Digital Commons Network^™

Impact Of Urban Runoff On Phosphorus, Nitrogen, And Dissolved Oxygen In A Shallow Subtropical Lake, Ryan Mesmer

LSU Master's Theses

This research assessed the current conditions of water quality in a shallow subtropical lake, influenced by a highly developed urban environment. Specifically, the research focused on the dynamics of phosphorus, nitrogen, and dissolved oxygen, as well as the effects of stormwater runoff on lake water quality. Furthermore, the research quantified gross primary production, net primary production, and respiration in order to discern seasonal variation in lake metabolism. A water quality monitoring platform with multi-parameter probes was deployed in the center of University Lake on the Louisiana State University campus. A series of lake water quality parameters including dissolved oxygen (DO) …

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 …

Empirically Evaluating And Developing Alarm Rate Standards For Liquid Pipeline Control Room Operators, Glen David Uhack Ii

LSU Master's Theses

The liquid and gas pipeline community has recently been faced with the challenge of new governmental regulations set forth by congress which are being implemented by PHMSA (an arm of the DOT). These new governmental regulations need to understand the role of the human in the loop as part of alarm management systems. To investigate alarm rate standards a repeated measures design was developed that included a series of ten (10) simulated liquid pipeline operator scenarios utilizing high fidelity liquid pipeline simulation software (Stoner Pipeline Simulator). A total of 39 participants volunteered for this study. Participants completed two subsets of …

"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 …

Cyberspace Is Outside The Schoolhouse Gate: Offensive, Online Student Speech Receives First Amendment Protection, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Normative and doctrinal analysis shows that schools do not possess jurisdiction over offensive online student speech, at least when it does not cause a substantial disruption of the school environment. This article is a timely analysis on the limits of school jurisdiction over offensive online student speech.

On February 4, 2010, two different Third Circuit panels issued opinions reaching opposite conclusions on whether schools may punish students based on online speech created by students when they are off-campus. The Third Circuit vacated both decisions and is considering these cases in a consolidated en banc appeal. Another case addressing the same …

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 …

The Influences Of Microbial Diversity On Carbonate Geochemistry Across A Transition From Fresh To Saline Water In The Edwards Aquifer, Texas, Cassie Jo Gray

LSU Master's Theses

Microbially-mediated karstification through the production of metabolic byproducts has been well-documented in cave environments, but less is known about deep karstic settings. This research aimed to distinguish between microbial and geochemical influences on carbonate dissolution in the Edwards Aquifer, a prolific karst aquifer in central Texas, specifically from a transect of six wells across a transition from fresh to saline water in New Braunfels. For the first time, a portion of the aquifer’s bacterial diversity was examined from molecular 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses, which revealed that Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Betaproteobacteria dominated the aquifer, with rare Bacteroidetes, Nitrospirae, and Firmicutes …

Identifying Factors Associated With Falls In Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Survivors: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, Kerri M. Winters-Stone, Britta Torgrimson, Fay Horak, Alvin Eisner, Lillian Nail, Micahel C. Leo, Steve Chui, Shiuh-Wen Luoh

Community Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective—To identify neuromuscular, balance and vision factors that contribute to falls in recently treated breast cancer survivors (BCS) and explore links between fall risk factors and cancer treatment

Design—Case-control plus prospective observation

Setting—Comprehensive cancer center

Participants—BCS within two years chemotherapy completion and/or on adjuvant endocrine therapy (N=59; mean age: 58 yrs)

Intervention—not applicable

Main outcome measures—Objective measures of postural control, vision and neuromuscular function included 1) a sensory organization test (SOT), 2) a visual assessment battery, 3) muscle mass by DXA, and 4) neuromuscular function with strength by repetition maximum, power by timed stair …

"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 …

Competence And Member State Autonomy: Causality, Consequence And Legitimacy, Paul Craig

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The scope of EU competence and the limits on Member State autonomy can validly be analyzed from a variety of perspectives. This chapter considers one such perspective, the prevailing concern about the scope and exercise of EU competence. This concern is often based on the premise that some reified entity called the EU has increasingly arrogated power, with a consequent diminution of national autonomy that the Member States have been unable to resist, and the ECJ is frequently regarded as bearing primary responsibility. it will however be argued in the first half of this chapter that the Community courts were …

The Argument For Same-Sex Marriage (Debate), Deborah A. Widiss, Nelson Tebbe, Shannon Gilreath

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, in which a federal district court held California's ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, is set for expedited review in the Ninth Circuit; many argue that the case will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. The arguments for and against the constitutionality of such statutes are thus at a fever pitch. In an article published earlier this year, Professors Nelson Tebbe and Deborah Widiss argued that marriage rights are best conceived of as an issue of equal access, rather than one of equal protection or substantive due process. Nelson Tebbe & Deborah A. Widiss, Equal Access and …

Beyond The Youth Gap In Understanding Political Violence, Colette Daiute

Publications and Research

"Youth are never taken seriously, and we sometimes have ideas that would be good for all people." ~ Alex, Croatia

"... Some things do depend on us; war, consequences of the war, poverty; the influence of the church interfering with the state affairs, which must not be so. " ~ Ljubicia, Serbia

As we hear in these comments by two teenagers who have grown up in the shadow of political violence, their generation is aware of the past and its legacies. These brief quotes mention many details that young people in easier situations may not notice: "consequences of the war," …

A Dynamic Physical Model For Soil Temperature And Water In Taylor Valley, Antarctica, H. W. Hunt, Andrew G. Fountain, Peter T. Doran, Hassan J. Basagic

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

We developed a simulation model for terrestrial sites including sensible heat exchange between the atmosphere and ground surface, inter- and intra-layer heat conduction by rock and soil, and shortwave and longwave radiation. Water fluxes included snowmelt, freezing/thawing of soil water, soil capillary flow, and vapour flows among atmosphere, soil, and snow. The model accounted for 96-99% of variation in soil temperature data. No long-term temporal trends in soil temperature were apparent. Soil water vapour concentration in thawed surface soil in summer often was higher than in frozen deeper soils, leading to downward vapour fluxes. Katabatic winds caused a reversal of …

Influence Of Wetland Landscape Structure On Duck Nest Success At Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon, Daniel Robert Craver

Geography Masters Research Papers

The decline of waterfowl populations and their requisite wetland habitats remains a concern. Because migratory bird refuges are often artificial landscapes of actively managed wetlands, and wildlife populations experience their greatest change during the breeding season, refuges should be designed to maximize breeding habitat. While past nest success studies have focused on at-nest variables, new approaches are needed to evaluate the effect of composition and configuration of plant communities at the landscape scale. This study aims to quantify landscape patterns within individual refuge management units to determine influence upon historical nesting success averages of ducks at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge …

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 …

The Many Faces Of Strict Scrutiny: How The Supreme Court Changes The Rules In Race Cases, Evan Gerstmann, Christopher Shortell

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we argue that there is no single test called strict scrutiny when the Court considers claims of racial discrimination. In fact, the Court changes the rules depending on why and how the government is using race. By examining racial redistricting, remedial affirmative action, and diversitybased affirmative action cases, we show how the Court uses at least three very different versions of strict scrutiny. The costs of maintaining the fiction of unitary strict scrutiny is high. In the area of racial profiling, for example, courts refuse to apply strict scrutiny for fear that it will either overly hamper …

Searching For Effective Teachers With Imperfect Information, Douglas O. Staiger, Jonah E. Rockoff

Dartmouth Scholarship

Over the past four decades, empirical researchers -- many of them economists -- have accumulated an impressive amount of evidence on teachers. In this paper, we ask what the existing evidence implies for how school leaders might recruit, evaluate, and retain teachers. We begin by summarizing the evidence on five key points, referring to existing work and to evidence we have accumulated from our research with the nation's two largest school districts: Los Angeles and New York City. First, teachers display considerable heterogeneity in their effects on student achievement gains. Second, estimates of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement data …

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

Pathos

Editors: Joel Eisenhower and Richard Hernandez

Issue 11

In-Home Coal And Wood Use And Lung Cancer Risk: A Pooled Analysis Of The International Lung Cancer Consortium, H Dean Hosgood, Paolo Boffetta, Sander Greenland, Yuan-Chin Amy Lee

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

System Development For High Frequency Ultrasound-Guided Fluorescence Quantification Of Skin Layers, Josiah D. Gruber, Akshat Paliwal, Venkataramanan Krishnaswamy, Hamid Ghadyani

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Raps Sheet, January 2010, Retirement Association Of Portland State

RAPS Sheet: Monthly Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Brewery Blocks West, Ben Gates, Tom Heinicke, Jared Hendricks, Brad Johnson, Atha Mansoory, Michael Shall, Will Thier, Jonathan Winslow

Real Estate Development Workshop Projects

Students from Portland State University's Center for Real Estate produce a development plan for a site in Portland's Pearl District.

Their task was to produce an original development plan, including the development concept, market analysis, conceptual design, economic analysis, capital and operations budget, and management plan.

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

Workplace Nutrition And Exercise Climate: Scale Development And Preliminary Model, Joseph J. Mazzola

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Obesity is a major concern in the United States and has a multitude of negative physical and mental health consequences. Proper nutrition and exercise are important elements to initiating and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Since most people spend a large amount of their time working, it is important that organizations create an atmosphere that is conducive to employees being able to eat healthy diets and exercise regularly. The social and environmental climate in terms of health was examined through the construct of a Workplace Nutrition and Exercise Climate (WNEC), defined here as the situational, social, and environmental factors within an …

Gaining Ground: Wetlands, Hurricanes, And The Economy: The Value Of Restoring The Mississippi River Delta, David Batker, Isabel De Torre, Robert Costanza, Paula Swedeen, John W. Day, Roelof Boumans, Kenneth Bagstad

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

This report shows conclusively that physical sustainability and delta expansion secures vast economic benefits locally and nationally. Within the context of the current financial crisis, investment in restoration secures short-term benefits of employment, income generation, greater ecosystem services and other economic benefits, and the long term goals of increased storm protection, greater oil and gas supply reliability and other economic benefits. A sustainable restoration of the Mississippi River Delta is a good investment with a high rate of return. Gaining ground is the most successful economic strategy for securing hurricane defenses and economic development.

Climate Change And Freshwater Resources In Oregon, Heejun Chang, Julie Jones

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

Climate change will affect various sectors of water resources in Oregon in the 21st century. The observed trends in streamflow show significant declines in September flow and, although not significant, increases in March flow in many transient rain-snow basins. These streamflow trends are associated with rising temperature and coincident declines in snowpack in spring in the latter half of the 20th century. While there are no distinct trends in high precipitation events, such events are associated with climate variability such as ENSO and PDO. Effects of ENSO and PDO are more pronounced at the beginning and end of the wet …