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Increasing Social Work Students' Political Interest And Efficacy: The Experience And Impact Of A Social Welfare Policy Course From The Students' Perspective, Christie Dianne Bernklau Halvor

Dissertations and Theses

Students of accredited social work programs are expected to demonstrate ten core competencies, including the ability to "engage in policy practice to advance social and economic well-being and to deliver effective social work services" (Council on Social Work Education, 2008). Despite this expectation, almost half of licensed social workers surveyed disagreed with the notion that they were adequately prepared for political engagement by their social work education (Ritter, 2007). Because social welfare policy courses are the primary curricular means for preparing generalist social workers for political advocacy, this study explores how undergraduate students respond to social welfare policy instructors' efforts …

Understanding The Experience Of Air Force Single Parents: A Phenomenological Study, Samantha Everhart Blanchard

Dissertations and Theses

Today, raising children under the best of circumstances represents a daunting endeavor as any parent and a growing body of research confirm. When a single parent is on active duty in one of the U.S. armed forces, there are additional challenges involved that may not exist among civilian counterparts. The phenomenon of single parents on active duty with its unique difficulties associated both with single parenting and with military service was the basis of this study. The purpose of the research was twofold: to describe the experiences of Air Force single parents as related to social support and work-life theory …

The Power Of Protection: A Population-Based Comparison Of Native And Non-Native Youth Suicide Attempters, Juliette Mackin, Tamara Perkins, Carrie Jeanne Furrer

Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services Publications

This study provides actionable information about intervening with American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth to prevent suicide. Statewide school survey data were used to model the impact of risk and protective factors on self-reported suicide attempts (both AI/AN and non-AI/AN). The cumulative risk and protective model worked similarly for both groups. AI/AN youth had a higher threshold of risk before making a suicide attempt. Protective factors buffered the impact of risk, particularly for the higher risk youth.

Artificial Oyster Reefs In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico: Management, Material, And Faunal Effects, Jessica Nicole Furlong

LSU Master's Theses

Artificial oyster reefs seek to restore reef ecosystem services, such as water filtration, shoreline protection, and habitat for nekton. This study established three objectives to address the dispersed nature of artificial reef information in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and lack of post-construction monitoring assessments. First, to document the extent of activities in the GoM, we developed a database of all inshore artificial oyster reefs created for restoration purposes. Of the 422 reefs in the resultant database, a third or less provided records of entities involved (27%), restoration goals (24%), area (20%), monitoring efforts (15%), relief (9%), and costs (8%). …

Spatial Assessment And Analysis Of Pollution Sources And Water Quality In The Bogue Falaya River And Abita River Watersheds, St. Tammany Parish, La, Chelsea Core

LSU Master's Theses

Watershed planning is an important ongoing process for enabling communities to repair polluted waterways and ensuring the health and vitality of waterways for future generations. This study defines a process to spatially track pollution sources entering into our waterways. An essential tool used in the watershed planning process is geographic information systems. It is important to gather spatial information to illustrate where all potential pollution sources are located within each watershed. The data for this study were assembled into a database and mapped to locate pollution sources including: commercial/small business wastewater treatment plants; subdivisions without community wastewater treatment; and individual …

China's 20th Century Sophist: Analysis Of Hu Shi's Ethics, Logic, And Pragmatism, Rya Butterfield

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This is a study of the theory of critical Sophistic logic that underwrote Hu Shi’s involvement in China’s 20th century reform period known as the Chinese Renaissance. Hu Shi was a radical liberal reformer who played a leading role in the New Culture Movement. He pursued a two-pronged project for cultural reform. One side of the reform was focused on developing a critical pragmatic logical theory. This side was aimed at the intellectual class and appealed to the heritage of the Confucian literati. The other side of the reform was focused on lifting the people’s vernacular language from vulgarity to …

Assessing Intention Of Volunteers To Develop Their Leadership: Creation Of An Instrument Using The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Janina Marie Fuller

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

During the current tough economic times volunteers are playing an increasingly important role in making human services widely available and in building collaborative community partnerships. Volunteers are most likely to be productive, to be satisfied with their experience, and to sustain their volunteer service when the opportunities provided to them are aligned with their motives for volunteering, which may include building the kinds of knowledge, skills, and interpersonal awareness that are the cornerstones of leadership. Organizations that purposefully recognize, support, and develop their volunteers’ leadership potential generate positive outcomes not only for themselves and their volunteers, but also for the …

The Ethical Implications Of Bartering For Mental Health Services: Examining Interdisciplinary Ethical Standards, Joel A. Lane

Counselor Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

The present paper discusses literature concerning the practice of bartering for counseling, psychological, or social work services in lieu of traditional monetary payment. The author contrasts the language concerning the practice of bartering found in the respective ethical codes for each profession, and presents literature describing both risks and potential benefits of bartering arrangements. The primary risks of bartering include liability concerns and the potential for harmful or exploitive dual relationships. The primary benefits are that bartering makes mental health services available to those who cannot afford traditional fees, and allows for a culturally relevant compensation method for those whose …

Object Protocols As A Tool For Debugging Method Call Sequencing Constraints, Ronald William Gilkey

LSU Master's Theses

Clearly conveying and enforcing the proper ordering of method calls on objects has become a common problem among developers and interface designers. Without the ability of the compilation environment to enforce these constraints, programmers must rely on clear documentation being provided and diligence in programming to ensure that a proper sequence of operations is performed. Commonly, though, type-checking becomes the only tool to help support the correctness of operation sequences as API documentation rarely describes inter-object communications. Thus, the likeliness of producing erroneous and buggy software increases. Object protocols provide a simple and straight-forward approach to solving this problem. They …

The Return To The World: Precís Of A Defense Of Heideggerian Realism, Graham Charles Bounds

LSU Master's Theses

I defend Martin Heidegger’s philosophy from Lee Braver’s contention that it espouses or entails anti-realism, and instead contend that it strongly supports a robust realism. Realism is, in essence, the metaphysical position which states that human beings are aware—or are capable of being aware—of entities that exist independently of us. The counter-position, anti-realism, sometimes equated with idealism, holds that this is not the case. Braver breaks down these simplistic definitions into several more technical propositions, or “matrices,” and attempts to show how Heidegger rejects the realism matrices in favor of their anti-realist counterparts. I will likewise examine the matrices, arguing …

L'Embarras Du Choix: A Year Of Developments In The Laws Affecting Remittance Transfers, Credit Cards, And Certain Prepaid Cards, Sarah Jane Hughes

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Impulse Buying On The Internet, Claire Elizabeth Crafts

LSU Master's Theses

Technology makes buying faster, smarter, and more convenient for consumers, and supplies endless opportunities for impulse buying. Research of this topic examines influencers for impulsive online shopping, and marketing techniques used to encourage such actions. After a thorough literature review to identify important factors relating to impulsive purchases and to develop hypotheses, a survey is conducted to provide data on which the hypotheses can be tested. The survey is divided into four sections examining the effectiveness of online marketing techniques, shopping habits, Internet habits, and questions relating to a recent online impulse purchase. Theories to test include ones relating to …

Systematic Government Access To Private-Sector Data, Fred H. Cate, James X. Dempsey, Ira S. Rubenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court And Information Privacy, Fred H. Cate, Beth E. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Advances in technology—including the growing use of cloud computing by individuals, agencies, and organizations to conduct operations and store and process records—are enabling the systematic collection and use of personal data by state and federal governments for a variety of purposes.

These purposes range from battling crime and terrorism to assessing public policy initiatives and enforcing regulatory regimes. To aid these efforts, governments are promoting mandatory retention and reporting of data by online service providers and the expansion of laws that facilitate wiretaps to greater portions of the web.

The legal framework for protecting individual privacy within this growing world …

Oysters And Catfish: Resource Exploitation At Rollins Shell Ring, Ft. George Island, Florida, Julie Ann Doucet

LSU Master's Theses

Detailed faunal analyses were conducted on two major subsistence resources, oysters and marine catfish, at Rollins Shell Ring, a Late Archaic (5000 – 3000 B.P.) site on the northeast coast of Florida. The focus of this investigation was on resource exploitation, and, specifically, whether there was evidence that oysters from this site were over-exploited. Three units from previous excavations at the site were selected for analysis, and represent the span of occupation recorded for this site. Measurements were obtained from oysters to determine habitat, and, along with shell height, were compared across time for any changes in the pattern of …

First Amendment, Fourth Estate, And Hot News: Misappropriation Is Not A Solution To The Journalism Crisis, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Journalism is a public good. The Framers understood the importance of a free press in a self-governing society and embedded a structural right for freedom of the press in the First Amendment. There is a journalism crisis. Symptoms of the crisis include layoffs of journalists, diminishing content in newspapers and shuttering of newspapers. The rise of online technologies has exacerbated the crisis, mainly by siphoning advertising revenue away from traditional news organizations to free classified advertisement websites such as Craigslist, search engines and myriad other non-journalistic online endeavors. The internet, however, is not the main cause of the journalism crisis. …

Local Political Knowledge And Assessments Of Citizen Competence, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article contrasts the national and local political knowledge of a random sample of 993 Philadelphians with the aim of enhancing the scholarly understanding of citizen competence. Empirical study of citizen competence extends back more than fifty years, but the survey data that have been brought to bear upon the topic are almost exclusively focused on national-level politics. Consequently, sweeping conclusions about the competence of the American public rest upon a narrow foundation. The comparisons in this article depict a slew of differences in the distribution of knowledge across national and local politics, many of which challenge established notions of …

Survival Of The Standard: Today's Public Interest Requirement In Television Broadcasting And The Return To Regulation, Drew Simshaw

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Resolving The Ip Disconnect For Small Businesses, Leah Chan Grinvald

Scholarly Works

Small businesses are an important component of the American economy. In fact, the jobs created by small businesses could assist the United States in overcoming its most recent economic downturn. Paradoxically, though, the failure rate of small businesses is quite high. Although various factors contribute to this high failure rate, one of the factors the U.S. government has focused on has been the disproportionate impact that intellectual property laws, policies, and their enforcement may have on small businesses. While the U.S. government has paid attention to the impact of domestic intellectual property laws on small businesses, the government has paid …

Application Of Reference Models In Technology Management, Farshad Madani

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Reference models, sometimes called with other different words, prepare a general model from a specific view of the related environment. Reference models are considered as a basic foundation to create: 1) a common language among specialists 2) a reference for the entities such as processes 3) relationships among entities 4) tools and decision making procedures for the real world.

In this report, it's tried the definitions of reference model in the selected papers have been reviewed. It's noticeable that in many papers the term of framework is used instead of reference model. Also, applications of reference models are reviewed and …

Samsung Oled Tv Marketing Plan, Baraa Abudawod, Christophe Perrenoud, Chris David, Farshad Madani

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The evolution of television has substantially evolved within the last 2 decades to introduce revolutionary modern technology seen in Plasma, LCD, and LED backlight TV. The changes of television technology will offer thinner, clearer, brighter TV, and reduce energy consumption. After a brief transition of corporate strategy, Samsung has grown into the market as the leading innovative television manufacturer and currently holds 97% market share of AMOLED (Active Matrix OLED) currently seen in mobile devices.

In January of 2012, Samsung introduced a high definition 55 inch prototype OLED TV at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that seemingly will revolutionize the …

Bioabsorbable Atrial Septal Occluder For Percutaneous Closure Of Atrial Septal Defect In Children, Osman Baspinar, Mehmet Kervancioglu, Metin Kilinc, Ahmet Irdem

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

The BioSTAR bioabsorbable septal repair implant is a new transcatheter secundum atrial septal defect occlusion device that is absorbed and replaced by healthy native tissue. This retrospective analysis was designed to determine the most significant factors for its successful use in children. From October 2009 through December 2010, 33 children underwent catheterization to close secundum atrial septal defects by means of the BioSTAR. The mean age of the patients was 6.8 ± 3.4 years (range, 2.5-13 yr), and the mean body weight was 22.6 ± 11 kg (range, 11-55 kg). The device was successfully implanted in 91% of patients (30/33). …

After Avandia: The Use Of Antidiabetic Drugs In Patients With Heart Failure, Khaled I Khalaf, Heinrich Taegtmeyer

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Managing diabetes mellitus is an ongoing concern, especially in the presence of heart failure. Recent reports have drawn attention to adverse cardiovascular events associated with the use of thiazolidinediones, including rosiglitazone (Avandia). In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration implemented a stringent “restricted access program” for the prescription of Avandia. Other studies, which have revealed increased mortality rates in association with tight glycemic control, raise serious concerns about managing diabetes in heart-failure patients.

Herein, we provide a perspective on the management of noninsulin-dependent diabetes in patients with heart failure. We point out that thiazolidinediones exert their major effects through …

Hypoplastic Right-Heart Syndrome Presenting As Multiple Miscarriages, Chadi Dib, Philip A Araoz, Norman P Davies, Joseph A Dearani, Naser M Ammash

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Reversible causes of miscarriage are many, but they affect only 1% of women who are trying to conceive. Herein, we describe the case of a 23-year-old woman who presented for evaluation of repeated miscarriages and was found to have hypoxemia and erythrocytosis. Further evaluation revealed hypoplastic right-heart syndrome with an intracardiac shunt. She underwent hybrid repair with pulmonary valve balloon valvuloplasty, followed by surgery to perform atrial septal defect closure and a Glenn anastomosis. The erythrocytosis and hypoxemia resolved, and she was able to conceive and deliver a healthy baby at term 2 years later.

This is a unique case …

Transcatheter Retrieval And Repositioning Of Embolized Stent From The Right Ventricle In An Infant, Daisuke Kobayashi, Harinder R Singh, Daniel R Turner, Thomas J Forbes, Srinath T Gowda

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Intracardiac stent embolization is a challenging complication in a small infant. A Palmaz stent was placed across the atrial septum in a 3-month-old boy to relieve symptoms of right-side heart failure. On routine chest radiography one week later, the stent was found to have embolized into the right ventricle. The stent was retrieved and repositioned by means of transcatheter technique, without subsequent complications. We found this method to be a viable alternative to surgery in a high-risk infant. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the successful transcatheter retrieval and repositioning of an expandable intravascular stent from an …

Medical Education On The Brink: 62 Years Of Front-Line Observations And Opinions, Herbert L Fred

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

No abstract provided.

Pulmonary Resection In The 21st Century: The Role Of Robotics, Robert J Cerfolio

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

No abstract provided.

An Introduction To Technology Forecasting With A Tfdea Excel Add-In, Dong-Joon Lim, Timothy R. Anderson

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes an Excel add-in program that can run TFDEA (Technology Forecasting using Data Envelopment Anlaysis) within the spreadsheet. It utilizes freely available statistical software R and its packages developed by Statconn. This add-in allows access to both user-friendly tools for data manipulation in spreadsheet available and the power and precision of the results via R.

The Effects Of Scenario Planning On Participant Perceptions Of Learning Organization Characteristics, Melissa Haeffner, Deanna Leone, Laura Coons, Thomas Chermack

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Scenario planning is often used by organizations to think about future uncertainties. However, what it does in terms of changing perceptions is diffi cult to assess and quantify. To address this need, this article builds on previous studies documenting the effectiveness of scenario planning. Specifi cally, this article contributes to the data on perceptions of learning organization characteristics. This study compiles quantitative data gathered from 133 individuals working in 10 United States companies who participated in scenario planning. The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) instrument was used in a pre- and post-test research design and differences were analyzed …

Defining Ccl20’S Role In Carcinogenesis, Melanie Schafer

University Honors Theses

It has become widely accepted that chronic inflammation is correlated with cancer. An important aspect in this relationship is the microenvironment established by inflammation and characterized by the production of small molecules known as cytokines and chemokines. One such chemokine, CCLZO, is a Th17 specific chemokine essential for Th17 activation. Although the contribution of Th1 and Th2 in carcinogenesis have been well established, Th17's role in cancer development has yet to be identified. In this study, we provide first experimental evidence regarding the functional role of CCL20 in turmorigenesis that can shed light onto Th17's function in cancer. We generated …