Digital Commons Network^™

A Mandatory Spay/Neuter Ordinance In San Francisco: The Solution To San Francisco’S Other Homeless Problem, Davi Lang

Master's Projects and Capstones

This Capstone explains the dog overpopulation problem in San Francisco where the increase in dog impoundments and animal cruelty cases, particularly ones involving dogs, has been straining its Department of Animal Care & Control’s already limited resources. At least 33 local governments around the United States have implemented mandatory spay/neuter laws for all dogs as a way to curb dog overpopulation. This Capstone argues for San Francisco to adopt a similar mandatory spay/neuter law, in which all dogs over the age of six months must be spayed or neutered, with certain exceptions. This will relieve the strain on Animal Care …

Re-Visiting Homosexuality In Cameroon: Effective Advocacy On The Path From Homophobia To Dignity And Equality, Jean Cedric Ndzomo

Master's Theses

Cameroon, one of the countries in the world that continues to criminalize homosexuality, has been on the news recently due to the torture and murder of young journalist and gay activist, Eric Ohena. This paper examines the discrimination faced by the LGBTI community in Cameroon by exploring the origins of homophobic violence, the role played by Cameroon's legal system, and the struggles of LGBTI Cameroonians in their fight for a better life. The analysis includes a review of the work by scholars on colonialism and sexuality in Africa, and questions the roots of violence and abuse against the LGBTI community …

Between Mobility And Stability: Immigration, Free Trade, And Human Rights In The Context Of The Latino Immigrant, Joseph M. Stosberg

Master's Theses

This work takes a multi-dimensional approach to understanding human rights abuse toward Latino immigrants. It is argued here that the opening up of Mexico and Central American countries to free trade, and the restricted movement across borders has increased human rights abuse toward immigrants. In order to investigate these issues this research looks at: the opening up of Mexico and Central American countries to free trade; a pervasive narrative that portrays the Latino immigrant as a threat; and U.S. immigration policy. I use these respective bodies of literature to guide the discussion of the Latino immigrant experience, from the decision …

The Plight Of Kenyan Domestic Workers In Gulf Countries, Caroline Muthoni Gikuru

Master's Theses

Kenya’s economy remains the regional leader within the East African Community (EAC) and among East African countries at large. However, political instability such as the 2007 post-election violence and the region’s social and political instability trickling into Kenya, have negatively affected the country’s economic growth. To bridge the economic gap, Kenyan women are seeking employment in the domestic service sector in the Gulf Countries, with Saudi Arabia being the most popular destination. At their destination countries, some domestic workers are subjected to various forms of abuse by their employers, leaving the worker without recourse due to the lack of legal …

Silence To Signs: Bridging The Communiction Gap For Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing Inmates In Prisons, Kayleigh A. Marshall

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper explores the failure of American prison systems to provide communication access to deaf and hard of hearing prisoners. Sign language is sparsely accessible to deaf individuals in prisons. Communication and access to language are key to the human condition and democratic participation. When prison administrations ban sign language, deaf individuals are prevented from accessing programs and services that would lead to lower recidivism rates, and they are prevented from participating democracy. Since use of sign language is a natural part of many individuals’ deaf experience, barring its use is also a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act …

Fall Commencement Ceremonies, University Of North Florida

Commencement Printed Materials

Program for the Fall Commencement ceremonies.

Challenges For Good Government Reformers In California: Shadow Lobbying & Astroturfing, Scott Alonso

Master's Projects and Capstones

Lobbying reform in California’s capital presents a complex policy problem for good government advocates and policymakers. Lobbyists have a large influence on political and policy matters in the state legislature and executive branch. Reform proponents naturally see the oversized influence of lobbyists as a problem. However, how big of a problem is lobbying? Further, what efforts underway now address lobbying? Lobbyists are defined in California law with a monetary and time limit requirement. We can look at current law to understand the failings of regulatory bodies and how the law fails to properly oversee lobbying activity. While there is not …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Its Effects On Corporate-Community Relationships: A Case Study Of Chevron's Richmond Refinery Fire In 2012, Afshan Khan

Master's Projects and Capstones

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a practical and strategic implementation process corporations often use to build social trust with the communities they serve. This process of developing social trust, according to Francis Fukuyama, creates conditions for corporations and communities to deepen their investments in each other, thus increasing the probability of economic prosperity. By seeking to balance social, environmental, and economic imperatives, corporations seeks to create a lasting, sustainable relationship with the communities they partner with. CSRs are not merely about re-branding and impression management, for they are about establishing a healthy, trusting relationship with the customers that corporations identify …

Partisanship And Opportunities For Additional Bipartisanship In Tech Immigration And Privacy Reform, Arielle E. Segal

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper explores the history of technology and government by analyzing the longstanding partisan advantage Democrats have had in the Silicon Valley and other tech hubs. Additionally, this paper seeks out opportunities for bipartisanship, specifically in the legislative realms of tech privacy and immigration reform. Constituencies, committee assignments, fundraising and other environmental factors can help determine a politician's level of interest in tech issues. Specifically, upon analyzing these factors, bipartisanship appears to be more likely in privacy reform than in immigration reform.

Online News-Seeking Behavior Among Three Generational Cohorts: Baby Boomers, Generation X, And Generation Y, Ivonna Cabrera Torres

Theses

News-seeking behavior has been a matter of study for many years now. With the rise of the Internet, online news has become a news interest for scholars studying the news field. This research surveyed 73 Generation Y, 46 Generation X and 54 Baby Boomers members at the Rochester Institute of Technology to understand the differences between the three cohorts when it comes to online news readership using the social network Twitter and to learn the differences between the preferred devices each generation uses to read online news.

Fumarate Inhibits Tnf-Α Release, Megan Kelly

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Vertebrates utilize two forms of immunity to combat pathogens. Innate immunity is considered the first line of defense that utilizes immediate action and three barriers. Innate immunity responses typically occur within minutes of pathogen exposure resulting in cellular receptor activation and acute pro-inflammatory cytokine release. Inflammatory macrophages engage bacterial endotoxins, including Gram-negative lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and Gram-positive lipoteichoic acid (LTA). And respond by releasing tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). While beneficial for neutralizing acute pathogen exposure, prolonged TNF-α release results in chronic inflammation and tissue damage. In the present study, we examined two methylated derivatives of a citric acid cycle intermediate, fumarate, …

Luciana Ranelli '14 Looks To El Paso, University Relations

Campus News Archive

The biology and secondary education major is preparing to student teach in El Paso’s Ysleta Independent School District.

A Technological Approach To Reforming Japan's Consumption Tax, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Significant change has been forecast for the Japanese Consumption Tax. Revenue needs are pressing, and the Consumption Tax appears to be underutilized. Should the rate be doubled from 5% to 10%, or more? If so, will rate increases necessitate further structural changes – recasting this annual credit-subtraction levy into a European style credit-invoice VAT? These options have not proven to be politically palatable, but they are directions that have been under active consideration.

On October 1, 2013 the Japanese Cabinet Office announced that the Consumption Tax would rise from 5% to 8% effective April 1, 2014. The rate will increase …

Every Town Is All The Same When You've Left Your Heart In The Portland Rain: Representations Of Portland Place And Local Identity In Portland Popular Lyrics, Meghan Andrea Kearney

Dissertations and Theses

This study looks at how place and local identity of Portland are described within music lyrics from Portland, Oregon popular indie-rock artists. Employing a constant comparative analysis on a set of 1,201 songs from 21 different popular Portland indie-rock artists, the themes of landscapes and climate were found to represent place, and themes of lifestyles and attitudes represented local identity. Reviewing the uncovered themes showed a strong connection between representations of place and local identity within lyrics and common stereotypes or understandings of the city of Portland and its indie-rock music scene. The results of this study illustrate how place …

Sexting Unleashed: The Social Phenomenon According To Youth Sexters, Jessica Marie Mcgraw

Dissertations and Theses

What is missing from academia and society at large is a more holistic picture of youth sexting. Not adequately understanding youth sexting has stunted previous attempts to effectively educate young people on its potential consequences. As such, the social and legal consequences of sexting gone viral have negatively impacted countless individuals. This study offers a preliminary glimpse of the sexting phenomenon by highlighting the experiences of 20 young people. I explore emergent themes regarding the nature of youth sexting as well as the interrelations amongst privacy, relationships, and sexting. Two distinct forms of sexting emerged from participant narratives, opening the …

Coordinating Job Release Dates With Workdays: A Job Shop Application To Utilities Field Service Scheduling, Ryan Lawrence Pelkey

Dissertations and Theses

A local utility company processes a variety of jobs each day including meter reading, service shut-offs, emergency response, and customer service work. For the Company, a specific workflow begins with automated meter-reading (AMR) and ends with collections/service shut-offs (CSOs) for accounts with excessively late payments (AMR-CSO workflow). There are considerable and systemic sources of variability in both the workload and resource demands of the AMR-CSO workflow including order arrival, order release schedules, order batch-sizing and maintenance scheduling.

This project draws on theory from the job-shop problem to explore possible means to mitigate this variability. We hypothesized that controlling various forms …

Scenario Development And Analysis Of Freshwater Ecosystem Services Under Land Cover And Climate Change In The Tualatin And Yamhill River Basins, Oregon, Robert Wesley Hoyer

Dissertations and Theses

Humans make decisions within ecosystems to enhance their well-being, but choices can lead to unintended consequences. The ecosystem services (ES) approach supports decision-making that considers all environmental goods and services. Many challenges remain in the implementation of the ES approach like how specific ES vary through space and time. We address this research problem using the Tualatin and Yamhill river basins in northwestern Oregon as a study area. Freshwater ES are quantified and mapped with the spatially-explicit ES modeling tool, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST). In chapter II, we develop a simple urban land cover change modeling …

An Investigation Into Instructional Support For Data Analysis In High School Science Inquiry, Anika Rae Baker-Lawrence

Dissertations and Theses

The implementation of scientific inquiry in the high school classroom has proven to be not only relevant and exploratory, but challenging and engaging as well. This style of curriculum design has been recognized as a primary means of achieving the goals and objectives set by the National Resource Council (NRC, 1996). While much research has shown that science inquiry helps students to gain understanding of content knowledge, little research has been conducted to assess gains in higher order thinking skills, specifically those related to data analysis (Anderson, 2002; Germann and Aram, 1996; Hofstein, Navon, Kipnis, and Mamlok-Naaman, 2005; Miner, Levy, …

December Agenda, Wku Graduate Council

Graduate School

Meeting agenda.

Meeting Minutes, Wku Graduate Council

Graduate School

Meeting minutes.

Middle Level Teacher Preparation: Principals’ Perceptions Of New Teacher Preparedness--Research, Chris M. Cook, Penny B. Howell, Shawn A. Faulkner

Journal of Excellence in College Teaching and Learning

Drawing on the Framework for Effective Middle Level Teaching(Faulkner, Howell, &Cook, 2012; Howell, Cook, Faulkner, 2013), this interpretive, exploratory study utilized survey methodology to analyze 38 middle level principals’ perceptions of effective teaching practices and the preparedness of newly hired middle level teachers. The findings suggest there is difference in perceptions of new teacher preparedness between principals with middle level teacher certification and principals that were prepared to teach at other grade levels. While both groups acknowledged the need for better teacher preparation, principals with middle level teacher certification reported that newly hired teachers were less prepared for effective middle …

Developing A Short-Term International Study-Abroad Program: From Beginning To End, Paula A. Delpech Phd

PRISM: A Journal of Regional Engagement

TOPIC: Short-term international immersion experiences have proven to be an excellent strategy for nursing programs to use as a way for students to develop cultural competence.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this article is to describe a faculty led short-term nursing study abroad program for undergraduate nursing students to Grenada. A two week study abroad program for seven undergraduate nursing students and two faculty member was organized in partnership with St. Georges University School of Nursing in Grenada.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION: The author describes the process of program development that includes the selection of the host country to post …

Location As Vocation: An Urban College's Engagement With Their Somali Neighbors, Matthew Maruggi, Annette Gerten

PRISM: A Journal of Regional Engagement

This article focuses on the significance of an urban college’s location and mission in guiding disciplines within the college to engage with its immigrant neighbors through service-learning.The authors describe how social connectedness theory and transformational learning theory were used to facilitate learning and increase students’ awareness of their sense of vocation.Student reflections on the service learning experience in both disciplines, religion and social work, are used to illustrate the application of each theory.

Assessing The Community Partner In Academic Service-Learning: A Strategy For Capacity-Building, Susan E. Waters, Joanna J. Cemore Brigden

PRISM: A Journal of Regional Engagement

Service-learning is an instructional method used by an ever increasing number of schools in the academic community. This paper describes surveys of community partners found on the websites of Campus Compact members and analyzes the content of these surveys. Eight themes emerged that embody the online community partner assessment surveys for service-learning courses: Agency Voice, Agency Resources, Students’ Work Skills, Students’ Service Skills, Agency Benefit, Communication and Coordination with University Service-Learning, Sustainability of Partnership, and Satisfaction with the Service-Learning Experience. The theme of Community-University Partnership established in extant literature was absent from the online surveys, so this theme was added …

Les “Marchands De Tableaux” Dans Le Bottin Du Commerce : Une Approche Globale Du Marché De L’Art À Paris Entre 1815 Et 1955, Félicie De Maupeou, Léa Saint-Raymond

Artl@s Bulletin

This article reconsiders the evolution of the Parisian art market using a homogeneous, stable, and diachronic source: the Bottin du commerce. The systematic study of the "art dealers" section from 1815 to 1955 provides a global perspective on the dynamics of the art trade and the transformations of the profession. After first developing under Louis XVIII, the market stabilizes and structures itself during the Second Empire. It then experiences a slowdown in the 1870s before taking off again and becoming fully competitive in the 1890s. The factors of this evolution are connected to the real economy - national and international …

Les Xx In The City: An Artists’ Neighborhood In Brussels, Laurence Brogniez, Tatiana Debroux

Artl@s Bulletin

In this article we focus upon the spatiality of the artistic circle Les XX, in Belgium and in Europe. We study the installation of the circle’s members in both Brussels and the context of the city’s local artistic geography. One zone seems to have been a focus of the group’s creative and social life: the suburb of Ixelles, in particular, the neighborhood around the rue de l’Abbaye. This area was home to many artists, including Anna Boch, whose villa became a sort of second home to Les XX. Through cartographic analysis and the description of this environment, we bring into …

Visualizing Spaces, Flows, Agents, And Networks Of The Art Markets In The 18th Century: Some Methodological Challenges, Sophie Raux

Artl@s Bulletin

This visualization project originated in a program entitled “Art Markets in Europe 1300-1800, Emergence, Development, Networks.” The latter focused mainly on the movement and dynamics of the art markets of the early modern age: Who were the agents of this mobility? What were its mechanisms? What idea do we have of the numbers of pictures circulating in Europe? Through what channels and networks were they distributed? These questions led the team to work out an experimental program of visualization aiming at endowing our research outcome with a visual and synthetic dimension that would help us renew our approaches and generate …

Mapping Eastern Europe: Cartography And Art History, Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius

Artl@s Bulletin

This paper compares maps of Eastern Europe, beginning from the map of Slavic lands by Josef Pavol Šafárik of 1842, and it claims that cartographic imagery has played a significant role in the legitimisation of the region’s collective identity. It argues that the adoption the map as a tool of art history, in order to spatialise and quantify the understanding of art, cannot bypass the postmodern critique of the map. It reflects on the overlap between the approaches and methods of critical cartography and critical art history, as well as on the mutual benefits of the visual turn in cartography …

Spaces Of Arts: Wrap-Up Comments, David M. Lubin

Artl@s Bulletin

In this personal, polemical, and ad hoc response to papers given at the Spaces of Arts conference at Purdue University in September, 2012, Lubin identifies potential problem areas for geographical and digital art history. He admonishes its practitioners not to replace hermeneutical interpretation of art objects and art movements with positivist aggregations of data and inflated faith in digital technology. Likewise, he warns against a utopian hope that maps, charts, and graphs can ever be enough to untangle the intransigent complexity of art and its embodiment of cultural and historical change.

Introduction: Do Maps Lie?, Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel

Artl@s Bulletin

No abstract provided.