Digital Commons Network^™

Perceptions And Effects Of Antenatal Education, Mohammed A. Al-Ateeq, Amal A. Al-Rusaiess, Aida A. Al-Dughaither

Saudi Medical Journal

OBJECTIVE: To assess the quality and effect of antenatal health education on health-related issues during pregnancy, and the benefits to women during the peripartum period. METHODS: This is a descriptive study of 300 women attending the Postnatal Clinics and Women Health Clinics in 2 Family Medicine centers at King AbdulAziz Medical City, National Guard Health Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The study was carried out between November 2009 and February 2010. A predesigned questionnaire was used. RESULTS: Three hundred women completed the questionnaire. Most women made their first antenatal visit during the fourth month of pregnancy, and most had 3-6 antenatal …

Diffusion Tensor Imaging Findings Associated With Cognitive Performance In Hydrocephalus Patients, Hongwei Cheng, Wenming Hong, Xiaojie Wang, Xiaopeng Hu

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Optimizing Systems For Cold-Climate Strawberry Production, Tiffany L. Maughan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Producing fruits and vegetables in the Intermountain West can be challenging due a short growing season, extreme temperatures, and limited availability of irrigation water. This is particularly true of strawberries, where commercial production is limited due to late fall and early spring frosts that shorten the growing season. With the increasing demand for local produce as urban populations grow and as consumer buying habits change, growers are looking for ways to overcome these climatic challenges. High tunnels are one option growers can use. High tunnels are similar to greenhouses, but less expensive to construct and to maintain. Another way to …

Impact Of Leveled Reading Books On The Fluency And Comprehension Levels Of First Grade Students, Melissa Seals

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this nonequivalent, control group, pretest-posttest design study was to evaluate the effectiveness of leveled book programs on first-grade students' oral reading fluency rates and comprehension levels. This study was conducted over a 10-week time span with four first-grade classes. All of the students in each class were given a pretest to determine their current reading level, and then the classes were randomly placed into the treatment group, which used leveled books during independent reading time, or the controlled group, which used trade books selected by the students during independent reading time. Two individually administered assessments, Developmental Reading …

Constitutionally Tailoring Punishment, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

Since the turn of the century, the Supreme Court has regulated noncapital sentencing under the Sixth Amendment in the Apprendi line of cases (requiring jury findings of fact to justify sentence enhancements) as well as under the Eighth Amendment in the Miller and Graham line of cases (forbidding mandatory life imprisonment for juvenile defendants). Although both lines of authority sound in individual rights, in fact they are fundamentally about the structures of criminal justice. These two seemingly disparate doctrines respond to structural imbalances in noncapital sentencing by promoting morally appropriate punishment judgments that are based on individualized input and that …

The Legality Of Deliberate Miranda Violations: How Two-Step National Security Interrogations Undermine Miranda And Destabilize Fifth Amendment Protections, Lee Ross Crain

Michigan Law Review

As part of the global “War on Terror,” federal agents intentionally delay issuing Miranda warnings to terrorism suspects during custodial interrogations. They delay the warnings presuming that unwarned suspects will more freely offer vital national security intelligence. After a suspect offers the information he has, agents administer Miranda warnings and attempt to elicit confessions that prosecutors can use at the suspect’s trial. No court has ruled on the constitutionality of this two-step national security interrogation process to determine whether admitting the second, warned confession is allowed under Miranda v. Arizona and its progeny. A fragmented Supreme Court examined two-step interrogations …

No Promo Hetero: Children's Right To Be Queer, Clifford J. Rosky

Cardozo Law Review

This Article argues that the state has no legitimate interest in promoting heterosexuality or gender conformity during childhood. Although opponents of LGBT rights have longed cited this goal as one of the primary justifications for discrimination against LGBT people, it has no constitutional foundation upon which to stand.

Building upon a schema familiar to legal scholarship on LGBT rights, this Article challenges the state's interest in promoting heterosexuality in childhood by articulating a tripartite defense of children's homosexual speech, status, and conduct. It argues that these three aspects of children's homosexuality are connected to and protected by the Constitution's free …

The Pallant V Morgan Equity Reconsidered, Man Yip

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper argues that the Pallant v Morgan equity should not be recognised as an independent doctrine because it does not rest on any tenable jurisprudential basis. It shows that a characterisation based on ‘common intention’ should be rejected because it is inconsistent with established legal principles and commercial practice. The alternative explanation based on breach of fiduciary duty, as suggested by Etherton LJ in Crossco No. 4 Unlimited v Jolan Unlimited [2011] 2 All ER 754 fares no better, as there is no reason why the Pallant v Morgan equity cases should be considered separately from other instances of …

Public Law Theory And Judicial Review In Singapore: Jeyaretnam Kenneth Andrew V Ag [2013] Sgca 56, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Court of Appeal affirmed the High Court’s ruling that the applicant had no locus standito challenge the compatibility of a loan made by the Government to the InternationalMonetary Fund with Art 144(1) of the Constitution. On the interpretation of Art 144(1), therewas no prima facie case of reasonable suspicion that such incompatibility existed. Moreover,the applicant did not have sufficient interest in the matter.

Food Safety Knowledge, Behavior, And Attitudes Of Vendors Of Poultry Products Sold At Pennsylvania Farmers' Markets, Joshua Scheinberg, Rama Radhakrishna, Catherine N. Cutter

Journal of Extension

A needs assessment survey was developed to assess the knowledge and attitudes of poultry vendors at farmers' markets in Pennsylvania, on food safety, regulation, and poultry production. Vendors were administered a 32-question paper survey, in person, during market hours. The results revealed critical vendor practices and identified important vendor knowledge gaps and attitudes on food safety and poultry processing. The data obtained from the study will aid in the development of future farmers' market research, as well as generating training and outreach materials on food safety for vendors selling meat and poultry products at farmers' markets.

Does Evaluation Competence Of Extension Educators Differ By Their Program Area Of Responsibility?, Nav R. Ghimire, Robert A. Martin

Journal of Extension

Raising evaluation capacity is not an easy task unless the evaluation competence of Extension professionals in each program area is identified. The study reported here identified whether level of knowledge and skills and needs for further training in program evaluation vary for Extension educators based on their program area. A total of 752 Extension educators participated in the study through an online survey. Differences were observed for evaluation competence and further training needs between Extension educators among program areas. Therefore, offering training for Extension educators based on evaluation competence and the area of responsibility is recommended for optimum training outcomes.

Efficient Privacy-Preserving Range Queries Over Encrypted Data In Cloud Computing, Bharath K. Samanthula, Wei Jiang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

With the growing popularity of data and service outsourcing, where the data resides on remote servers in encrypted form, there remain open questions about what kind of query operations can be performed on the encrypted data. In this paper, we focus on one such important query operation, namely range query. One of the basic security primitives that can be used to evaluate range queries is secure comparison of encrypted integers. However, the existing secure comparison protocols strongly rely on the encrypted bit-wise representations rather than on pure encrypted integers. Therefore, in this paper, we first propose an efficient method for …

Eagle-Eye: A Near-Optimal Statistical Framework For Noise Sensor Placement, Tao Wang, Chun Zhang, Jinjun Xiong, Yiyu Shi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The relentless technology scaling has led to significantly reduced noise margin and complicated functionalities. As such, design time techniques per se are less likely to ensure power integrity, resulting in runtime voltage emergencies. To alleviate the issue, recently several works have shed light on the possibilities of dynamic noise management systems. Most of these works rely on on-chip noise sensors to accurately capture voltage emergencies. However, they all assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that the placement of the sensors is given. It remains an open problem in the literature how to optimally place a given number of noise sensors for …

Capacitance Calculation For Via Structures Using An Integral Equation Method Based On Partial Capacitance, Hanfeng Wang, Siming Pan, Jingook Kim, Albert E. Ruehli, Jun Fan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a new integral equation formulation for via structures is developed for the capacitance extraction between vias and planes. The formulation is initially developed for axially symmetric geometries and then extended to axially asymmetric geometries by changing the circular ring cells to arc cells. The extended method can be used to calculate the shared-antipad via structure, which is widely used in high-speed differential signal interconnects. In addition, the image theory is used to handle inhomogeneous media, and a new technique is given to reduce computational costs for via-to-plane structures based on properties of the capacitance-matrix elements. The proposed …

Tumor Necrosis Factor -Α, Interleukin-10, Intercellular And Vascular Adhesion Molecules Are Possible Biomarkers Of Disease Severity In Complicated Plasmodium Vivax Isolates From Pakistan., Afsheen Raza, Najia K. Ghanchi, Ali Bin Sarwar Zubairi, Ahmed Raheem, Sobia Nizami, Mohammad Asim Beg

Department of Medicine

Background: Cytokine-mediated endothelial activation pathway is a known mechanism of pathogenesis employed by Plasmodium falciparum to induce severe disease symptoms in human host. Though considered benign, complicated cases of Plasmodium vivax are being reported worldwide and from Pakistan. It has been hypothesized that P.vivax utilizes similar mechanism of pathogenesis, as that of P.falciparum for manifestations of severe malaria. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to characterize the role of cytokines and endothelial activation markers in complicated Plasmodium vivax isolates from Pakistan.

Methods and Principle Findings: A case control study using plasma samples from well-characterized groups suffering from P.vivax …

To Say What The Law Is: Rules, Results, And The Dangers Of Inferential Stare Decisis, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

Judicial decisions do more than resolve disputes. They are also crucial sources of prospective law, because stare decisis obligates future courts to follow those decisions. Yet there remains tremendous uncertainty about how we identify a judicial decision’s lawmaking content. Does stare decisis require future courts to follow the rules stated in a precedent-setting opinion? Or must future courts merely reconcile their decisions with the ultimate result of the precedent-setting case? Although it is widely assumed that a rule-based approach puts greater constraints on future courts, two recent Supreme Court decisions—Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes and Ashcroft v. Iqbal—turn this conventional …

Workforce Preparedness Of Information Systems Students: Perceptions Of Students, Alumni, And Employers, Susan Bristow

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Employers of newly hired higher education graduates report their new workforce is not prepared. Further research was required to discover insights to the workforce readiness gap. This concurrent mixed methods study explored what competencies influenced employer's perceptions of the work-readiness of Information Systems (ISYS) undergraduate students and discovered ISYS graduates' and current ISYS students' perceptions of their work-readiness. Participants consisted of a convenience sample including 69 ISYS program upperclassmen, 20 ISYS program alumni, and 8 employers of the ISYS program graduates. ISYS program alumni completed an online Qualtrics survey to measure the participants' perception of their workforce preparedness. ISYS program …

Love, Reason, And Romantic Relationships, Justin Leonard Clardy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The capacity to love is without a doubt one of the most prized features of our existence. However, love offers us a wide range of complex questions with very few answers. Yet, it is important that we get an accurate view of love because knowing what to love and how to live aids us in trying to manage our lives sensibly. In this paper, I plan to present a reasons-responsive account of romantic love that involves the valuing of qualities that the beloved has as well as the valuing of the relationship shared with the beloved. I will also show …

Tcap Scores And Per Pupil Expenditures: Statewide Changes Before And After Tennessee’S First To The Top Act, Martha Ely Cantrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between the changes in Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) scores and the changes in Per Pupil Expenditures (PPE) after the enactment of First to the Top Act of 2010 and the receipt of $501,000,000 in federal Race to the Top (RTTT) grant monies. Half of that money was retained by Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) for education reform initiatives. The other half was awarded to each Local Education Agency (LEA) according to the Title I formula after TDOE approval of individual Scopes of Work. Reform initiatives included transition to Common …

Conceptual, Impact-Based Publications Recommendations, Ann Smittu Joseph

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

CiteSeerx is a digital library for scientific publications by computer science researchers. It also functions as a search engine with several features including autonomous citation indexing, automatic metadata extraction, full-text indexing and reference linking. Users are able to retrieve relevant documents from the CiteSeer^x database directly using search queries and will further benefit if the system suggests document recommendations to the user based on their preferences and search history. Therefore, recommender systems were initially developed and continue to evolve to recommend more relevant documents to the CiteSeer^x users. In this thesis, we introduce the Conceptual, Impact-Based Recommender (CIBR), …

Analysis Of Social Networks In A Virtual World, Gregory Thomas Stafford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As three-dimensional virtual environments become both more prevalent and more fragmented, studying how users are connected via their avatars and how they benefit from the virtual world community has become a significant area of research. An in-depth analysis of virtual world Social networks is needed to evaluate how users interact in virtual worlds, to better understand the impact of avatar Social networks on the virtual worlds, and to improve future online Social networks.

Our current efforts are focused on building and exploring the Social network aspects of virtual worlds. In this thesis, we build a Social network of avatars based …

Successful Marketing Strategies For Promoting Event Destinations, Evease Iniece Tucker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Travel and tourism has been recognized as being an important driver of jobs, growth and economic recovery in the United States. Meetings, events and incentive travel contribute $98.7 billion of the direct spending, $15.0 billion in taxes and 859,000 jobs. As a result, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) in the United States are taking advantage of this impact for growth in their destinations. As a destination marketing organization's main job responsibility is to promote their destination to attract visitors, which requires superior marketing strategies to achieve these goals.

This research investigates the marketing strategies of DMOs in the United States. The …

The Impact Of Counselor Level Of Spiritual Well-Being On The Morale, Global Symptoms, And Global Impairment Of Adolescents Receiving Treatment For Substance Use And/Or Other Mental Health Disorders: A Pilot Study, Michael William Holland

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years there has been a movement towards a holistic perspective of human nature in the counseling leading to increased interest in the nature and role of spirituality in counseling and the counseling process. In the present study multiple regression analysis is used to determine whether Counselor Level of Spiritual Well-Being, or aspects thereof, namely, Counselor Level of Existential Well-Being and/or Counselor Level of Religious Well-Being, as measured by the Spiritual Well-Being Scale significantly impacts client outcomes, namely, Morale, Global Symptoms, and Global Impairment as measured by the Health Dynamics Inventory for adolescents receiving treatment for substance use and/or …

Hydrogeology And Chemical Characterization Of Hydrocarbon In Domestic Water Wells, Rancho Villa Subdivision, Rogers, Arkansas, Janelle Renee Sherman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is centered on the Rancho Villa community in Rogers, Arkansas where several residents have had hydrocarbon contamination in their domestic water wells. The goal of this project was to understand the hydrogeology in the study area, characterize the contaminant chemically, and determine the source of the contaminant. The hydrogeology of the area was determined from previous theses. Seventeen samples were taken from the wells in the Rancho Villa community; each sample was analyzed for geochemical parameters and by Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) for organic compounds analysis. Four of the 17 samples had a visible non-aqueous layer of hydrocarbon …

Infrared Spectra Analysis Of Thermally Altered Iron Phyllosilicates And The Implications For Mars, William Thomas Bryan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at two iron-rich phyllosilicates, which may be present on Mars. The minerals, greenalite and hisingerite, are rich in iron-II and iron-III, respectively. Small samples (~0.40 grams) of each mineral were crushed and heated in a Lindberg Tube Oven for approximately twenty-four hours at temperatures selected to mimic lava flows and impact events. Following heating, each sample was placed in a Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectrometer to collect the near- and mid-infrared spectra. The spectra allowed for these terrestrial analogs to be analyzed with regards to how their structure breaks down with increasing temperature. The samples' colors were …

Perceived Impact Of Character Education Program At A Midwest Rural Middle School: A Case Study, Sandra Jean Goss

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today there exist a concern for the safety and success of students in the public education system. Families, educators, and community members are concerned with the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of students in an environment where incidents of violence are growing. Events like the school shootings at Jonesboro, Arkansas, and at Columbine High School left our nation concerned with the problems within the school system. Many believe that character education can be an effective solution. The purposes of this study are to describe key elements of one school's character education program, and to determine the impact that this program …

Compared To What? The Effectiveness Of Synthetic Control Methods For Causal Inference In Educational Assessment, Clay Stephen Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Synthetic control methods are an innovative matching technique first introduced within the economics and political science literature that have begun to find application in educational research as well. Synthetic controls create an aggregate-level, time-series comparison for a single treated unit of interest for causal inference with observational data. However, the strict statistical assumptions associated with matching methods for causal inference raise concerns for unobserved bias related to some data models and availability. The small but increasing set of existing synthetic controls studies with student achievement measures as the outcome of interest suggest that research is warranted into the effectiveness of …

Kirschner's Modal Ontological Argument, Andrew Kirschner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ontological Arguments for the existence of God, first discovered by St. Anselm (1033-1109), attempt to deduce the existence of God from the concept of God. It is the aim of this thesis to champion a modal version of the Ontological Argument as philosophically sound by demonstrating it to be logically valid and by successfully defending the argument's premises as true. Kirschner's version of the Ontological Argument states:

P1 For every type of entity, instances of that type of entity either actually exist, merely possibly exist, or necessarily do not exist.

P2 If an entity can be conceived, then that entity …

Investigation Of The Effects Of Rapid Thermal Annealing On Mbe Grown Gaasbi/Gaas Heterostructures For Optoelectronic Devices, Perry C. Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

High efficiency optoelectronic devices rely on high quality materials making up the device structure. The scope of this thesis investigates the effectiveness of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at improving the material quality of GaAsBi/GaAs heterostructures. During the fabrication of a device, the contacts of the device had the rapid thermal annealing process accomplished to produce ohmic contacts and this research explored if this annealing treatment degraded the quantum wells that made up the active region of a device. To investigate these effects, a system to measure the photoluminescence of the material system was constructed utilizing Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. The …

A Comparison Of Nebulized Vitamin B12 Versus Oral Vitamin B12 Supplementation, Terry L. Williams Jr.

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vitamin B12 is important for various processes in the human body including DNA synthesis, red blood cell production, energy production, fatty acid synthesis, and for the conversion of homocysteine into methionine. Vitamin B12 deficiency is becoming more prevalent. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if a different route of administration, i.e. nebulization, was a viable option for increasing serum levels of vitamin B12 in both exercisers and non-exercisers. The increasing number of people that are vitamin B12 deficient is due to several factors including medication use, elective gastric bypass surgery, and an increasing elderly population. There are currently …