Digital Commons Network^™

Firm Survival And Industry Evolution In Vertically Related Populations, John M. De Figueiredo, Brian S. Silverman

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines how the density and governance of vertically related populations affect the life chances of organizations. We integrate the literatures on organizational ecology and vertical integration to develop a theory of how 1) specialized upstream industries affect downstream survival rates 2) the prevalence of different governance forms among upstream and downstream organizations moderates this relationship, and 3) different forms of governance exert differential competitive pressures on focal organizations. We find evidence supporting our hypotheses in an empirical examination of the downstream laser printer industry and upstream laser engine industry.

Pitx2 Is Overexpressed In Follicular Cell-Derived Thyroid Cancer And Promotes Thyroid Cancer Proliferation By Regulating Cell Cycle, Yue Huang

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Thyroid cancer is the most prevailing malignancy of the endocrine system. Its incidence is rapidly rising at the second fastest rate of all malignancies in the United States, making it a significant health problem. Although the majority of thyroid cancer is slowly-growing and well-differentiated, available treatment options are very limited, and most of them require complete removal of the thyroid gland and surrounding tissues. Patients who have undergone thyroid removal have to take life-long hormone replacement therapy, which is very inconvenient and costly. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new treatments for this disease. As a prerequisite for …

Mother Country: Reproductive Tourism In The Age Of Globalization, Lauren Jade Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mother Country is a multi-sited, qualitative study of the United States fertility industry. I analyze the industry in two dimensions: as a particularly American institution and nascent profession, and as a destination for "reproductive tourism." The United States fertility industry, buttressed by lax federal regulation, free market principles, and high technology resources, is organized to benefit certain classes of American citizens and foreign nationals in their quest to have children. As such, the United States has become a prime destination for people seeking assisted fertility services such as commercial surrogacy, egg donation, and sex selection, which are unavailable, inaccessible, or …

Faunal Analysis Of The Early Modern Bishop's Farm At Skalholt, Arnessysla Iceland, George Hambrecht

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents the analysis of faunal material recovered from middens outside the main complex of the Bishop of Southern Iceland's Cathedral farm at Skáholt, Arnessysla, Iceland. Issues of diet, deposition patterns, as well as participation in larger trade and intellectual networks addressed. All of these issues are examined in order to investigate larger issues centered around the early modern Atlantic world. The Skáholt material is also compared with the larger body of existing early modern Icelandic archaeofaunal data in order to investigate issues of adaptation and resilience in the face of harsh climatic as well as social and economic …

Myth4 And Ferm Have Overlapping And Distinct Roles In The Function Of Myo1, A Class Xiv Myosin In Tetrahymena Thermophila, Michael Gotesman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

MyTH4 and FERM are conserved tail domains in myosin classes VII, X, XII, XIV, XV and in MyoG. Myo1, a class XIV myosin in Tetrahymena thermophila, contains MyTH4 and FERM. Previous studies have shown that Myo1 localizes to phagosomes, the cytoskeleton, and the macronucleus, and that phagosome trafficking and division of the macronucleus are affected in a MYO1 knockout. To investigate the roles for MyTH4 and FERM in the function of Myo1, GFP-tagged MyTH4, FERM, and truncated FERM were separately overexpressed in Tetrahymena. Actin antibody coprecipitated tubulin, GFP-MyTH4, and GFP-FERM. GFP-MyTH4 and GFP-FERM cosedimented with either exogenous microtubules or exogenous …

Stakeholders' Roles In Prioritizing Technical And Vocational Education And Training In Postconflict Liberia, Edward S. Forh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Postconflict governments and counterparts have collaborated to provide skills training to communities as a critical postconflict development strategy. In these undertakings, the role of community members remains largely undefined. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to understand the perceptions held by rural community members regarding the role they played in influencing government's policy priority for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as a local human development strategy in postconflict Liberia. The conceptual framework was based on human capital theory and concepts of motivation and achievement. Fourteen participants were purposefully selected for the study. Data were collected …

The Impact Of Industrial Technician Skill Losses At A West Tennessee Manufacturer, Kenneth W. Moten

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Business survival requires that decision makers understand the critical knowledge resources that support the business' core competencies, while also facing the challenges of current labor trends. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of the management staff at a west Tennessee manufacturing facility about industrial technician skill losses. This phenomenological design included semistructured interviews of 20 managers, supervisors, and engineers and was an exploration of the potential losses from skilled worker attrition. The foundations of labor theory; knowledge management; and accounting measurements of intangible assets in advanced technology, communications, and economic systems provided the key elements …

Relationship Of Teacher Training Levels To Teacher Referrals For Twice Exceptional Students, Robin A. Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although previous studies have acknowledged the role of teacher training in working with children with special needs, none have investigated the relationship between teacher training and referrals. There is a need to understand the factors that affect K-12 classroom teachers' referrals of twice exceptional (2E) students into gifted programs. Supported by the optimal stimulation theory, the purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there is a relationship between teacher training and 2E student referrals. The survey method was used to collect data from 102 K-12 teachers in the Ohio school district on their teaching credentials, ranging from no …

Generational Cohort Differences In Types Of Organizational Commitment Among Nurses In Alabama, April Lavette Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In hospitals in the United States, the ratio of nurses to patients is declining, resulting in an increase in work demands for nurses. Consequently, organizations face challenges with nurses' organizational commitment. Studies have revealed generational differences, as determined by birth year, in employee levels of organizational commitment in a number of organizational settings. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding the impact of generational cohorts on the organizational commitment of nurses. The purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental, cross-sectional design was to address whether generational cohorts of nurses differed in their levels of organizational commitment, and to investigate whether …

Standardized Professional Development Content Validation For Educators, Sara J. Sharp

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Educators in a low socioeconomic urban school district have been concerned with the quality of professional development (PD) training provided by the district. This issue affects students, parents, and teachers. Guided by the educational philosophy of inquiry and community, which hold that empowering teachers with validated PD could improve teacher pedagogy and perhaps academic outcomes, this project study examined (a) what benefits a standardized professional development content validation program for the 21st century can provide and, (b) what standardized professional development content validation for the 21st century looks like. A sequential exploratory mixed-methods design was used on a purposive sample …

Quality Costing Knowledge, Attitudes, And Perceptions In A Small Manufacturing Company, Adam M. Benner

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this research was to identify and assess employee knowledge, attitude, and perception of quality costing in a manufacturing company. The company selected for this research was a small manufacturer of agricultural processing equipment with an undeveloped quality management program. A quality costs questionnaire was discovered from a review of the literature and was slightly modified to gather data from a sample of company employees. The following information was collected from employees: knowledge of common quality costing terminology, attitude towards quality and non-quality concepts, and perception of departments associated with quality costs and the scale of quality costs …

Cofactors In Coronavirus Entry, Ana Shulla

Dissertations

Viruses have evolved complex ways to penetrate host barriers and cause disease. One of the most important barriers the virus has to cross is the cellular membrane. Enveloped viruses accomplish this task by viral glycoprotein-mediated binding to host cells and fusion of virus and host cell membranes. For the coronaviruses, viral spike (S) proteins execute these cell entry functions. In my dissertation research I focused on understanding the coronavirus spike proteins as well as other cofactors required for S-mediated entry into cells.

The S proteins are set apart from other viral and cellular membrane fusion proteins by their extensively palmitoylated …

Winning The Future: Strategic Plan For The Development Of Tourism, Robertico R. Croes, Manuel A. Rivera, Abraham Pizam, Eric D. Olson, Seung Hyan Lee, Yun Ying Zhong

Dick Pope Sr. Institute Publications

Aruba has developed and positioned its tourism sector as one of the premier destinations in the Caribbean over the past twenty-five years. The push towards tourism development was primarily aimed to create jobs and to enhance the quality of life of its population. The results have been astounding: not only has the island successfully transformed from an industrial-based economy to a tourist- and service-based economy, but the island now boasts one of the highest living standards in the Caribbean. The prosperity on the island is broadly shared among Arubans. Tourism has become an engine of economic growth, totaling U.S.$2.3 billion …

An Exploratory Study Of The Curricular Integration Of Ethics In Executive Mba Programs, Jaime M. Franco

Dissertations

An Exploratory Study of the Curricular Integration of Ethics in Executive MBA Programs

News headlines of corporate scandals have unleashed a contentious debate of whether or not graduate management education has contributed to corporate collapses and the resultant financial crisis. In particular, questions abound as to the willingness of Executive MBA program (EMBA) administrators and faculty to integrate ethics into the curriculum.

A sizable amount of research has been conducted and published on the curricular integration of ethics in graduate management education. Unfortunately, very little is known about the curricular integration of ethics in EMBA programs. Over time, the number …

Hořava Gravity: Symmetries And Generalized Particle Dynamics, Dario Capasso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the search for a theory of Quantum Gravity a new proposal was recently made by P. Hořava. The main feature of this new proposed theory is that it is power-counting renormalizable by construction, and could prove to be truly renormalizable, although more work is needed in this direction.

The renormalizability of the theory is a central issue. Indeed, General Relativity does not have this property, implying that to construct its quantum version we need to “complete” the theory in the UV. Hořava suggested a possible way to provide a UV completion of GR by giving up full spacetime reparametrization …

Stem Cell Replacement Therapy For The Mammalian Inner Ear: A Systematic Literature Review, Robin Warwick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Objective: The purpose of this investigation is to review current possible regeneration techniques for damaged hair cells of the inner ear in mammals. The avian has the ability to spontaneously regenerate damaged hair cells, and thus provides an animal model to simulate a similar response in the mammalian inner ear.

Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted using a PubMed database search to address the following question What are the current investigations pertaining to regenerating hair cells using stem cell-based research? The articles were analyzed and rated at Level Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, or III level of evidence. …

What Books Don't Tell You: Teacher-Eye-View Of Universal Design For Learning And The Implementation Process, Marylou Hatley

Dissertations

This study examines teacher perceptions of universal design for learning (UDL) and the systemic changes that might occur during implementation. The study compares differences in teacher perceptions based upon implementation year. Classroom observations, interviews, and survey of teachers and administrators from one Midwestern school district provide data for this study. Results of this study show that overall teachers feel positive about implementing UDL. Teachers experience both successes and obstacles during the implementation of UDL. Teachers have differing views of what UDL is supposed to look like in the classroom and many teachers are unsure of how to apply UDL into …

Perceptions Of Mentor Teachers In A Professional Development School, Gertrude Nalumansi

Dissertations

The professional development school (PDS) is an innovative teacher education

program, designed to foster simultaneous teacher and student development in K-12 schools and teacher training institutions. Built as a partnership between professional education institutions and K-12 schools, the program aims at preparing new teachers, promoting the professional development of practicing teachers, and improving student performance through the application of inquiry-based practices. This study examined the perceptions of mentor teachers in an urban elementary professional development school regarding mentoring strategies used to enhance teacher development, benefits to mentor

teachers in a PDS, and support and guidance strategies used by the partnering …

Patent Settlements, Risk, And Competition, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

PowerPoint presentation delivered at the session, Patent Settlements: The Issues Beyond the "Reverse Payment" Cases at the ABA 59th Annual Antitrust Spring Meeting, March 30, 2011.

Front Matter

Animal Law Review

Front Matter includes Title Page, Masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for Animal Law Review Volume 18, Issue 1, 2011.

A "Fisheye" Lens On The Technological Dilemma: The Specter Of Genetically Engineered Animals, George Kimbrel, Paige Tomaselli

Animal Law Review

One year ago, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed approval of the first genetically engineered (GE or transgenic) animal for food production—a salmon engineered to grow much faster than normal using genetic material from an ocean pout. Faced with concerns from scientists and the public that these “super” salmon will escape into the wild and be the final blow to wild salmon, proponents crafted a scheme that is half Michael Crichton, half Kurt Vonnegut: The engineered salmon eggs will begin life in a lab on a frozen Canadian island, then be airlifted to a guarded Panamanian fortress, …

The Animal Companion Puzzle: A Worth Unknown Though Height Taken, Ronald B. Lansing

Animal Law Review

A tort occurs where one individual breaches a duty allegedly owed to another. When the damage necessitates a judicial rem­edy, it is up to the courts to fix the appropriate level of compen­sation. The law distinguishes between two categories of compensatory awards and labels them ''economic'' and ''noneconomic'' remedies. When a loss falls into the latter cate­gory-that is, the damages suffered lack an ascertainable mar­ket value-judges have struggled to put a price on the harm.

This jurisprudential puzzle is particularly apparent in the pet loss context. Companion animals are defined as property under the law in all fifty states. Thus, …

Alternative Learning Formats In A Land Use Seminar, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Finding Haystacks With Needles: Ranked Search For Data Using Geospatial And Temporal Characteristics, Veronika Margaret Megler, David Maier

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The past decade has seen an explosion in the number and types of environmental sensors deployed, many of which provide a continuous stream of observations. Each individual observation consists of one or more sensor measurements, a geographic location, and a time. With billions of historical observations stored in diverse databases and in thousands of datasets, scientists have difficulty finding relevant observations. We present an approach that creates consistent geospatial-temporal metadata from large repositories of diverse data by blending curated and automated extracts. We describe a novel query method over this metadata that returns ranked search results to a query with …

Can Transportation Researchers Reuse Project Datasets And Programs?, Tyler Hayes, Lois Delcambre, Leonard Shapiro

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Data users involved in research and analysis typically invest a lot of eort cleaning and manipu- lating their data as they work. Based on this observation, we have investigated two hypotheses: 1) reuse of datasets and procedures is difficult, and 2) the inability to reuse datasets and procedures is primarily due to a lack of documentation. To test these hypotheses we conducted structured interviews with data users asking questions regarding the struggles in their work pertaining to data, their documentation habits, and the importance of documentation. The interviews revealed that the data users rarely reused data or procedures, frequently encountered …

Grading And Reporting Purposes And Practices In Catholic Secondary Schools And Grades' Efficacy In Accurately Communicating Student Learning, Peter Imperial

Doctoral Dissertations

Few aspects of school are as controversial as the practice of grading, for grades affect students' educational opportunities. The purpose of this study was to identify the practices Catholic high-school teachers employed in determining students' grades. The study investigated the extent to which academic achievement comprised the grades teachers reported, and the extent to which teachers' practices are consistent with their expressed purposes for grading. The study also explored the extent to which Catholic teachers' grading practices are consistent with their schools' purpose for grading. Using random sampling, 486 Catholic secondary school teachers and 50 administrators from 33 high schools …

Improving Safety In High-Speed Work Zones: A Super 70 Study, Andrew P. Tarko, Mouyid Bin Islam, Jose E. Thomaz

JTRP Technical Reports

Super 70 was an urban reconstruction project (March-November 2007) along I-70 in the central part of Indianapolis. INDOT applied in that project several innovative and traditional solutions. This study investigates the safety effect of the solutions. Advanced econometric models were applied to study both the spatial differences in the risk of crash on different roads inside and outside of the construction zone and short-term fluctuations in response to changes in traffic, weather, and traffic management. The single most successful management strategy was rerouting heavy vehicles (13+ tons) on alternative interstate routes. The second significant source of safety benefit was jointly …

Dynamic Real-Time Routing For Evacuation Response Planning And Execution, Srinivas Peeta, Sushant Sharma, Yu-Ting Hsu

JTRP Technical Reports

This study addresses the problem of dynamic routing operations in the emergency response context, primarily in terms of the routing of response vehicles and evacuees. The study focuses on identifying the paths used for routing response vehicles and the evacuees in disaster situations. In this context, two application modules are developed: module for K-shortest paths routing and module for multiple-stop routing. The K-shortest paths module allows more flexible options for routing response vehicles under the dynamic network conditions due to a disaster. It provides multiple routes for evacuation and response operations. The multiple-stop routing module enables the delivery of relief …

Benefits And Assessment Of Annual Budget Requirements For Pavement Preservation, Hiral K. Shah, Yoojung Yoon, Makarand Hastak, Jusang Lee

JTRP Technical Reports

This research identifies methods and best practices that can be used by the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) in performing various strategies for pavement preservation. It also identifies various methods of calculating benefits of pavement preservation and a methodology for allocation of funds for pavement preservation, which are the two main objectives of this research. In order to achieve these objectives, several tasks were performed: literature review, data collection through Surveys and telephone interviews, data analysis and recommendations. For the data collection process, all the DOTs across the US and three Canadian provinces were sent a Survey. A total of …

Recovering Full Repair Costs Of Indot Infrastructure Damaged By Motor Vehicle Crashes, Grant D. Farnsworth, Thomas M. Brennan Jr., Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Technical Reports

There are approximately 4,000 instances per year where state property located along Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) maintained right-of-way needs to be replaced or repaired due to motor vehicle crashes. INDOT incurs significant financial losses to repair state property damage that is not recovered from the responsible driver because responsible parties can not be identified and invoices do not reflect the fully-loaded cost of the repair. This study’s objective is to identify enhanced management procedures to decrease the financial burden of the state by identifying best practices supporting the following four goals: 1) increasing the percent of invoices collected, 2) …