was an intentional lifestyle choice. Risks included the possibility of bad management and park closure. Manufactured home parks were found to offer an attractive option for exploring a NORC-SSP model that builds on residents' assets and community capacity.

Polyaniline Nanofibers As The Hole Transport Medium In An Inverse Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell, Ian Brock Hesselsweet

Dissertations and Theses

In order to become a viable alternative to silicon photovoltaics, dye-sensitized solar cells must overcome several issues primarily resulting from their use of a liquid electrolyte. Much research has gone into correcting these shortcomings by replacing the liquid electrolyte with solid-state hole-transport media. Using these solid-state materials brings new difficulties, such as completely filling the pores in the TiO₂ nanostructure, and achieving good adhesion with the dye-coated TiO₂. A novel approach to addressing these difficulties is the inverse dye-sensitized solar cell design. In this method the devices are constructed in reverse order, with the solid-state hole-transport medium providing the nanostructure …

The Multicultural Family Learning Gardens At The Learning Gardens Laboratory: An Investigation Of Community Collaboration, Madelyn Mickelberry Morris

Leadership for Sustainability Education Comprehensive Papers

This project explores the role of the small-scale polyculture garden in promoting a resilient community, its importance in helping meet nutritional and medicinal needs, and its role as a site for civic and place-based transformative development. The pedagogical principles of sustainability education address the importance of ecological systems, biocultural diversity, social & economic justice, and multicultural perspectives. Framing the garden as a sustainable solution, I will address the need for vibrant local food networks, particularly in low-income areas; social, ecological, and community resilience; opportunities for ecological education; and increased meaningful opportunities for civic engagement. Using a conceptual framework of the …