Digital Commons Network^™

Logic And Grammar In Child Language: How Children Acquire The Semantics Of Polarity Sensitivity, Lyn Tieu

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the acquisition of a phenomenon that lies at the interface of logic and grammar. Polarity-sensitive items (PSIs), including negative polarity items (NPIs) such as English any, are often characterized by their restricted distribution, and analyzed in terms of their licensing condition (compare John doesn’t have any books, where any is licensed by negation, with the unlicensed *John has any books). Any moreover oscillates between NPI uses and so-called ‘free choice’ uses (John may choose any book). While a small handful of previous acquisition studies on English any have targeted children’s knowledge …

How Social Media Affect The Social Identity Of Mexican Americans, Kaitlin Eve Felsted

Theses and Dissertations

This is a thesis conducted qualitatively using the Grounded Theory approach where in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 legal Mexican Americans in order to understand how social media affect Mexican Americans' social identity. This effect was understood by discovering the relationships between social identity theory and integration. Results showed that Mexican Americans felt that social media helped them with their English skills and connected them to their friends and family in Mexico. Mexican Americans were able to use social media to connect to their in-group community, and Mexican American community leaders were able to connect Mexicans to their in-group within …

Comparison Of Psychogenic Movement Disorder Patients With Non-Epileptic Seizures And Other Hyperkinetic Motor Manifestations: An Integrated Model Of Psychosocial And Neuropsychological Functioning, Bonnie Michelle Scott

Psychology and Counseling Theses

Psychogenic movement disorders (PMDs) represent a complex and severe form of psychopathology, which even after a century of research remains poorly understood. As previous investigations have neglected to differentiate symptom phenotypes and have approached assessment from the perspective of cognitive dysfunction apparent in PMD patient's neurological counterparts, the current study aimed to examine the neurocognitive performance and psychological profiles of PMD patients with hyperkinetic motor manifestations guided by a theoretical lens of frontal lobe pathology and informed by previous neuroimaging studies with this patient population. Subsequent to diagnostic confirmation of their condition by means of video-electroencephalographic monitoring or adherence to …

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 …

The Lion & The Ringmaster: Croatia's Accession To The European Union, Jelena N. Bilandzich

Master's Theses

July 1, 2013 marked Croatia's official induction into the European Union. For Croatia this was the culmination of a long negotiation process filled with concessions and challenges. This situation inspired the question of how Croatia's alliance with the EU has affected the state? In order to analyze this relationship the aspects of Croatian identity and sovereignty were explored, in addition to the EU's principles and problems regarding member and candidate states. The evidence found within this investigation came from a number of literary sources ranging from the academic to official government documents. Furthermore, nine interviews were conducted within Croatia, which …

Land Grabs And Implications On Food Sovereignty And Social Justice In Senegal, Joanna Lafrancesca

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the case study of Senegal to examine the implications of large- scale land acquisitions on the livelihoods of small-scale farmers. I investigate the diverse perspectives of market enthusiasts, human rights organizations, peasants, the state, and international financial organizations on large-scale land acquisitions. Based on primary research, I argue that the state of Senegal plays an active role in permitting “land grabs” and that they pose a threat to food sovereignty among Senegalese host communities. Lastly, I argue there needs to be a broader understanding of long-term consequences and risks to insure social justice in areas affected …

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.

“Cause That’S The Only Skills In School You Need” A Qualitative Analysis Of Revenge Goals In Poor Urban Youth, Lena Janina Jäggi

Theses and Dissertations

Ample research shows that revenge goals are correlated with maladjustment and retaliation is an important factor driving youth violence. Still, in environments with limited institutionalized interventions revenge might be an indispensable tool to maintain social equilibrium. This qualitative secondary analysis of 50 (30 Boys) revenge scenarios from a larger longitudinal study (N=358 dyads of youth/maternal caregiver) expands existing one-dimensional knowledge of revenge from closed-answer vignettes to the rich real world experience of 10-16 year old youth from an urban community sample. Key findings showed significant qualitative differences in both cognition and emotions of revenge scenarios. Ten distinct patterns emerged and …

Research Brief: "Women Service Members And Veterans Returning To Colleges And Universities: An Exploratory Analysis", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief summarizes a scholarly article of the same name. It reviews research which analyzes the impact of being a transitioning woman veteran entering the student veteran sphere.

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 …

Novel Thermophilic Bacteria Isolated From Marine Hydrothermal Vents, Christine Demko Sislak

Dissertations and Theses

As part of a large study aimed at searching for patterns of diversity in the genus Persephonella along the north to south geochemical gradient of the ELSC, ten novel strains of Alphaproteobacteria were isolated unexpectedly. Using defined media under microaerophilic conditions to enrich for Persephonella from chimney samples collected at the seven vent fields on the ELSC and the dilution to extinction by serial dilution method to purify cultures, a total of ten strains belonging to the Alphaproteobacteria were isolated. Two of these isolates, designate MN-5 and TC-2 were chosen for further characterization and are proposed as two new species …

Enhanced Sonar Array Target Localization Using Time-Frequency Interference Phenomena, Jordan Almon Shibley

Dissertations and Theses

The ability of traditional active sonar processing methods to detect targets is often limited by clutter and reverberation from ocean environments. Similarly, multipath arrivals from radiating sources such as ships and submarines are received at sensors in passive sonar systems. Reverberation and multipath signals introduce constructive and destructive interference patterns in received spectrograms in both active and passive sonar applications that vary with target range and frequency. The characterization and use of interference phenomena can provide insights into environmental parameters and target movement in conjunction with standard processing methods including spectrograms and array beamforming.

This thesis focuses on utilizing the …

Who Owns This Body? Enslaved Women's Claim On Themselves, Loucynda Elayne Sandeen

Dissertations and Theses

During the antebellum period of U.S. slavery (1830-1861), many people claimed ownership of the enslaved woman's body, both legally and figuratively. The assumption that they were merely property, however, belies the unstable, shifting truths about bodily ownership. This thesis inquires into the gendered specifics and ambiguities of the law, the body, and women under slavery. By examining the particular bodily regulation and exploitation of enslaved women, especially around their reproductive labor, I suggest that new operations of oppression and also of resistance come into focus.

The legal structure recognized enslaved women in the interest of owners, and this limitation was …

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, …

Identification And Characterization Of Fine Particulate Matter Hot Spots On An Urban Arterial Corridor Integrating Probe Vehicle, Traffic And Land Use Data, Katherine Eleanor Bell

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of integrated probe vehicle, traffic and land use data to identify and characterize fine particulate matter (PM[subscript 2.5]) hot spot locations on urban arterial corridors. In addition, a preliminary analysis is conducted to consider volatile organic compound (VOC) hot spot locations. A pollutant hot spot is defined as a location on a corridor in which the mean pollutant concentrations are consistently above the 85th percentile of pollutant concentrations when compared to all locations along the corridor. In order to collect data for this study, an electric vehicle was equipped with …

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.

Walking As Experimental Poiesis, Katherine E. Bash

Artl@s Bulletin

This experimental text, created by way of bricolage, is a form of mapping that activates relationships between the experience of the body, meanings accrued over time, and the inhabited landscape. This work situates the body as the first site and engages walking to open up fields of experimental making of meaning through experiences collected (visually, textually, physically, etc.) along the way. These experiences are forms of ‘data’ that over time, gain more meaning as the archive expands to include new references. Specifically, the walk being mapped begins in 2004 in Florianopolis, Santa Caterina, Brazil, and continues temporally through to today.

Filling The Blank Space Of Global Art Peripheries: Measurements Of Art Mobility And Their Ambivalence In Nairobi, Kenya, Olivier Marcel

Artl@s Bulletin

In recent years, art made in Africa, particularly in the metropolitan context, has witnessed a substantial increase in attention coming from transnational institutions. While many researchers have pointed out the deceitful nature of contemporary art’s globalization, this turn of events still challenges the way we conceive the space of contemporary art. In this paper I use cartography as a critical tool to approach the international mobility facilitated by two art organizations based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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 …

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.