Digital Commons Network^™

Nurturing Resiliency Among Adolescents With Emotional And Behavioral Disturbances (Ebd) In A Special Education Setting, Rimaz Herz

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Many youth with emotional and behavioral disturbance (EBD) face significant challenges and difficulties with their families, schools, friends and peers, and even themselves, and experience them academically, emotionally, physically, socially and behaviorally. These youth need resilience to help them overcome these difficulties and challenges. This qualitative study focused on understanding the nature of schooling and interventions provided to students identified as having the most severe emotional and behavioral disabilities or needs, and how such schooling and interventions might explicitly or implicitly promote resilience. The researcher sought to examine interventions used by observing a specific self-contained program with clearly defined services. …

Understanding The Critical Role Of A Wetland In Maintaining The Ecosystem: A Case Study, Sushil Tuladhar

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Beaver Valley Wetland in north-east Iowa was studied to determine its functionality in filtering incoming contaminants from the surrounding agricultural fields. The study was conducted from May through November of 2011. Altogether 78 water samples (from 13 sites), 84 soil samples (from 14 sites), and some sediment samples were collected for chemical analysis. Heavy metals in three different soil categories, such as surface, 6” deep, and sediments were found to be at or below the acceptable concentrations, indicating no immediate concern for metal toxicity in the wetland environment. The chemical tracers that were used to study the sub-surface flow regime …

Temporal Dynamics Of Nutrient Flux Across Hydrologic Unit Boundaries, Md. Aminul Haque

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The study was done in Dry Run Creek watershed, a small sub-urban watershed in the northwestern part of Black Hawk County, Iowa. Different hydrologic units like, wetland, agricultural area, urban area, and stream channels were compared in terms of nutrient transport. Soil, surface water, and groundwater samples were collected from May, 2012 to October, 2012. Among the hydrologic units, agricultural land has the highest organic matter percentages, infiltration rate, soil nitrate, and total phosphorus. High infiltration rate and amount of nutrients in agricultural soil made those areas more vulnerable to vertical infiltration of pollutants. Agricultural and urban soils had similar …

Longitudinal Analysis Of Perceived Body Image, Sport Commitment, Burnout, And Athletic Injury, Erik Chaouch

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Injury is a risk that all athletes face while participating in sport. How injuries affect athletes perceived body image, sport commitment levels, and burnout levels are not yet fully understood. Athletes are aware of what the media portrays an athlete as, aware of what peers think an athlete should look like, and even have their own pre-conceived notions as to what an athlete’s body should look like. Many athletes perceive their bodies to be appropriate for their sport, yet there is dissatisfaction with their own bodies in the context of what is socially considered to be attractive. A distorted body …

Program For The Scla/Sela Joint Conference 2013, “Local Roots, Regional Reach", Jonathan Newton - Editor, Ed Rock - Editor, Michelle Hannon - Graphic Designer

Publications

Describes the scope of the 2013 regional conference of both the South Carolina Library Association (SCLA) and Southeastern Library Association (SELA). Includes titles of conference sessions, names of presenters, descriptions of topicsand list of sponsors and exhibitors, as well as the overall conference program including keynote speakers Courtney Young, American Library Association (ALA) President-Elect; Michelle Stone, Author of The Iguana Tree; and George Singleton, Author of Stray Decorum.

Unf Journal Winter 2013, University Of North Florida

UNF Journal

A university periodical for alumni and friends of the University of North Florida.

Malleable Law: The (Mis)Use Of Legal Tools In The Pursuit Of A Political Agenda, Manuel A. Gomez

Faculty Publications

This paper explores the manipulative use of the law for political gain. It describes instances in which law is distorted and camouflaged under an apparent goal of pursuing justice, social change or development, but its real function is to facilitate the attainment of self-interested political gains or other ends. The malleability of law is illustrated in this article with a description of the social programs known as “Misiones Bolivarianas” implemented in Venezuela since 2004. The Misiones were ostensibly portrayed as effective government measures launched to reduce poverty and fight inequality in areas where traditional state institutions had failed.

Floor To Ceiling: How Setbacks And Challenges To The Anti-Bullying Movement Pose Challenges To Employers Who Wish To Ban Bullying, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Institutional Factors Influencing The Effectiveness Of Scientist-Physician Partnerships In Biomedical Research, Yunmei Wang

Student Scholarship

Substantial resources invested in biomedical research have generated revolutionary discoveries in medical science. However, it takes on average 17 years to turn about 14% of research findings into changes that benefit patients. Lack of scientist-physician partnership (SPP) is one main reason for the extremely slow translation of science into medical practice. Our previous study identified several institutional and socio-cultural barriers that hinder SPP and slow down knowledge transfer in medicine. However, the relationships among the identified factors, as well as the prevalence of their impacts on scientist-physician partnership and transfer of knowledge are not clear. This study focuses on the …

Managerial And Organizational Factors That Influence A Firm's Safety And Environmental Performance: An Examination Of The Fortune 500 Companies, David Klossner

Student Scholarship

This research seeks to illuminate which managerial and organizational factors lead large corporations to operate in an environmentally conscious manner. We used a blended quantitative approach to test the effects of managerial and organizational factors on a corporation's environmental performance. We used three data sets: (a) firm's actual environmental performance, (b) firm's actual safety performance, and (c) survey from top executives of the Fortune 500 companies. Our data shows that profit seeking positively affects environmental performance; in contrast, a manager's intrinsic values have little effect; and surprisingly a corporation's environmental performance is inversely related to coercive external pressure and risk …

Graduate Recital In Piano, Tana Denning

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

On the 22nd of February, 2013, Tana Denning presented a half-recital in partial completion of her master's degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy. The recital was held at 6pm in Davis Hall at the University of Northern Iowa. Pieces on the program included two preludes by Debussy, Italian Concerto by Bach, an original arrangement of a traditional Irish melody, and Scherzo No. 4 by Chopin. The second half of Ms. Denning's recital requirement was spent on a pedagogical project regarding the use of folk music in piano lessons. This project is outlined at the end of the abstract.

Introduction: Under The Knife: Health Law, Health Care Reform, And Beyond, Stacey A. Tovino

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Returns To Criminal Capital, Thomas Loughran, Holly Nguyen, Alex R. Piquero, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Human capital theory (Becker 1962; Mincer 1958; Schultz 1960; 1961) posits that individuals can increase their labor market returns through investments in education and training. This concept has been studied extensively across several disciplines. An analog concept of criminal capital, while the focus of speculation and limited empirical study, remains considerably less developed theoretically and methodologically. This paper offers a formal theoretical model of criminal capital indicators and tests for greater illegal wage returns using a sample of serious adolescent offenders, many of whom participate in illegal income-generating activities. Our results reveal that, consistent with human capital theory, there are …

The Tragedy Of The Anticommons: A Concise Introduction And Lexicon, Michael Heller

Faculty Scholarship

This article gives a concise introduction to the ‘tragedy of the anticommons.’ The anticommons thesis is simple: when too many people own pieces of one thing, nobody can use it. Usually, private ownership creates wealth. But too much ownership has the opposite effect – it leads to wasteful underuse. This is a free market paradox that shows up all across the global economy. If too many owners control a single resource, cooperation breaks down, wealth disappears, and everybody loses. Conceptually, underuse in an anticommons mirrors the familiar problem of overuse in a ‘tragedy of the commons.’ The field of anticommons …

Taking Up Space: A Case Study Exploration Of The Relationship Between Citizenship And Free Humanities Programs In Canada, Jessica L. Klassen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Citizenship is increasingly being utilized as the discourse to discuss inclusive and exclusive realities within a polity. This case study examines free humanities programs in Canada, which offer free university-level courses in the humanities to people experiencing marginalization in society. The stated intention of the programs is that, through education in the humanities, critical reflection, and access to the university space, students will increasingly engage in active citizenship and participate in the public sphere. This thesis explores the extent to which this intention has been realized. Primary data was collected from sixteen students, professors, and program coordinators of free humanities …

Miller V. Alabama And The (Past And) Future Of Juvenile Crime Regulation, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was the keynote address for a symposium on Miller v Alabama, the 2012 Supreme Court opinion holding unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment a statute imposing a mandatory sentence of life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide. The essay argues that Miller embodies a way of thinking about juvenile crime that has taken hold in the early 21st century – an approach that emphasizes the importance for legal policy of developmental differences between juveniles and adults. This emerging trend contrasts sharply with the regulatory approach of the 1990s when moral panics over juvenile crime fueled punitive law reforms …

Fee Effects, Kathryn Judge

Faculty Scholarship

Intermediaries are a pervasive feature of modern economies. This article draws attention to an under-theorized cost arising from the use of specialized intermediaries – a systematic shift in the mix of transactions consummated. The interests of intermediaries are imperfectly aligned with the parties to a transaction. Intermediaries seek to maximize their fees, a transaction cost from the perspective of the parties. Numerous factors, including the requirement that a transaction create value in excess of the associated fees to proceed and an intermediary’s interest in maintaining a good reputation, constrain an intermediary’s tendency to use its influence in a self-serving manner. …

(Crime) School Is In Session: Mapping Illegal Earnings To Institutional Placement, Holly Nguyen, Thomas Loughran, Ray Paternoster, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

A growing consensus suggests that incarcerating offenders tends to have either null or criminogenic effects at both the individual and neighborhood levels. There is also further evidence that there are unintended consequences of incarcerating juvenile offenders such as delayed psychosocial development and school dropout. The current study considers a much less examined hypothesis — that correctional environments can facilitate the accumulation of “criminal capital” and might actually encourage offending by serving as a school of crime. Using unique panel data from a sample of serious juvenile offenders, we are able to identify the criminal capital effect by considering illegal earnings …

Desistance And Legitimacy: The Impact Of Offender Notification Meetings On Recidivism Among High Risk Offenders, Andrew V. Papachristos, Danielle M. Wallace, Tracey L. Meares, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: Legitimacy-based approaches to crime prevention operate under the assumption that individuals — including violent offenders — are more likely to comply with the law when they believe that the law and its agents are legitimate and act in ways that seem inherently “fair” and “just.” While mounting evidence finds an association between such legitimacy-based programs and reductions in aggregate levels of crime and violence, no study has investigated whether such programs influence individual offending. This study evaluates the effectiveness of one such program — Project Safe Neighborhoods’ (PSN) Offender Notification Meetings — at reducing individual recidivism among a population …

North Carolina's Wary Reception Of Drug Treatment Court: The Myth Of Inherent Ethics Violations Within Its Structure, Lily Van Patten

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Integrative And Holistic Global Higher Education : An Investigation Of Camp Adventure Child And Youth Services As A Model Service Learning Program, Bin Ruan

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Camp Adventure™ Child and Youth Services (CACYS) is a distinctive academic program that emphasizes service learning opportunities for students. It focuses on preparing students with necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies to plan and implement the services for children and youth of varying lengths with a focus on different ages and needs. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the changes of college and/or university students in core competencies from entry to exit in the CACYS using a framework offered by Bok (2006). The core competencies included in this study were communication, critical thinking, character development, citizenship, diversity, global …

Identification Of Motivation In Senior Individuals Who Engage In The Adventure Experience Of Ice Climbing, Donald B. Briggs

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Research has shown that individuals participate in high adventure activities for a variety of reasons. This study identified motivational factors for seniors, 55 and older, who participate in the high adventure activity of ice climbing. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight senior ice climbers who had at least three years of experience, had climbed the Midwest Silos, and were familiar with the researcher. Using a constant-comparative method, primary and secondary themes were identified from the data.

The findings of this study suggest senior ice climbers participate for a variety of reasons with the primary motivators of self-efficacy, social interaction, fun, …

Working With Patients At Risk For Hereditary Degenerative Brain Disorders, Stephen John White

Theses and Dissertations

Hereditary degenerative brain disorders (HDBDs) are a unique class of genetic conditions that result in progressive loss of function within the nervous system, many of which present during adulthood. Given this, the diagnosis of a HDBD can be daunting for both the patient and the genetic counselor assisting in medical care. The purpose of this study was to find themes among genetic counselors who see this patient population and help provide a framework to counselors entering this field by recognizing verified methods of HDBD counseling. Sixteen genetic counselors who routinely see patients at-risk for HDBDs were interviewed concerning how they …

Examining The Role Of Electronic Medical Record Generated Provider Reminders On Provider Offering Of Breast Cancer Screening Services, Charles Beverley, Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction:Breast cancer affects the lives of millions of women each year in the United States. Early detection by mammography screening can reduce the risk for advanced stages of breast cancer and improve the probability of long-term survival in women. Electronic medical records (EMRs) have been identified as a successful approach for increasing the offering of preventive care in breast cancer. This study examines the impact of EMR usage, and EMR generated provider reminders on physician ordering or providing of mammography screenings.

Methods:This study used survey data from the 2008-2010 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). Our sample included non-federal office-based …

Osteon-Mimetic Nanocomposite Materials For Bone Regeneration, Ozan Karaman

Theses and Dissertations

The limitations of large bone defect regeneration has brought the focus of Bone Tissue Engineering research on fabricating three-dimensional bone-mimetic grafts that could enhance osteogenesis and vascularization. Osteons composed of apatite-deposited aligned collagen nanofiber layers are the fundamental building blocks of cortical bone. In natural cortical bone, mineralization is mediated by extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins with amino acid sequences rich in glutamic acid. This dissertation is focused on the establishment of a novel biomimetic approach to engineer scaffolds for healing large bone defects.

In the first part, we investigated the effect of calcium phosphate (CaP) deposition on aligned surface-modified nanofibers …

Advanced Methodology Developments In Mixture Cure Models, Chao Cai

Theses and Dissertations

Modern medical treatments have substantially improved cure rates for many chronic diseases and have generated increasing interest in appropriate statistical models to handle survival data with non-negligible cure fractions. The mixture cure models are designed to model such data set, which assume that studied population is a mixture of being cured and uncured. In this dissertation, I will develop two programs named smcure and NPHMC in R. The first program aims to facilitate estimating two popular mixture cure models: the proportional hazards (PH) mixture cure model and accelerated failure time (AFT) mixture cure model. The second program focuses on designing …

A Novel Alcohol-Sensitive Position In The M3 Domain Of The Nmda Receptor Glun2b Subunit, Robert W. Peoples

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Exploring Taxation As A Substitute For Overregulation In The Development Process, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

No abstract provided.

Experimental Study Of Optimal Energy Weighting In Energy-Resolved Ct Using A Czt Detector, Franco Rupcich, Taly Gilat-Schmidt

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Recent advances in energy-resolved CT can potentially improve contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), which could subsequently reduce dose in conventional and dedicated breast CT. Two methods have been proposed for optimal energy weighting: weighting the energy-bin data prior to log normalization (projection-based weighting) and weighting the energy-bin data after log normalization (image-based weighting). Previous studies suggested that optimal projection-based and image-based energy weighting provide similar CNR improvements for energy-resolved CT compared to photon-counting or conventional energy-integrating CT. This study experimentally investigated the improvement in CNR of projection-based and image-based weighted images relative to photon-counting for six different energy-bin combinations using a bench …

Enhancing Firm Profitability By Improving Director Dynamics, Solange Charas

Student Scholarship

Board performance research focused on individual director's economically-motivated behaviors and outcomes has generated inconsistent and disappointing results. Most research does not consider the board as a team, despite recent calls for a focus on collective board processes and behaviors. As 90% of directors rate their individual performance at very effective but only 30% rate overall board performance at an equivalent level, it is obvious that this gap needs to be addressed. The discrepancy between individual and team performance effectiveness was the focus of this research, based on original data from 182 directors and their assessment of their board's dynamic, team …