Digital Commons Network^™

Roberto Flores V. Atty Gen Usa

2011 Decisions

Agency

Specific Contributions Of Ventromedial, Anterior Cingulate, And Lateral Prefrontal Cortex For Attentional Selection And Stimulus Valuation., Daniel Kaping, Martin Vinck, R Matthew Hutchison, Stefan Everling, Thilo Womelsdorf

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Attentional control ensures that neuronal processes prioritize the most relevant stimulus in a given environment. Controlling which stimulus is attended thus originates from neurons encoding the relevance of stimuli, i.e. their expected value, in hand with neurons encoding contextual information about stimulus locations, features, and rules that guide the conditional allocation of attention. Here, we examined how these distinct processes are encoded and integrated in macaque prefrontal cortex (PFC) by mapping their functional topographies at the time of attentional stimulus selection. We find confined clusters of neurons in ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) that predominantly convey stimulus valuation information during attention shifts. …

Deaf Apostolate Newsletter, Christmas 2011

Deaf Apostolate Newsletter

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Boston, MA

Deaf Apostolate Newsletter Finding Aid

Maine's Community Living Program: Implementation And Outcomes, Julie T. Fralich Mba, Mark Richards Bs, Louise Olsen

Disability & Aging

In 2009, the Office of Elder Services, Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), was awarded a grant from the Administration on Aging (AoA) under its Community Living Program (CLP). The overall goal of the CLP announcement was to strengthen the capacity of the Aging Network to target and serve individuals at highest risk of residential facility placement by offering flexible services including consumer directed options. Over the last five years, options counseling has evolved from a general set of activities and functions within AAAs/ADRCs to a more standardized and generally accepted role within the Aging Network. With the …

Minority Small-Firm Credit Applicants: Does Persistence Pay?, Grace Kim

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

When credit application experiences are examined, minority-owned small firms are not the discouraged borrowers that credit outcome studies generally suggest. This paper examines repeated application for credit by small firms. Univariate statistical analysis reveals that persistence is necessary but insufficient for minority firms to be successful credit applicants. At the same time, minority-owned firms overall were more likely than white-owned firms to make repeated attempts to obtain credit, though successful minority applicants actually required fewer applications than their white cohorts. Multivariate regression also finds that different firm, lender, banking relationship, and loan characteristics affect the continued search for credit by …

Three-Dimensionally Preserved Integument Reveals Hydrodynamic Adaptations In The Extinct Marine Lizard Ectenosaurus (Reptilia, Mosasauridae), Johan Lindgren, Michael J. Everhart, Michael W. Caldwell

Sternberg Museum of Natural History Faculty Publications

The physical properties of water and the environment it presents to its inhabitants provide stringent constraints and selection pressures affecting aquatic adaptation and evolution. Mosasaurs (a group of secondarily aquatic reptiles that occupied a broad array of predatory niches in the Cretaceous marine ecosystems about 98-65 million years ago) have traditionally been considered as anguilliform locomotors capable only of generating short bursts of speed during brief ambush pursuits. Here we report on an exceptionally preserved, long-snouted mosasaur (Ectenosaurus clidastoides) from the Santonian (Upper Cretaceous) part of the Smoky Hill Chalk Member of the Niobrara Formation in western Kansas, USA, that …

Gene Expression And Physiological Analyses To Study Metabolic Shifts In Medicago Truncatula Subjected To Biotic Stresses, Michelle Ryan Martin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Plants are frequently under attack from pests and deploy various defense mechanisms to fight off predators. Many plant defenses are induced following herbivory or pathogen infection. An investment in defense could potentially lead to a diversion of metabolic resources away from primary metabolism, including reduction in plant commitment to photosynthesis. In this thesis, changes in expression levels of representative genes for primary and secondary metabolism were studied using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in Medicago truncatula Gaertner subjected to beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua H¨¹bner) damage or Phoma medicaginis Malbr. & Roum. infection. Photosynthetic yield was also measured using chlorophyll fluorescence …

Surface Wetting And Friction Studies Of Nano-Engineered Surfaces On Copper Substrate, Julius Sheldon Morehead

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nano-engineered-textures on a material surface can dramatically improve the wetting and non-wetting properties of a surface, and they also show promise to address friction issues that affect surfaces in contact. In this work, aluminum-induced crystallization (AIC) of amorphous silicon (a-Si) was used to produce nano-textures on copper (Cu) substrates. A study was performed to examine the effects of changing the annealing conditions and a-Si thickness on nano-texture formation. The creation of various nano-topographies and chemically modifying them using octafluorocyclobutane (C4F8) was performed to control hydrophilicity, hydrophobicity, and oil affinity of nano-textured surfaces. A video-based contact angle measurement system was used …

Treading New Paths: How Creative Collaboration Transformed Teaching The Research Process To Usc Upstate’S First-Year Students, Andrew Kearns

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2009

What are the special needs of first-year students in learning the research process? How will students come to see information literacy as a process rather than a set of discrete skills? What research and information literacy skills need to be intentionally taught in the classroom and library instruction sessions? How do we as librarians make sure that our instruction session fits organically into the course of which it is ostensibly a part? At USC Upstate, we have addressed these questions through creation of our First-Year Information Literacy Program in three first-year courses, involving creative collaboration between the library, the University …

Winona Currents Magazine, University Advancement - Winona State University

Winona Currents

This magazine published by Winona State University’s University Advancement was intended to inform WSU Alumni, students, faculty, staff and the greater community about Alumni and the university.WSU goes to Washington to meet our D.C. Alumni.

Government By Contract And The Structural Constitution, Kimberly N. Brown

Notre Dame Law Review

The article presents information on the structural constitution of the U.S. It informs that modern federal government is outsourced to private contractors. It discusses charge of federal powers to private entities and put forwards an analysis on privatization from a standard structural constitution point. It discusses the decision in the case of Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Board. It states that the law governing independent agencies helps in analyzing the government outsourcing.

Using Gis-Based, Hitchcock Algorithm To Optimize Parking Allocations For Special Events, Wayne A. Sarasua, Prashant Malisetty, Mashrur Chowdhury

Publications

Clemson, a small college town in South Carolina, deals with a massive over-saturation of its transportation system during special events, especially during home football games, resulting in total system failure. This research has developed a methodology to optimize parking, using a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based transshipment algorithm, and it has produced great time savings compared with the individual, “manual” efforts of thousands of drivers attempting to find spaces where available. As such, this research constitutes an effective implementation of the Hitchcock Transportation Algorithm for solving a transshipment problem applied to parking lot distribution. Because the Hitchcock Algorithm considers the network …

From Nixon’S War On Drugs To Obama’S Drug Policies Today: Presidential Progress In Addressing Racial Injustices And Disparities, Cigdem Sirin

Departmental Papers (PS)

This study investigates presidential progress in addressing racial injustices and disparities within the context of the war on drugs. I argue that racial inequalities emanating from the war on drugs have been largely overlooked and at times aggravated by previous administrations. Although there have been some improvements in this regard since President Obama took office, more extensive policy reforms are needed to better remedy such inequalities. I also argue that the viability of a progressive presidency for racial justice vis-à-vis U.S. drug policies depends not only on the personal agenda of the president but also on a supportive public as …

Assessing The Authenticity Of The Document-Based Question Featured Within The New York State Global History And Geography Regents, Clinton Depew

Education Masters

This study questioned the validity of the Global History and Geography Regents exam DBQ as an authentic learning event and assessment. The previous five years of the Global History and Geography Regents DBQs administered in June were evaluated to assess the authenticity of the documents in regards to their context, the level of questioning featured in the task and constructed response questions, and the readability levels of the documents. Ultimately the analysis of the data disproved the validity of the DBQ as an authentic task as presented in the Global History and Geography Regents. In the end, teachers must infuse …

Martin Luther King Jr.: What We Can Learn From Him Today, Christina Guzman

Verbum

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

"Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. He was the eldest son of a Baptist minister, and the grandson of the founder of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where his father served as a pastor. When Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted his first job as a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954, he found a black community that had long-standing resentments over the mistreatment of black passengers on the city‘s segregated buses. After the arrest of Rosa Parks in November 1955, King was chosen …

Bi-Stability, Hysteresis, And Memory Of Voltage-Gated Lysenin Channels, Daniel Fologea, Eric Krueger, Yuriy I. Mazur, Christine Stith, Yui Okuyama, Ralph Henry, Greg J. Salamo

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Lysenin, a 297 amino acid pore-forming protein extracted from the coelomic fluid of the earthworm E. foetida, inserts constitutively open large conductance channels in natural and artificial lipid membranes containing sphingomyelin. The inserted channels show voltage regulation and slowly close at positive applied voltages. We report on the consequences of slow voltage-induced gating of lysenin channels inserted into a planar Bilayer Lipid Membrane (BLM), and demonstrate that these pore-forming proteins constitute memory elements that manifest gating bi-stability in response to variable external voltages. The hysteresis in macroscopic currents dynamically changes when the time scale of the voltage variation is …

Dominican Republic: First Steps To Green Economy, Charles Arthur

NotiCen

No abstract provided.

Fibromyalgia Syndrome: The Relationship Between Alexithymia And Attachment Style On Couple Relationship, Ileana Ungureanu

Marriage and Family Therapy - Dissertations

The fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is the most frequent cause of chronic, widespread pain in North America and Europe. It is a non-inflammatory musculoskeletal syndrome predominantly found in the female middle-aged population with a ratio men/women of ¼. Considered for decades an `imaginary' or at best a psychosomatic disease, fibromyalgia gained its status as a diagnosable entity in the early 90s giving a `voice' to the invisible suffering of people, the majority of them being women afflicted by it. While in general the research on psychosocial aspects of fibromyalgia is scarce, couple and family aspects are even less studied than individual …

A "Narrow Exception" Run Amok: How Courts Have Misconstrued Employee-Rights Laws' Exclusion Of "Policymaking" Appointees, And A Proposed Framework For Getting Back On Track, Angela Galloway

Washington Law Review

The civil rights and workplace protections afforded some government workers vary vastly nationwide because federal circuit courts disagree over how to interpret an exemption common to five landmark employment statutes. Each statute defines “employee” for its purposes to exclude politicians and certain categories of politicians’ appointees—including government employees appointed by elected officials to serve at “the policymaking level.” Neither Congress nor the United States Supreme Court has defined who belongs to the “policymaking-level” class. Consequently, lower federal courts across the country have adopted their own standards to fill the gap, creating a wide circuit split. At stake in this employment …

Controlling Biofouling By Surface Engineering And Molecular Inhibition, Debjyoti Bandyopadhyay

Chemistry - Dissertations

The common theme that binds together all the chapters in this dissertation is anti-biofouling chemistry. By utilizing tools of surface engineering and molecular inhibition, a hypothesis driven, systematic approach of controlling the different forms of biofoulings such as protein adsorption, mammalian cell adhesion and biofilm formation is presented. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction about topics relevant for understanding the studies presented in subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 reports the synthesis of enantiomerically pure alkanethiols that terminate with different stereoisomer's of sugar alcohols, and the effect of chirality of these polyol-terminated self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on resisting protein adsorption.

Chapter 3 …

Growing Up Gay In Black America: An Exploration Of The Coming Out Process Of Queer African American Youth, Demarquis Clarke

Marriage and Family Therapy - Dissertations

Although it is commonly acknowledged that homophobia and racial marginalization influence queer African American male youth, there is very little research to back up this belief. Due to the paucity of information for clinicians, families, and communities on the relational dynamics of queer African American male youth and their parents, queer African American male youth were interviewed to explore the ways in which they understand their experience of the disclosure process, paying particular attention to the interface between race and sexual orientation and relational dynamics. This exploratory, qualitative study examined data gathered in interviews with individual male youth that identified …

Property's Memories, Eduardo Peñalver

Articles

No abstract provided.

Creche Herald Vol. 15, No. 4, Rita B. Bocher

Creche Herald

The Winter 2011-12 publication features nativity sets and personal reflections from members in the organization; information about nativities and nativity exhibits; and information about the Friends of the Creche annual meeting.

Turning Pebbles (Human Rights Watch), Truth, Justice, And Reconciliation Commission

VII. Academic and Civil Society Analysis

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Blaze: Strategies For Improving Forest Service Fire Suppression Policies, Aurora R. Janke

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

Current Forest Service fire management policies restrict NEPA’s application to fire suppression actions and contribute to a lack of detailed information about the effectiveness and environmental impact of suppression efforts. Decisions by the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana in the Forest Service for Environmental Ethics v. U.S. Forest Service litigation suggest that NEPA review applies to commonly used fire suppression tactics and that the Forest Service should conduct this review before fires occur. Other recent federal district court decisions and congressional concern with current fire suppression efforts support the need for NEPA review in the fire suppression …

Creating An Environmental No-Man's Land: The Tenth Circuit's Departure From Environmental And Indian Law Protecting A Tribal Community's Health And Environment, Claire R. Newman

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

When Congress set aside reservations as permanent homelands for American Indian people, it intended that the reservations remain “livable environments.” When resource conflicts arise in “checkerboard” areas outside Indian reservations—where land ownership alternates between a tribe, state, the federal government and private, non-Indian landowners—disputes over regulatory jurisdiction and environmental protection intensify. Two recent Tenth Circuit opinions determining the next generation of uranium mining in the checkerboard area of the Navajo Nation, depart from the intent of environmental laws and fail to uphold federal agencies’ trust responsibilities to the Tribe. These cases illustrate the legal vulnerabilities tribal communities in checkerboard areas …

A Journey Into Creative Play: Its Purpose, Effects And Overall Impact, Meagan Bender

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

An interactive journey into the effects and impacts of play on the creative process is explored through an online blog using Google Blogger. The purpose of my project was to explore the connection play has on the creative process. I combined my curiosity of playfulness as a key affective skill with my love for playing with my children onto an interactive website for all to be able to experience my journey. My hope was that by viewing my blog it would inspire others to incorporate more play in their daily lives. My intent was to show that creative play fosters …

Secret's Out: The Ineffectiveness Of Current Trade Secret Law Structure And Protection For Global Health, Stephanie Zimmerman

Penn State International Law Review (1982 - 2011)

No abstract provided.

Communal Infant Care In Black-And-White Ruffed Lemurs (Varecia Variegata)., Andrea Lee Baden

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Cooperative breeding describes a system where group members provide regular, unsolicited allomaternal care for offspring that are not genetically their own (Emlen 1991 Hrdy 2009). Most cooperative breeders live in groups with high reproductive skew (i.e. | singular breeders with helpers at the nest) however, skew falls along a continuum (Sherman et al. 1995 Vehrencamp, 2000), and, while rare, some cooperative breeders live in groups which experience low skew, subordinates commonly breed, and many if not all breeding individuals communally rear offspring (i.e. | plural or communal breeders) (Keller and Reeve 1994). Though phylogenetically widespread, communal breeding is rare. Among …

Patent-Eligible Inventions After Bilski: History And Theory, Joshua D. Sarnoff

UC Law Journal

The U.S. Supreme Court has continued to require that patentable subject-matter eligibility determinations be made by reference to three historic, categorical exclusions (scientific principles, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas), which must be treated as if already known even when newly discovered by the applicant. Various thoughtful scholars have alternatively urged that these exclusions should be viewed restrictively or that such eligibility decisions should be avoided. But these scholars underappreciate the systemic and social benefits of categorical exclusions, and particularly of treating these categories as if they were already known prior art. In any event, the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Patent …