Digital Commons Network^™

Murray Ledger And Times, December 12, 2012, Murray Ledger And Times

The Murray Ledger & Times

No abstract provided.

Methods For Identifying Acoustic Emissions From The Front Face Of A Small Piezoelectric Blower, Brad K. Solomon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on identifying acoustic noise generating components in piezoelectric blowers through transverse velocity measurements and the development of a numerical fluid model. Piezoelectric ceramics have proven useful for many industries and areas of research involving: high precision actuators, noise control, ultrasonic devices, and many other areas. As of late, a unique adaptation of piezoelectric ceramics is surfacing in the area of pumping and cooling. Air pumps that use these ceramics replace the traditional electric motor, resulting in lower power consumption, less moving parts, constant pressure gradients, lower overall weight, and a low profile. The current drawback of this …

Cost Accounting Applied To Farming In Southwest Michigan, Toni Fisher

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to discuss how cost accounting is applied to the farming process. Specifically, this study evaluates and defines costs incurred within the farming industry where products are produced and sold after being generated from raw materials. Successful farmers must know the costs of raw materials acquired to produce cash corps.

While there are many types of crops farmed in southwest Michigan, this study specializes in cash crops, specifically corn and soybean production. Cost accounting methods applicable to the farming industry are introduced, discussed and applied in this study. A spreadsheet is presented which displays typical …

As Seen On Twitter: African-American Rhetorical Traditions Gone Viral, Tiffani Long

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This communication research study identifies the presence of the African-American rhetorical traditions of call-response, signification, tonal semantics, and narrative sequencing used in communication on the online social media network, Twitter. The objective of this study is to provide insight into the culture and community of Twitter. Additionally, the research demonstrates how traditional oral rhetorical traditions survive in the digital world. Over a 15-day period, tweets were collected by the author using a computer screenshot feature. Using a coding rubric, three coders, including the author, coded the collected tweets for the four rhetorical traditions. Resulting from this procedure, the coders concluded …

The Enduring Impact Of One-Session Exposure Treatment On Selective Processing Bias And Explicit Memory Avoidance In Snake- And Spider-Fearful Participants, Karen Stanley-Kime

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The prevalence of anxiety disorders in the general population makes clarification of variables that contribute to the onset or maintenance of these disorders essential. Two such contributory variables are anxiety-induced selective processing bias and theorized subsequent explicit memory avoidance. The purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of one-session in vivo exposure treatment on selective processing bias and explicit memory avoidance immediately following successful treatment of stimulus-specific anxiety as well as at one-week and one-month follow-up. Participants (N = 60) were assigned to one of three groups: (1) the treatment group, composed of individuals who were fearful …

George Dibble And The Struggle For Modern Art In Utah, Sarah Dibble

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I explore the spread of modern art to conservative regions of the country, in particular Utah. By using George Dibble as a case study this thesis will also address the struggle that Utah artists had to endure to have their progressive ideas in art be accepted in such a conservative area. It will address the criticism that Dibble had to endure by discussing specific incidents involved with certain works of art. Although there were plenty of people who did not like modern art, there were some institutions and people who were advocates of this progressive form of …

Examining Post-Migration Psycho-Cultural Adjustment Challenges Of Foreign-Born Students At Community Colleges In The Northeastern United States, Charles I. Anemelu

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Using Fsv In High-Speed Channel Characterization And Correlation, Jiangfan Zhang, Jianmin Zhang, Jane Lim, Kelvin Qiu, Rick Brooks, Bill Chen

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In modern high performance networking systems, high-speed channels are among the most concerns due to the channel loss, discontinuities and crosstalk as data rate reaches 15 Gbps (Gigabit per second) and above through backplane. Full-wave modeling and system level simulations are widely used to estimate the performance for high-speed channels. Due to the variations and uncertainties associated with the simulation and manufacturing, correlation between simulation and measurement is often used to gain confidence on the channel performance prediction. in this paper, a high-speed channel including the portion inside a high-end ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) package and the portion on a …

The Bg News December 12, 2012, Bowling Green State University

BG News (Student Newspaper)

The BGSU campus student newspaper. December 12, 2012. Volume 103-Issue 50.

The Self-Inflicted Wound (Fred P. Graham), Bernard E. Gegan

St. John's Law Review

No abstract provided.

Compensation For Traffic Injuries: New York And Comparative Systems, Josephine Y. King

St. John's Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Daily Egyptian, December 11, 2012, Daily Egyptian Staff

December 2012

No abstract provided.

A Simplified Onsite Image-Registration Approach For Radiosurgery By Partial Ct, Wupeng Yin

Open Access Theses

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is a kind of method of radiation therapy that uses three-dimensional computerized imaging to precisely guide a high-powered X-ray beam to deliver a concentrated dose of radiation to the abnormal area of the body. This therapy can efficiently and successfully treat many different types of tumors, either benign or malignant. Commonly used radiosurgery treatments are applied by CyberKnife or Gamma Knife through Stereotactic mechanism. Stereotactic radiosurgery can be assisted by two and three dimensional imaging during a course of radiation treatment. This is usually called Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT), which utilizes the imaging coordinates to direct radiation …

Temporal Fluctuations Of The Sound Speed Field And How They Affect Acoustic Mode Structures And Coherence, Felipe Messias G. Lourenco

Open Access Theses

In an idealized shallow water propagation channel with smooth boundaries and range independent sound speed profiles, normal modes can accurately describe the entire sound field which can be predicted using normal mode models. We also know that fluctuations in the sound field can be caused by fluctuations in the sound speed profile or by source/receiver motion. These phenomena are deterministic and can be simulated by changes in the mode shape or by a combination of the motion of modes past the receiver. If the fluctuations are small then small changes will occur in mode shape or in the mode positions, …

Mechanisms Of Nmnat/Wlds Mediated Axon Protection, Brandon M. Kitay

Open Access Dissertations

Neurodegeneration is a hallmark of several inherited and acquired diseases of the nervous system. Though great attention in the past has been given to understanding and mitigating neuron loss in these diseases, efforts at targeting neuron cell body death pathways have yielded modest success in preventing or delaying disease onset. Often preceding neuronal death, axon degeneration is a common pathological feature of many neurodegenerative processes, and may therefore provide a therapeutic target upstream of neuronal loss. Though formerly believed to be a passive process, recent observations concerning the destruction of distal axons following transection, referred to as “Wallerian degeneration” (WD), …

Predictors Of Hiv/Aids Related Stigma And Discrimination Among Anglophone Caribbean Women, Kimberly A. Hires

Open Access Dissertations

The effects of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) global epidemic continue to emerge decades after teh first wave of infection. One key aspect of the HIV epidemic that is significantly impacted by culture and knowledge of HIV transmission is stigma, specifically HIV/AIDS related stigma and discrimination (HASD). The Caribbean region has the second highest HIV prevalence rate in the world. In 2011, there were approximately 13,000 new infections and 10,000 AIDS related deaths among adults and children in the Caribbean. Three Anglophone nations significantly impacted by the HIV epidemic are Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. HASD has been identified …

Civic Capital And The Size Distribution Of Plants: Short-Run Dynamics And Long-Run Equilibrium, Matthias Bürker, G. Alfredo Minerva

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers

We characterize how the size distribution of plants, within narrowly defined industries, changed in Italy over a ten-year time span, and relate this to the stock of civic capital at the provincial level. Data on plant size come from the 1991 and 2001 Italian censuses. Civic capital turns out to have a positive effect on both the average and standard deviation of size. Looking at several precise points of the plant size distribution, we find that it shifts toward the right and becomes more dispersed where civic capital is high. The potential endogeneity of current civic capital is addressed by …

Profit, Productivity And Price Performance Changes In The English And Welsh Water And Sewerage Companies, Alexandros Maziotis, David S. Saal, Emmanuel Thanassoulis

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of regulation in the financial performance of the Water and Sewerage companies (WaSCs) in England and Wales. We apply a panel index approach across WaSCs over time to decompose unit-specific (temporal) index number based profitability growth as a function of the profitability, productivity and price performance growth achieved by benchmark firms, and the catch-up to the benchmark firm achieved by less productive firms. The results indicated that the steady decline in average price performance, gains in productivity and relatively stable economic profitability after 2000, suggest that Ofwat is now more …

Output Quality And Sources Of Profit Change In The English And Welsh Water And Sewerage Companies, Alexandros Maziotis, David S. Saal, Emmanuel Thanassoulis

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers

This paper investigates the determinants of profit change over the period 1991-2008 for the Water and Sewerage Companies (WaSCs) in the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry. We firstly apply an input oriented profit decomposition approach following the approach of De Witte & Saal (2010). Then, we make allowances for differences in the quality of output, by decomposing the output effect into high quality and low quality output effect. We decompose profit changes into various factors such as quantity and price effect, technical change, efficiency change, resource mix, product mix and scale effect, without and after controlling for quality. …

A Regionalized National Universal Kriging Model Using Partial Least Squares Regression For Estimating Annual Pm2.5 Concentrations In Epidemiology, Paul D. Sampson, Mark Richards, Adam A. Szpiro, Silas Bergen, Lianne Sheppard, Timothy V. Larson, Joel Kaufman

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Many cohort studies in environmental epidemiology require accurate modeling and prediction of fine scale spatial variation in ambient air quality across the U.S. This modeling requires the use of small spatial scale geographic or “land use” regression covariates and some degree of spatial smoothing. Furthermore, the details of the prediction of air quality by land use regression and the spatial variation in ambient air quality not explained by this regression should be allowed to vary across the continent due to the large scale heterogeneity in topography, climate, and sources of air pollution. This paper introduces a regionalized national universal kriging …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Firms’ Performance: A Stratigraphical Analysis, Nicola Comincioli, Laura Poddi, Sergio Vergalli

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers

Over the last two decades in OECD countries an increasing number of firms are obtaining certification as Socially Responsible (CSR is the acronym for Corporate Social Responsibility). Several studies (including Preston and O’Bannon, 1997; Waddock and Graves, 1997; McWilliams and Sieger, 2001; Ullman, 1985) have sought to test whether there is a relation between Social Responsibility certification and the firms’ performance. Our work builds a CSR index that intersects two of the three main international indices (Domini 400 Social Index, Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, FTSE4Good Index), in order to overcome some problems related to the multiplicity of CSR definitions …

The Carousel Value-Added Tax Fraud In The European Emission Trading System, Maria Berrittella, Filippo Alessandro Cimino

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers

In this article, we analyse the effects of the carousel value-added tax fraud in the European carbon market and the legislative measures that the EU Member States could adopt to deal with this phenomena. We use a computable general equilibrium model, called GTAP-E and the version 6 of the GTAP database to evaluate the economy-wide and terms of trade effects. The policy test has been designed for five European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. According to our findings, the legislative measures aimed to remove the VAT fraud in the European Emission Trading System will have …

Long-Term Effects Of Alcohol Consumption [Annotated Bibliography], Polly Cowan

Undergraduate Research Award

No abstract provided.

A Guide To Documenting Software Design For Maximum Software Portability For Software Defined Radios, Joseph Snively

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The use of software defined communications systems is growing incredibly fast. The field of software engineering as a discipline has not adequately addressed the subject of software portability which makes large and costly software development efforts less ready to port to future platforms. By understanding the causes of portability problems, they can either be avoided altogether in development or very well documented so that they are easier to overcome in future efforts. Literature, case studies, and surveys are used to collect opinions and information about large software programs where portability is a desirable characteristic in order to best establish the …

U.S. Drought Monitor, December 11, 2012, Rich Tinker

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for December 11, 2012 (12/11/12) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Chinaman Go Home!: A Socioeconomic And Gendered Examination Of The Anti-Chinese Movements Of Portland, Oregon And San Francisco, California, Kali Ingerson

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the Anti-Chinese Movement in Portland, Oregon in relation to that of San Francisco. Contemporary sources indicated a correlation between labor and racism. This correlation is explored in both San Francisco and Portland along with contemporary notions of gender identity in an effort to examine the Anti-Chinese movement using modern social historic theory.

2012 Fall Engr333 Project Final Report, 2012 Fall Engr333

ENGR 333

Calvin College is considering an addition to the West Wing of the Spoelhof Center to provide additional space for the art and business programs. The construction of this new addition provides the opportunity to investigate the feasibility of installing new, sustainable technology. This semester the students of Engineering 333 were presented with the following challenge: “What it will take for Calvin College to install a geothermal HVAC system for the West Wing?” A geothermal HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system utilizes the relatively constant temperature of the earth to provide heating during winter and cooling during summer. Geothermal HVAC …

Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome: Parent Support For Early Decision Making, Sarah Toebbe, Karen S. Yehle, Jane Kirkpatrick, Jennifer Coddington

School of Nursing Faculty Publications

Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome is a life threatening congenital cardiac anomaly. After a child has been diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, parents must make life or death decisions within days of birth. Healthcare providers must provide appropriate education so that parents are able to make informed, timely decisions. Information regarding the diagnosis, treatment options, and parental decision making process for initial decision making for hypoplastic left heart syndrome are provided to guide nurses who work with these families. The challenging decision making process which parents must go through after diagnosis of hypoplastic left heart syndrome will be described.

Rachel …

Family Science: An Ethnographic Case Study Of The Ordinary Science And Literacy Experiences Of One Family, Glenda Margaret Mccarty

Dissertations

Despite the copious research available on science learning, little is known about ways in which the public engages in free-choice science learning and even fewer studies have focused on how families engage in science to learn about the world around them. The same was true about studies of literacy development in the home until the 1980s when researchers (e.g. Bissex, 1980; Heath, 1983; Taylor, 1983) began documenting the literacy happenings and practices of young children in natural settings. Findings from intensive emergent literacy research studies have challenged traditional approaches to the teaching and learning of literacy, especially drawing attention to …

Psychological Well-Being And Dietary Quality Of College Women: Examining The Confounding Influence Of Sleep And Physical Activity, Whitney Ann Hebbert

Theses and Dissertations

Objective. To determine the relationship between overall psychological well-being and stress on diet quality among young adult women and to examine the potential confounding influence of season, physical activity and sleep on these relationships. Design/Participants. The study used a cross-sectional design. Three hundred and fifty-one women were recruited to participate in the study. All participants were university students (20.2 ± 1.6 y). Overall psychological well-being was assessed using the General Well-being Schedule (GWB) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Diet intake was measured using three 24-hour recalls over a seven day period. The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) was calculated to …