Digital Commons Network^™

Spelling Murkowski: The Next Act - A Reply To Fishkin And Levitt, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

Both Joey Fishkin’s and Justin Levitt’s responses to my article, “How Do You Spell MURKOWSKI?” deal thoughtfully with the deeper questions raised by the Murkowski litigation. They both wonder, in various ways, what the right way to think about voter assistance should be. But they approach the issue from very different angles. Fishkin focuses on the state’s obligation to assist voters: to what extent, and in what ways, is the state obligated to help voters vote? Levitt approaches the question of voter assistance from nearly the opposite angle: what responsibilities do voters have in making sure that their vote counts, …

Cost And Sentencing: Some Pragmatic And Institutional Doubts, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2010, the Missouri Sentencing Commission recommended that, in addition to offense and offender characteristics, the pre-sentencing reports prepared for the sentencing judges should also include the costs of various possible sentences. In this brief essay, I focus mainly the pragmatic case for considering cost as a factor in judicial sentencing, asking about what goals adding cost is supposed to achieve, and whether it will in fact achieve those goals. I ask three questions in particular: (1) Will including cost in the Missouri Sentencing Assessment Reports (SARs) actually change judicial behavior in the ways supporters of the reform favor? (2) …

The Present Day Genesis And Evolution Of Cave Minerals Inside The Ojo De La Reina Cave (Naica Mine, Mexico), Giovanni Badino, José Maria Calaforra, Paolo Forti, Paolo Garofalo, Laura Sanna

International Journal of Speleology

Ojo de la Reina is the first and the smallest cave intersected at the -290 level in the Naica Mine (Mexico), therefore it was the first cavity in which the lowering of temperature induced by mine ventilation caused condensation over crystals’ surface since 2005. The consequent dissolution of the gypsum crystals and subsequent condensed water evaporation lead to the deposition of several new minerals, among which some highly soluble Mg/Na compounds (bloedite, epsomite, halite, hexahydrite, kieserite, starkeyite). The single available source of Mg and Na ions in this minerogenetic environment is represented by the huge fluid inclusions widespread within the …

The Link Between Functional Behavioral Assessment And Behavioral Intervention Plans, Megan Kathleen Seamans Anderson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The inclusion of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and behavioral intervention plans (BIP) in the mandates of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) 2004 changed the way an educator can discipline a student with a disability . Limited research has been conducted to evaluate FBAs and BIPs completed in the school setting, more specifically the use of FBA data to inform the BIP, and compliance with IDEIA mandates. The current study examined 72 initial FBAs and BIPs completed by school teams in a Midwest regional education agency. Findings indicate the majority of teams were out of compliance with IDEIA …

Specters Of Law: Why The History Of The Legal Spectacle Has Not Been Written, Peter Goodrich

Articles

The article examines the intersection of law, theology, and visual/performance elements, arguing that legal discourse often overlooks the significance of typography, imagery, and theatricality. It highlights how legal texts use formatting techniques like bold and italics to convey meaning and draws parallels with theological concepts, such as the duality of power and the role of images in governance. The analysis critiques the legal tradition for neglecting these performative aspects and emphasizes the need to recognize law as a theater that denies its own theatricality.

The Design, Construction, And Operation Of A Two-Photon Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope, Benjamin Alexander

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

Psychopathy: Correlates Of The Mmpi-2-Rf And Ppi-R, Katherine Achsah Lisa Hall

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The present study sought to examine the utility of the MMPI-2-RF (Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2008) in assessing psychopathic personality traits. In past studies, the Restructured Clinical scales (RC4, RC9, RC7, and RC2) have been positive predictors of psychopathic characteristics. The aim of this study is to validate and build upon the previous research by re-examining the Restructured Clinical scales (RC4, RC9, RC7, and RC2) and investigate the MMPI-2-RF fear scales (Behavioral-Restricting Fears & Multiple Specific Fears), High-Order Scale (Behavioral/Externalizing Dysfunction), Externalizing Scale (Juvenile Conduct Problems and Substance Abuse) and the Personality Psychopathology Five scales (Negative-Emotionality/Neuroticism-Revised & Introversion/Low Positive Emotionality-Revised). It …

Examining The Relationship Between Fact Learning And Higher Order Learning Via Retrieval Practice, Pooja Agarwal

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The development of higher order skills is a desired outcome of education. Some believe that higher order learning can be improved directly, whereas others argue that higher order learning can be improved via the enhancement of factual or conceptual knowledge. The relationship between fact and higher order learning is often speculated, but empirically unknown. This project examines whether retrieval practice via quizzing, a strategy typically used to enhance fact learning, can be used as a strategy to improve higher order skills in both laboratory and applied settings. In the current study, higher order skills were considered to comprise the understand, …

Quantitative Perfusion-Sensitive Mri Phantoms, Jeff Anderson

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Perfusion-sensitive MR methods are increasingly utilized in preclinical and clinical MR research studies with the promise of providing quantitative estimates of parameters that describe in vivo microvasculature. One of these techniques, dynamic contrast enhanced: DCE) MRI, has found particularly common use in oncology for the detection, staging, and monitoring of highly vascularized tumors. DCE-MRI has been qualitatively validated by various studies that show a high correlation between modeled parameters from DCE and histologically measured microvascular density: MVD). However, in the absence of a matching "gold-standard" technique, DCE-MRI has not yet been quantitatively validated: i.e., the accuracy of the estimated parameters …

Motion-Based Video Games For Stroke Rehabilitation With Reduced Compensatory Motions, Gazihan Alankus

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability among adults in industrialized nations, with 80% of people who survive strokes experiencing motor disabilities. Recovery requires daily exercise with a high number of repetitions, often without therapist supervision. Motion-based video games can help motivate people with stroke to perform the necessary exercises to recover. We explore the design space of video games for stroke rehabilitation using Wii remotes and webcams as input devices, and share the lessons we learned about what makes games therapeutically useful. We demonstrate the feasibility of using games for home-based stroke therapy with a six-week case study. …

Improving The Dispersive Optical Model Toward A Dispersive Self-Energy Method, Seth Waldecker

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The connection between the dispersive optical potential and the irreducible nucleon self-energy from Green's function theory is improved, providing a tighter link between nuclear reactions and nuclear structure. In particular, since the self-energy is inherently nonlocal, an explicitly nonlocal term is incorporated in the real part of the dispersive optical potential, which has been assumed to be local in previous parametrizations. The explicit treatment of nonlocality allows for a proper solution of the Dyson equation, and the resulting propagator can then be used to calculate experimental observables associated with ground state properties, such as the charge density, particle number, and …

The Impacts Of Lead Contamination On The Community Of Herculaneum, Missouri, Jill Mcnew-Birren

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Lead contamination in Herculaneum, Missouri presents a complex context where the long history of a large lead processing plant has created an environmental health hazard. Local residents have been forced to balance their interest in promoting a clean and healthy local environment against their desire to preserve community identity and honor the history of their city and its most prominent industry. Additionally, contamination and related controversy has substantively impacted this community and its citizens on multiple levels--e. g., education, health, and financial well-being. The study presented in this dissertation explores not only the impact of contamination upon the community, but …

The Effect Of Sensory Experience And Movement Observation On Motor Adaptation To Novel Force Perturbations, Paul Wanda

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

On a daily basis, humans capably and effortlessly interact with their surrounding environment through the performance of accurate movements. Movements are often perturbed through the physical influence of the surrounding environment, interaction with objects, or injury, yet adaptation is both rapid and flexible. When adapting, humans are informed by their direct trial-and-error movement experience, incrementally updating predictive control on the next movement; how the brain processes sensed errors into adaptation is not fully known. We may also learn to move through the observation of the movements of others, as visually observed movement information may be transformed into motor memories that …

Dynamic Pion Studies In Nuclear Matter, Jonathan Morris

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

A framework is developed which allows the extension of current realistic Nucleon-Nucleon interactions to include pionic degrees of freedom. A prescription for transforming any static pion model to one containing explicit energy dependence is provided. We show that adding energy dependence to the pionic component of the Nucleon-Nucleon interaction reduces the component of D-state wave function in the deuteron while adding a non-negligible chance of finding the deuteron in an NNπ state. Retrofitting the static pion Reid soft-core potential with dynamic pions entailed a necessary refit of the parameters in the central and tensor parts of the potential to phase …

Grief Among Dementia Caregivers: A Comparison Of Two Assessment Systems, Elizabeth Mulligan

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Research suggests that family caregivers of people with dementia may experience grief prior to the death of their care recipients, in part because of the series of losses they experience and the chronic nature of caregiving. Methods for assessing predeath grief, however, are just beginning to be developed, and basic questions about measurement remain. The purpose of the current study was to identify areas of overlap and disjunction in two self-report measures of predeath grief, one adapted from the postdeath literature: the Prolonged Grief Disorder Inventory) and one designed specifically for use with dementia caregivers: the Marwit-Meuser Caregiver Grief Inventory-Short …

Likely Old Or Likely New? Taking Memory Advice During Recognition Decisions, Diana Selmeczy

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

We examined the influence of external recommendations on recognition memory decisions. In contrast to prior literature that primarily focuses on the negative impacts of external influences during memory judgments, we investigated whether participants can capitalize on explicit reliable recommendations in order to improve their performance. In the first experiment, participants were given explicit external recommendations: “Likely Old” or “Likely New”) that were 75% accurate for deeply and shallowly encoded test items. In the second experiment, participants were given varying levels of recommendations: 65% and 85% accurate). Across both experiments we found that participants improved their performance when given external recommendations …

Often Wrong But Never In Doubt: Categorized Lists Produce Confident False Memories, Kurt Desoto

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In the categorized list procedure, subjects study words from semantic categories, then take a recognition test on those items. Subjects are likely to recognize common: high output dominance) category members even when they are not studied. Across three experiments, we sought to extend the categorized list procedure, further develop an explanation of why false recognition of category members occurs in this procedure, and modulate false recognition of category members by manipulating encoding and retrieval phases. Experiment 1 extended previous categorized list research, showing that subjects are likely to false alarm with high confidence to high output dominance category members that …

Re-Framing The Doni Tondo: Patronage, Politics And Family In Michelangelo's Florence, Eric Hupe

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

Efficient Automated Planning With New Formulations, Ruoyun Huang

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Problem solving usually strongly relies on how the problem is formulated. This fact also applies to automated planning, a key field in artificial intelligence research. Classical planning used to be dominated by STRIPS formulation, a simple model based on propositional logic. In the recently introduced SAS+ formulation, the multi-valued variables naturally depict certain invariants that are missed in STRIPS, make SAS+ have many favorable features. Because of its rich structural information SAS+ begins to attract lots of research interest. Existing works, however, are mostly limited to one single thing: to improve heuristic functions. This is in sharp contrast with the …

Structural And Thermophysical Property Studies Of Metallic Liquids And Glasses Using The Beamline Electrostatic Levitation Technique, Nicholas Mauro

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

An accurate description of atomic structures is at the heart of an improved understanding of the properties of condensed solids. By correlating structural information from high energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction with thermophysical properties important insights have been gained into the role of local structural evolution in undercooling and glass formation. Here, the results of a number of investigations into the structures and properties of some amorphous phases will be presented and analyzed. Phase separation in Al88Y7Fe5 is identified prior to devitrification and is proposed as an explanation for extremely high observed nucleation rates. The development and construction of the Beamline …

The Relationship Of Financial Performance, Quality Indicators, And The Role Of Nurse Executives In Virginia Nursing Homes, Jeany V. Murphy

Health Services Research Dissertations

Problem statement. The dynamic nature of the healthcare industry has triggered changes in nurse executive functions. The job has expanded into entrepreneurial roles to be able to provide the most cost effective services while maintaining good quality outcomes for the residents. The new responsibility requires a different set of knowledge and competencies that is usually achieved through advanced education. It is not known whether nurse executives in long term care in Virginia possess the skills to influence both the financial and quality outcomes of the facility.

Methods. This descriptive research study examined the relationship of the nurse executives' technical, human, …

Computational Methods For Accelerated Discovery And Characterization Of Genes In Emerging Model Organisms, Alan Kwan

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Cilia are evolutionarily conserved, complex, microtubule-based structures that protrude from many eukaryotic cells. In humans, cilia can be found on almost all cell types. The effect of abnormal or absent cilia has been established as the common underlying cause of a recently emerging class of genetic diseases collectively referred to as ciliopathies. The function and structure of cilia are conserved across all organisms with cilia. One of the most influential model systems used to study ciliopathies has been the ciliated green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, an organism for which there is a sequenced genome with relatively few experimentally validated whole-gene annotations …

Single-Molecule Imaging Studies Of Protein Dynamics, Shannon Kian Zareh

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Single-molecule fluorescence imaging is a powerful method for studying biological events. The work of this thesis primarily focuses on single molecule studies of the dynamics of Green Fluorescent Protein: GFP) and other fluorescent-labeled proteins by utilizing Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence: TIRF) microscopy and imaging. The single molecule experiments of this thesis covered three broad topics. First, the adsorption mechanisms of proteins onto hydrophobic and hydrophilic fused silica surfaces were imaged and reversible and irreversible adsorption mechanisms were observed. The second topic covered a new technique for measuring the diffusion coefficient of Brownian diffusing proteins, in particular GFP, in solution via …

Targeting And Activity Of The Aaa+ Atpase Torsina Within The Endoplasmic Reticulum, Abigail Vander Heyden

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

AAA+ ATPase enzymes couple ATP hydrolysis to the exertion of conformational change on a substrate. TorsinA is one of the few AAA+ ATPases that resides within the lumen of the mammalian endoplasmic reticulum: ER). A glutamic acid deletion in the catalytic domain of torsinA causes DYT1 dystonia, but torsinA's function and the basis for disease remain unclear. I show that torsinA is dynamically targeted from the bulk ER to nuclear envelope: NE) upon coexpression with a cofactor protein, LULL1, and that torsinA's movement into the NE is concomitant with displacement of select linker of the nucleoskeleton and cytoskeleton: LINC) complex …

Examination Of Uv-Cross-Linkable Di-Block Copolymer Strategy For Functionalized Reaction Surface On Microelectrode Arrays, Libo Hu

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Microarrays are powerful tools for high-throughput screening of small molecule libraries. Our group is using a microelectrode array variant on these efforts that allows us to construct and screen the libraries in a rapid, cost effective fashion. In this approach, the small molecules are attached to polymer-coated microelectrodes, which can be used to detect ligand-receptor interactions as they happen by means of impedance. Impedance experiment work by monitoring the current associated with a redox couple in solution. When a protein binds a ligand on the array, it sterically prevents the redox couple from reaching the electrode surface and thus causes …

Accelerated Reader And Sustained Silent Reading's Impact On Students' Motivation To Read, Amy Benedict

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to determine if students' motivation to read is influenced by the use of Accelerated Reader or SSR in their school. Fourth grade students had been selecting books to read based on Accelerated Reader levels. After reading each book the students took a quiz. SSR was implemented for two weeks to determine if students' attitudes towards reading would improve.

A mixed-methods approach was used in this research design. Quantitative data were collected through the MRP survey, administered both before the introduction of SSR and after implementing SSR. Qualitative data were collected through an individual conversational …

Family Policy, Family Resources, And Children's Educational Achievement: A Comparative Study Of 18 Rich Countries, Yung Soo Lee

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Educational achievement among children is one of the most important concerns for most contemporary societies. While numerous studies have explored factors associated with children's educational achievement, little research fully incorporated multi-level, multi-faceted contexts of child education. More specifically, less attention has been paid to the role of macro-level, policy contexts and their interactions with various aspects of family-level resources. To help fill the gap in the literature, this study investigates: 1) the role of various aspects of family-level resources, that is family financial, human, and social capital, in children's educational achievement,: 2) mediating pathways among those family-level resources, and: 3) …

Cooperative Learning And Peer Tutoring To Improve Third-Grade Students’ Test Scores On Grade-Level Assessment, Francina Y. Thurston

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education ETD Archive

This applied dissertation was designed to utilize learning strategies that emphasized small-group instructions where students work together cooperatively and with peers to achieve mastery. Traditionally, the classroom practices used in this school lent themselves primarily to whole-class instructions that emphasized competitive and individualistic goals rather than small groups and cooperative practices. The multistrategy used in this study sought to shift the focus of classroom instructions away from what was traditional. However, the introduction of the multistrategy that called for small group teaching required training for teachers and students.

The writer developed several solution strategies that trained students and teachers in …

Leishmania Persistence And Host Cell Interactions, Michael Mandell

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Leishmania parasites are the causative agent of leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease. An important aspect of Leishmania biology is asymptomatic parasite persistence, which typically occurs after clinical cure. Persistent parasites remain enigmatic despite their importance as reservoirs for transmission, having roles in maintaining protective immunity, and posing the risk of reactivation. I developed methods for assessing parasite replication by BrdU labeling and showed that persistently infected mice harbor two sub-populations of L. major, one labeling similarly to acute-phase parasites, with the other showing much less labeling. That persistent parasite replication occurs without a commensurate increase in parasite number implies parasite …

The Forms And Limits Of Religious Accommodation: The Case Of Rluipa, Ira C. Lupu, Robert W. Tuttle

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper, prepared for a Symposium at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law to mark the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith, focuses on the constitutionally appropriate forms for, and limits on, government protection of religious freedom. Part I articulates in general terms the primary constitutional strategy of mandatory accommodations – protection of religion and its secular analogues in matters of speech, association, and equality – and the limits on such accommodations, with an emphasis on a jurisdictional limit to the state’s capacity to decide questions of religious significance. Part II extends this concept …