Digital Commons Network^™

Cultural Identity And Education: A Critical Race Perspective, Theodorea Berry, Matthew Candis

Faculty Publications

The article discusses cultural identity, experience, and gap, along with the connections of critical race theory (CRT) and critical race feminism (CRF) with cultural identity and experience. Topics include the definition of cultural experience, the identity of African American educators, and the cultural gap experienced by African American students.

Lightweight Data Location Services For Exascale Storage Systems, Zhiwei Sun

All ETDs from UAB

In order to satisfy the storage demands of Exascale computing by 2018 (a stated goal of the US government and the HPC research community), a number of Exascale storage systems have begun to be designed and explored to facilitate application checkpointing and parallel file storage. Nondeterministic storage systems (which weaken the assumptions of Terascale and Petascale predecessors) can provide useful capabilities that are difficult to implement in today's parallel file systems, such as high-performance writes, dynamic load-balancing, enriched flexibility of moving data and creating replicas, and potentially other features. However, locating data and reading data back from nondeterministic storage systems …

Hard On Your Heart: A Qualitative Description Of Adolescent Prenatal Stress, Candace Clayton Knight

All ETDs from UAB

Introduction: Pregnancy during adolescence is potentially stressful due to the concurrent tasks of navigating the typically tumultuous adolescent stage of development and the life altering experience of pregnancy (Kaye, 2008). There is a growing body of research linking prenatal stress to poor birth and developmental outcomes such as premature birth and low birth weight infants (K. Keenan, Sheffield, & Boeldt, 2007; Mulder et al., 2002), which makes describing the relatively unexplored perceptions and experience of stress during adolescent pregnancy important. The life course framework, with its emphasis on social, environmental, and family risk factors, has implications for reducing disparities among …

High Density Genotyping For Immunogenetic Polymorphisms Associated With Transmission And Control Of Hiv-1 Infection In Zambian Heterosexual Serodiscordant Couples, Heather Prentice

All ETDs from UAB

Understanding host genetic correlates of HIV-1 outcomes in sub-Saharan African populations is of continued importance due to the disproportionate disease burden in this population. We sought to identify genetic variants associated with HIV-1 acquisition in a sample of 439 initially seronegative individuals enrolled in the Zambia-Emory HIV Research Project, as well as novel variants associated with viral load (VL) in a sample of 172 seroconverters (SCs) with an estimated date of infection and 449 seroprevalent individuals (SPs). We were unable to detect any statistically significant associations in our analysis of HIV-1 acquisition, though one signal in the HLA-DOA gene associated …

Finding Room For Everyone: Libraries Confront Social Exclusion, Jen Hoyer

Publications and Research

Communities that are working to combat exclusion have greater potential for success if they enlist the support of public libraries, which are in many ways ideally situated to welcome marginalized populations and provide programs and services that combat social exclusion. This chapter explains how this adaptability in response to social problems fits with the mandate of public libraries; examines why and how libraries should confront social exclusion; and looks at the Atwater Library and Computer Centre (ALCC) in Westmount, Québec, as an illustration of how this has been successfully accomplished.

Dedication To Professor Randall J. Gingiss, South Dakota Law Review, Barry Vickrey, Clint Sargent, Patrick M. Garry, John K. Konenkamp

South Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Neighborhood Exposure To Extreme Heat: A Spatial Examination Of El Paso And Juárez, 2010, Faraj Mohamad Aboargob

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Numerous studies have been conducted on the modification of local weather by the urban environment. In studying urban environmental effects on the urban heat island (UHI), researchers have investigated influences such as land use, vegetation density, topography, population density, and neighborhood socioeconomic status. Many studies have used data collected from field observations, while other studies relied solely on computer modeling. This Dissertation research used a spatial analysis approach, which has been less widely employed, to investigate neighborhood level biophysical, built environmental and socio-demographic determinants of the El Paso and Juárez UHI. The research utilized inexpensive data obtained from US and …

A State-To-State Analysis Of Mexican Migration To The U.S., Avilia Bueno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The determinants of undocumented immigration flows from Mexican states to U.S. states utilizing data recently released by the Mexican consulate are analyzed. The impact of economic, demographic, and geographic factors on immigrant location choice in the year 2007 is analyzed using ordinary least squares, tobit, and two stage least squares to control for factors likely to be endogenous with immigration. The results generally support that immigrants tend to migrate towards states with higher Mexican immigrant populations, shorter distances, higher wages, and smaller populations. In addition, the relationship between undocumented immigration and economic freedom and the policy measures used to construct …

9/11 And The War On Terror: Iraq War Narratives And The Sacrifice Model, Janette Galvan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

What are Americans willing to sacrifice for war and during war? In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, American citizens weighed a trade-off between their security and their civil freedoms because of fear of another terrorist attack. The reasoning was that United States citizens were patriotic and in being so they were willing to sacrifice some civil liberties to win the war on terror to prevent future terrorist attacks, thereby ensuring their future safety and then, perhaps, recover the sacrificed civil freedoms. This thesis project focuses on the sacrifices Americans willingly made for and during the war on terror, sold …

Religious Identity And The Provision Of Public Goods: Evidence From The Indian Princely States, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Religious identity affects preferences and can consequently affect policy. We propose two mechanisms through which a ruler's religious identity can affect public good provision: i) greater provision of goods in regions where more subjects are the ruler's co-religionists, and ii) lower provision of goods where private markets provide a substitute to the ruler's co-religionists. Empirically, identifying the causal effect of religious identity on policy is often impossible, since the religious identity of rulers rarely changes over time and place. We address this problem by exploiting the variation in the religion of rulers in the Indian Princely States in the early …

The Impact Of Competition On Prices With Numerous Firms, Xavier Gabaix, David Laibson, Deyuan Li, Hongyi Li

ESI Working Papers

We use extreme value theory (EVT) to develop insights about price theory. Our analysis reveals detail-independent equilibrium properties that characterize a large family of models. We derive a formula relating equilibrium prices to the level of competition. When the number of rms is large, markups are proportional to 1= (nF' [F^-1 (1- 1/n)], where F is the random utility noise distribution and n is the number of rms. This implies prices are pinned down by the tail properties of the noise distribution and that prices are independent of many other institutional details. The elasticity of the markup with respect to …

Summer Land Surface Temperature: Small-Local Variation In Intro-Urban Environment In El Paso, Tx, Mactar Mohamed

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

It has been well documented that rapid urbanization and population growth have led to the transformation of the natural landscape into anthropogenic urban land and changed such surface physical properties as albedo, energy balance, and surface roughness. Cities, therefore, will be warmer at the urban areas than the rural lands; this situation creates a phenomenon called Urban Heat Island (UHI).

In the recent decades, numerous approaches to study the variation of land surface temperature during daytime have emerged; however, little is known about the variation during nighttime. This study addressed the spatial variation of Summer Nighttime Land Surface Temperature …

Remembering The City: Memory-Images: Part Of The Portfolio Memory City, I Rae

School of Art, Design and Architecture

No abstract provided.

Utilizing Cyber Espionage To Combat Terrorism, Gary Adkins

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The world has effectively exited the Industrial Age and is firmly planted in the Information Age. Global communication at the speed of light has been a great asset to both businesses and private citizens. However, there is a dark side to the age we live in, where terrorist groups are able to communicate, plan, fund, recruit, and spread their message to the world. The relative anonymity the internet provides hinders law enforcement and security agencies in not only locating would-be terrorists but also in disrupting their operations. The internet is a loosely knit group of computers and routers and is …

Routes Of Compromise: Road Building And Motor Transportation In Modern Mexico, 1920-1952, Michael K. Bess

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Routes of Compromise" studies the creation and function of the government bureaucracy that built motor roads and highways, and the everyday impact of those roadways on public life in Mexico. It covers roughly thirty years of construction efforts from 1920 to the early 1950s as foreign and domestic actors, working at the transnational, national, state, and local levels, established a series of policy and investment programs that became the primary model for infrastructure development in Mexico during the mid-twentieth century. Road building offers a unique perspective to the study of Mexican state formation, underscoring how the national government sought to …

Assessing The Equity Implications Of Greenspace Distribution In An Arid Region, Abdelatif Eldeb

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the last few decades, vegetation deterioration is receiving increased attention because of its adverse impacts on societal and human health, environmental sustainability, and quality of life. I have selected two cities in Chihuahua Desert region (El Paso and Juarez) as case study sites to develop a novel and applicable methodology for integrating remotely sensed data of different spectral and spatial resolutions into an analysis of the spatial distribution of an urban amenity. The primary objective of this research is to determine if the spatial distribution of greenspace in 2010 is equitable with respect to socio-demographics in El Paso and …

Seismic Reflection Exploration Of Geothermal Reservoir Atnaval Air Station (Nas) Fallon, Nevada, Alay Ghebremariam Gebregiorgis

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Primary objective of this study is to increase geologic and tectonic understanding of the geothermal resources at the Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon, Nevada. The seismic reflection method is employed to study faults, fractures and other tectonic structures in the subsurface in order to identify geothermal drill targets. The efficiency of geothermal systems is strongly dependent on water circulation. Discrete faults may be permeable and provide pathways for water flow depending on the fracture density. It is therefore desirable to detect and map faults and fracture zones and characterize their physical properties when evaluating a geothermal prospect.

The seismic …

Pressing Seams, Abigail Carl

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Pressing Seams" is a collection of poems based on the experiences of Old Colony Mennonites living in settlements near Seminole, Texas, and Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, as well as on the experiences of marginalized individuals and groups living in the El Paso/Juárez region. The juxtaposition of the experiences of these individuals and communities within the geographic location of the United States-Mexico border creates a third space that is, as defined by Gloria Anzaldúa, "both geographical and metaphorical" where these poems seek to intersect and interact in dynamic ways that challenge the dominant socio-political and religious discourses and ideology that govern these communities …

"Operation Stone Garden": A Case Study Of Legitimation Of Violence And The Consequences For Mexican Immigrants In Chaparral, New Mexico, David Haller Mckenney

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

While globalization is widely theorized in terms of apolitical trans-border flows, this paper argues that the so-called "War on Terror," the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the so-called "War on Drugs" have legitimated the use of violence and aggression. This includes criminalization, closure, containment and deportation directed at trans-national flows of immigrants. Immigrants have become conflated with terrorists, drugs, crime and contamination as a generalized "other," to use Simmel's terms; they are typed as suspicious and dangerous strangers. From this perspective I suggest that the rise of contemporary security regimes or "the mobility regime" that emerged well before the …

Competing Visions: The Politics Of Racial And Ethnic Identity Formation And Land Use In Pasadena, 1771-1890, Yvette Jeanne Saavedra

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This project studies the competing visions of land use and racial/ethnic exclusion in Pasadena, California throughout the period from 1771-1890. This work examines how the landscape of the San Gabriel Region during the Spanish, Californio, and American Period reflects culturally subjective ideas about race and visions of optimal land use. It looks at the links between the racialization of space and people and interrogates how racial and cultural attitudes regarding optimal land use constructed the social identities of those who lived in the region. By looking at the continuities that exist between Spanish, Californio, and American attitudes regarding land use …

(Re)Mapping The Rhetorical Situation: Toward A Transactional Networked Ecology, Ramesh Kumar Pokharel

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The existing theories of the rhetorical situation that focus on and around Bitzer's theory define the rhetorical situation as something "real," "genuine," "objective" based on historic reality. I believe that this modernist containment to perceive the rhetorical situation as fixed entities limit our understanding about it in a broader sense, because it cannot capture the changed meaning that naturally exists with the impact of new media and technology. With the advent of new media and technology, the notion of rhetorical situation also has changed and thus there is an exigence of a new theory of the rhetorical situations that better …

Environmental Education Through The Lens Of Diverse Elementary School Students In The United States: A Phenomenographic Study, Brissa Yazmin Quiroz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Global environmental change is occurring, putting our planet under pressure. Children need to understand not only why the environment is important, but also their role as citizens of a globalized society and their necessary contribution to solving global problems. Students carry their own perspectives about the environment and education, and these differing perspectives should be a significant topic for environmental education research. Recent research studies have included the conceptualization of nature and the environment through children's eyes; yet, no studies have examined the concept of environmental education through the eyes of diverse children. Minority voices and experiences are not frequently …

Privacy-Invading Technologies And Recommendations For Designing A Better Future For Privacy Rights, Alexandra Rengel

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

The concept of privacy has been discussed for centuries by philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, and legal scholars. The importance that individuals place on privacy is beyond question and transcends geographical, cultural and racial boundaries. Individuals' need for secrecy and private space is so fundamental to forging relationships with others, and to preserving our sense of self, that a society with a complete lack of individual privacy would be unimaginable. A right to privacy protects individuals from having the contents of certain private information made public and regulates the means and manner by which that information is obtained. However, new technologies often …

Toward A Field Of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, And Praxis, Sumi Cho, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Leslie Mccall

Faculty Scholarship

Intersectional insights and frameworks are put into practice in a multitude of highly contested, complex, and unpredictable ways. We group such engagements with intersectionality into three loosely defined sets of practices: applications of an intersectional framework or investigations of intersectional dynamics; debates about the scope and content of intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological paradigm; and political interventions employing an intersectional lens. We propose a template for fusing these three levels of engagement with intersectionality into a field of intersectional studies that emphasizes collaboration and literacy rather than unity. Our objective here is not to offer pat resolutions to all …

K-12 Teachers' Perceptions About Social Media Integration Into Instruction In Saudi Arabia, Hamdan Abdulaziz Alamri

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

To Labor As An Indian Travels: What The Spokan Indians Taught The Eells And Walkers, Early Missionaries On The Columbia Plateau, Pippin J. Rubin

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

"Between 1838 and 1848, two New England families interacted and lived among a small band of Spokan Indians. During their time together, both groups learned much from each other. The story of how the Eells and Walkers related to the Spokan is different from other missionary tales. Their peaceful existence and daily cultural exchanges shines a gentler light on this era of transition on the Columbia Plateau. Their story should not distract from what occurred elsewhere in the Oregon Country during the 1830s and 1840s, but its telling gives a fuller and thus a more accurate picture of what took …

Are 34s-Enriched Authigenic Sulfide Minerals A Proxy For Elevated Methane Flux And Gas Hydrates In The Geologic Record?, Walter S. Borowski, Nancy M. Rodriguez, Charles K. Paull, William Ussler Iii

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The sulfate–methane transition (SMT) zone is a diagenetic transition within anoxic marine sediments created by the metabolic activity of a consortium of sulfate-reducing bacteria and methane-oxidizing Archaea. As interstitial dissolved sulfate is consumed by microbially mediated sulfate reduction of sedimentary organic matter (SOM) and anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) large enrichments of ³⁴S occur in the interstitial sulfate pool. These isotopic enrichments are transmitted to the dissolved sulfide pool (∑HS⁻) and subsequently into sulfide minerals (So, ∼FeS, FeS₂).

We investigate the sulfur isotopic composition of pore-water sulfate and sulfide minerals at three sites underlain …

Made In Japan: Kumi-Daiko As A New Art Form, Anna Marie Viviano

Theses and Dissertations

Japanese taiko ensemble drumming, known in Japan as kumi-daiko, is an art form that has only taken shape within the past fifty years. This new performance style involving taiko seems, on the surface, to have much in common with traditional Japanese court and theater music, regarded by scholars as the art music of Japan. Using drums that have a long history in Japan, however, does not necessarily make that ensemble part of ancient Japanese tradition. By studying the most famous groups in Japan, such as Kodo, it is easy to discern that kumi-daiko has many different inspirations, but is not …

Life History, C. W. Fox, Frank J. Messina

Biology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Jurisgenerative Constitutionalism: Procedural Principles For Managing Global Legal Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Global Legal Pluralism recognizes the inevitability (and sometimes even the desirability) of multiple legal and quasi-legal systems purporting to regulate the same act or actor. However, the resulting pluralism—just as inevitably—creates conflicts among norms that are potentially intractable. Thus, legal systems must address how best to respond to the realities of pluralism. This inquiry has constitutional dimensions because it goes to the constitutive character of communities and their relationships with other communities, be they international, transnational, national, subnational, or epistemic.

One response to pluralism is jurispathic: “kill off” all competing laws by declaring that one set of norms—and only one—shall …