Digital Commons Network^™

Can You Hear Us Now? Investigating The Effects Of A Wireless Grid Social Radio Station On Collaboration And Communication In Fragile Populations, Sarah Anna Chauncey

School of Information Studies - Dissertations

The ability to interact with peers and coworkers in online digital networks is essential in learning and business environments. Our digital participatory culture is based on communication in response to purposeful activity and is facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICT). Students with emotional, behavioral, and learning disabilities are often disengaged and excluded from this knowledge-building conversation. This disengagement results in a cycle of failure exhibited through diminished self-efficacy and inadequate academic and emotional self-regulation. A critical goal of those who work with these students is to bolster their resilience, persistence, participatory, and communicative skills--to invite them back into the …

Risk Characteristics Of Healthcare Workers That Decline Voluntary Influenza Vaccination, Caroline Epler

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Overlooked Role Of The National Environmental Policy Act In Protecting The Western Environment: Nepa In The Ninth Circuit, Michael C. Blumm, Keith Mosman

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

Critics widely disparage the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for being a mere “paper tiger” or bureaucratic red-tape. The U.S. Supreme Court has surely encouraged this perception by treating the statute with consistent hostility, reducing it to a requirement only to follow prescribed administrative procedures but not produce any environmental results. But in the Ninth Circuit, NEPA lives a more important life, since that court has not forgotten NEPA’s essential environmental purpose. This article examines four lines of cases in the Ninth Circuit that may show that NEPA’s future might reflect its conservation purpose. These cases 1) deny NEPA plaintiffs …

Radiation Therapy Quality In Ccg/Pog Intergroup 9961: Implications For Craniospinal Irradiation And The Posterior Fossa Boost In Future Medulloblastoma Trials, Bernadine Donahue, Mary A.H. Marymont, Sandra Kessel, Matthew K. Iandoli, Thomas Fitzgerald, Emiko Holmes, Mehmet Kocak, James M. Boyett, Amar Gajjar, Roger J. Packer

Neurology Faculty Publications

Purpose: Associations of radiation therapy (RT) deviations and outcomes in medulloblastoma have not been defined well, particularly in the era of reduced-dose craniospinal irradiation and chemotherapy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the quality of RT on Children’s Cancer Group/Pediatric Oncology Group 9961 and analyze associations of RT deviations with outcome.

Materials and Methods: Major volume deviations were assessed based on the distance from specified anatomical region to field edge. We investigated associations of RT deviations with progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and explored associations with demographics and clinical variables.

Results: Of the 308 patients who were …

Effects Of An Anticipatory Reading Guide On Third Grade Struggling Readers’ Comprehension, Evan Ortlieb

Journal of Contemporary Research in Education

With relatively stagnant levels of reading achievement in the last twenty years, it is paramount that educators not only teach content but also comprehension strategies to struggling readers. Though there are innumerable strategies available to teachers, this eight-week investigation explores the use of an anticipatory reading guide on third grade struggling readers’ performance on comprehension and vocabulary questions derived from a standardized state test. Results from the quasi-experiential designed study indicate that when struggling readers have practice opportunities to use and create anticipatory reading guides for thinking about what will be asked of them after reading, they perform at higher …

A Truly Radical Idea In Social Studies Education: Teach The State Standards, Richard Gardiner

Journal of Contemporary Research in Education

State social studies standards are reflective of the concepts of Bloom’s taxonomy, emphasizing the development of higher order thinking skills. Standardized social studies tests, on the other hand, are not reflective of Bloom’s taxonomy and almost exclusively test for memorization and identification. In other words, the standards target very different objectives than the standardized tests are designed to assess. If, then, the central objective is to achieve adequate or higher standardized test scores, we must admit that it is not “standards-based” education that is desired, but rather test-focused instruction.

Vol. 1, No. 2 (2012): Full Issue, Journal Editors

Journal of Contemporary Research in Education

No abstract provided.

Bard Free Press, Vol. 14, No. 4 (December 2012), Bard College

Bard Free Press - All Issues (2000-2018)

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Litigation In The European Union: Does The U.S. Class Action Have A New Analogue, S. I. Strong

Notre Dame Law Review

The article discusses an introduction of a regulatory litigation in the European Union (EU) analogous to class actions in the U.S. It mentions that earlier the U.S. was the only country to carry out large scale litigation as well as regulatory litigation but EU changed its present policies to adopt cross border collective redress in February, 2012. It presents a combination of new governance theory and equivalence functionalism to determine whether or not EU has adopted regulatory litigation.

Still Confronting The Confronting The Consolidation Conundrum, Richard Marcus

Notre Dame Law Review

A correction in the name of Joan E. Steinman published in the issue 4 of the Notre Dame Law Review is presented.

Management Of Biological And Chemical Constituents For The Advancement Of Intensive, Minimal-Exchange, Biofloc-Based Shrimp (Litopenaeus Vannamei) Aquaculture, Andrew James Ray

Dissertations

Intensive, minimal-exchange, biofloc-based shrimp aquaculture systems may provide a sustainable alternative to traditional shrimp culture. Through a series of experiments, this document explores the effects of several key management strategies on water quality, isotopic distribution, and shrimp production.

An experiment evaluated the effects of managing suspended solids (biofloc) concentration at two levels. It was found that using a higher flow rate to larger settling chambers resulted in significantly lower biofloc and nitrate concentrations, and significantly improved shrimp growth rate. A second experiment compared systems with clear water and systems with biofloc. The filters in the clear water systems prevented biofloc …

Criminal Justice Students' Perceptions Of Restorative Justice: A Study Of Demographic Variables And Restorative Justice Values, Lana Adelaide Mcdowell

Dissertations

As time progresses, criminologists continue to search for philosophies and policies which possess the ability to reduce criminal behavior. One such philosophy and policy may be restorative justice. This study explores the meaning of restorative justice as well as types of restorative justice processes including peacemaking circles, group conferencing, reparative boards, victim offender mediation/reconciliation programs, victim offender panels, social justice initiatives, and community justice. This study also provides a tentative definition/theory of restorative justice which suggests crime creates broken relationships; therefore, reparation, inclusion, acceptance of responsibility, remorse, apology, forgiveness, resolution, reintegration, reconciliation, and restoration are necessary components of justice.

Logistic …

The Impact Of Standards-Based Reform On Special Education: An Exploration Of Westvale Elementary School, Jessica Kim Bacon

Teaching and Leadership - Dissertations

A critical, interpretivist, qualitative study, this project examines how standards-based reform impacts special education at an urban school, called Westvale Elementary School. The school was labeled a Persistently Low Achieving school under the No Child Left Behind Act and was thus required to undergo a "transformation" process. The demographics of the school at the time of the study were: over 95% free and reduced lunch, 40% Limited English Proficiency, and over 20% students with disabilities. The racial makeup of the school is: 50% Hispanic or Latino, 35% Black or African American, and 10% white. My methodological approach drew primarily upon …

Killing Them With Kindness: Examining Consumer-Friendly Arbitration Clauses After At&T Mobility V. Concepcion, Myriam Gilles

Notre Dame Law Review

The article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court case AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, in which California's "Discover Bank rule" was struck by the Court under the Federal Arbitration Act, which was upheld by the California Supreme Court in the court case Discover Bank v. Superior Court. It provides information that the rule is a judge-made rule which depicts that class action waivers are unforceable in arbitration agreements if such agreements are mentioned in standard form consumer contracts.

PdmsStar-Peg Hydrogels Prepared Via Solvent-Induced Phase Separation (Sips) And Their Potential Utility As Tissue Engineering Scaffolds, B. M. Bailey, R. Fei, Dany J. Munoz Pinto, M. S. Hahn, M. A. Grunlan

Engineering Faculty Research

Inorganic-organic hydrogels based on methacrylated star polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS_star-MA) and diacrylated poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG-DA) macromers were prepared via solvent-induced phase separation (SIPS). The macromers were combined in a dichloromethane precursor solution and sequentially photopolymerized, dried and hydrated. The chemical and physical properties of the hydrogels were further tailored by varying the number average molecular weight (M_n) of PEG-DA (M_n = 3.4k and 6k g mol^-1) as well as the weight percent ratio of PDMS_star-MA (M_n = 7k g mol^-1) to PEG-DA from 0:100 to 20:80. Compared to analogous hydrogels …

Operationalizing Intelligence Dominance, Roy Godson

CIWAG Case Studies

Newer, fragile states often lack the police, administrative, and economic resources needed to govern effectively, and many cannot provide basic goods and services to significant sectors of their population. The vacuum inside these states is being filled by armed groups and political movements that are growing in both numbers and capability. The global competition for power, influence, and legitimacy leads to struggles for control of populations, territory, and resources.

Retroactive Harms And Wrongs, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

According to the immunity thesis, nothing that happens after we are dead harms or benefits us . It seems defensible on the following basis: 1. If harmed (benefitted) by something, we incur the harm (benefit) at some time. 2. So if harmed (benefitted) by a postmortem event, we incur the harm (benefit) while alive or at some other time. 3. But if we incur the harm (benefit) while alive, backwards causation occurs. 4. And if we incur the harm (benefit) at any other time, we incur it at a time when we do not exist. 5. Yet nothing incurs harm …

F-Transform In View Of Trend Extraction, Irina Perfilieva, Vladik Kreinovich, Vilém Novák

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the analysis of time series, it is important to decompose the original values into trend, cycle, seasonal component, and noise. In this paper, we provide a theoretical justification of the fact that the F-transform can be used for this purpose. We formulate "natural" requirements on the trend extraction procedure and then show that the inverse F-transform fulfils all of them.

Search-Based Detection Of High-Level Model Changes, Ameni Ben Fadhel, Marouane Kessentini, Philip Langer, Manuel Wimmer

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Software models are iteratively refined, restructured and evolved. the detection and analysis of changes applied between two versions of a model are one of the most important tasks during evolution and maintenance activities. in this paper, we propose an approach to detect high-level model changes in terms of refactoring. Our approach takes as input an exhaustive list of possible refactoring, the initial model and revised model, and generates as output a list of detected changes representing a sequence of refactoring. a solution is defined as a combination of refactoring that should maximize as much as possible the similarity between the …

Inference And Learning In Probabilistic Logic Programs With Continuous Random Variables, Muhammad Asiful Islam

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

Statistical Relational Learning (SRL), an emerging area of Machine Learning, aims at modeling problems which exhibit complex relational structure as well as uncertainty. It uses a subset of first-order logic to represent relational properties, and graphical models to represent uncertainty. Probabilistic Logic Programming (PLP) is an interesting subfield of SRL. A key characteristic of PLP frameworks is that they are conservative extensions to non-probabilistic logic programs which have been widely used for knowledge representation. PLP frameworks extend traditional logic programming semantics to a distribution semantics, where the semantics of a probabilistic logic program is given in terms of a distribution …

Estimation Of Solute Fluxes From Ungaged Headwater Catchments In The Catskill Park Of New York State, Chris Gianfagna

Civil and Environmental Engineering - Theses

Predictions of flow and subsequent solute fluxes from ungaged basins have important implications both for water resources management and ecosystem monitoring studies. The Catskill region of New York State is one such place that requires both water resources management and ecosystem monitoring due to its strategic location as the main water-supplying region for New York City. This study examines the differences in chemical mass flux estimates made in ungaged basins using three different chemistry aggregation methods for solute concentrations determined from monthly grab samples. The efficacy of area ratios for predicting flow at the upstream location of a nested pair …

Enriching Step-Based Product Information Models To Support Product Life-Cycle Activities, Mehmet Ilteris Sarigecili

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

The representation and management of product information in its life-cycle requires standardized data exchange protocols. Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) is such a standard that has been used widely by the industries. Even though STEP-based product models are well defined and syntactically correct, populating product data according to these models is not easy because they are too big and disorganized. Data exchange specifications (DEXs) and templates provide re-organized information models required in data exchange of specific activities for various businesses. DEXs show us it would be possible to organize STEP-based product models in order to support different …

Using Marine Snails To Teach Biogeography And Macroevolution: The Role Of Larvae And Dispersal Ability In The Evolution And Persistence Of Species, Jonathan R. Hendricks

Faculty Publications

While some marine animals are capable of traveling great distances, many have limited mobility as adults and spend the majority of their lifetimes in a small geographical area or may even be cemented to a single place. While it might be expected that species with limited mobility would have small geographic distributions, some nevertheless occur over very large areas. This is the case for some marine snails (gastropods). A key factor that impacts the geographic distribution of marine snails is the type of larvae they have during the phase of their life history that follows hatching from an egg. Because …

The Forum (Volume 42, Number 4), Valparaiso University School Of Law

Valparaiso Law School Forum

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of Optical Dipole Traps For Trapping Neutral Atoms For Quantum Computing, Danielle May

Physics

No abstract provided.

Parties Annexes

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

October To December 2012

All Summaries

No abstract provided.

Secondary Structure, A Missing Component Of Sequence- Based Minimotif Definitions, David P. Sargeant, Michael R. Gryk, Mark W. Maciejewsk, Vishal Thapar, Vamsi Kundeti, Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, Pedro Romero, Keith Dunker, Shun-Cheng Li, Tomonori Kaneko, Martin Schiller

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Minimotifs are short contiguous segments of proteins that have a known biological function. The hundreds of thousands of minimotifs discovered thus far are an important part of the theoretical understanding of the specificity of protein-protein interactions, posttranslational modifications, and signal transduction that occur in cells. However, a longstanding problem is that the different abstractions of the sequence definitions do not accurately capture the specificity, despite decades of effort by many labs. We present evidence that structure is an essential component of minimotif specificity, yet is not used in minimotif definitions. Our analysis of several known minimotifs as case studies, analysis …

Phenotypic Plasticity Of Oral Jaw Dentition In Archosargus Probatocephalus, Cynthia E. Worcester

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Phenotypic plasticity, the capacity of a single genotype to exhibit variable phenotypes in different environments, is common in many species. A sample of wild caught Archosargus probatocephalus, also known as sheepshead, from Florida was randomly divided into two treatment groups: one group was fed soft prey, Mercenaria sp. muscle tissue, and the other group was fed hard prey, Mercenaria sp. in the shell, for 365 days. It was hypothesized that the sheepshead fed hard prey would have a thicker tooth enamel layer containing more calcium, and therefore be stronger than the tooth enamel layer of those fed soft prey …

Examining Land Use/Land Cover Change And Potential Causal Factors In The Context Of Climate Change In Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal, Kamal Humagain

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the context of growing tourism and global warming, the fragile landscape of the Himalayas is under immense pressure because of rapid land cover changes in developing countries like Nepal. Remotely sensed data combined with ethnographic knowledge are useful tools for studying such changes. The quantitative change can be measured analyzing satellite images whereas local people’s perceptions provide supportive information. To measure such changes in Sagarmatha National Park of Nepal, Multispectral Scanner (MSS) and Thematic Mapper (TM) images since 1972 were used. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was calculated for different elevation classes and land cover types. These measurements, along …