Digital Commons Network^™

Modeling The Human Gait Phases Using Granular Computing, Melaku Ayenew Bogale

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Gait analysis is applied for the provision of diagnosis, evaluation, and for the design of therapeutic intervention for subjects suffering from neurological disorders. The benefits accruing from gait analysis are well established. People with neurological disorders like mild traumatic brain injury, Cerebral Palsy and Multiple Sclerosis, suffer associated functional gait problems. The symptoms and sign of these gait deficits are different from subject to subject and even for the same subject at different stage of the disease. Identifying these gait related abnormalities helps in the treatment planning and rehabilitation process.

The dynamic behavior of gait parameters is cyclic and the …

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 …

Predictors Of Academic Success Between On-Track And Off-Track Students In A Mexican University, Jesus Francisco Hinojos

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The main purpose of this study was to assess how predictors of quality of academic effort relate to academic success and student persistence of on-track and off-track students in a higher education institution in Northern Mexico; to investigate the relationship of pre-entry attributes,

family background and academic success as expressed by GPA among on-track, off-track and dropout students. And to examine the relationship between participants quality of effort invested in their own learning and development in six academic areas and four areas of college students' social activities.

This study utilized the College Student Experience Questionnaire (CSEQ) to determine the quality …

The Effect Of Co-Witness Information And Individual Differences In Cognitive Abilities On The Suggestibility Of Pre-School Children, Rachell Leanne Jones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Despite nearly 25 years of research, psychologists are still learning new ways in which various demographic, psychological, social, and cognitive factors contribute to child suggestibility. Numerous facets of each area have been studied independently, but as a field, it is becoming apparent that suggestibility is also affected by complex interactions between these various components (Scullin, Kanaya, & Ceci, 2002). The current study investigated several forensic interviewing techniques and psychosocial and cognitive factors that were hypothesized to influence child suggestibility. One hundred children were randomly assigned to five interview conditions after viewing a live event. The supposed statements of a co-witness …

Motivations For A Source To Resist An Interrogation: Consequences To The Self Versus Consequences To An Other, Julia Labianca

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The current research investigated the effect of situational and dispositional factors on a source's decision to confess guilty knowledge of another's actions to an interrogator. The extant literature suggests that potential consequences to the self are a major motivator for decisions to confess or resist an interrogation. Previous research also suggests that the potential consequences to the other person may also influence a source's motivations to confess guilty knowledge. Additionally, personality measures related to interdependence versus personal independence (collectivism and individualism) and individual loyalty may also influence a source's motivations to cooperate with or resist an interrogation. However, few experiments …

Method Development For A Chemical And Biological Analysis Of Glucocorticoids In Wastewater, Maria Carmen Lozano

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Glucocorticoids are a class of steroid hormones that can either be produced synthetically or naturally by the adrenal glands. The synthetic glucocorticoids are highly prescribed in the United States for their anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive properties to treat a variety of ailments and diseases; however, these have been implicated in a number of adverse human conditions such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, immune-suppression, delayed puberty, adrenal insufficiency and Cushing Syndrome, among others. Ongoing research has shown that synthetic and natural hormones are transported to aquatic environments via mammalian excretion or wastewater effluent, and as a result, the release of glucocorticoids into the …

Endocrine Disrupting Compound 4-Nonylphenol And Neurodegeneration, Jessica Martinez Jurado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Neurodegeneration, a progressive loss of nerve cells (neurons), occurs in many neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Schizophrenia, and drug addiction. Cytoskeletal disruption in neurons and aggregation of proteins associated with these disorders is the hallmark of neurodegeneration. However, the cause of neurodegenerative disorders is unknown and currently there are no effective drug treatments. Aging is the most consistent risk factor for developing a neurodegenerative disorder, and recent evidence suggests that environmental factors, which act as endocrine disruptors, pose a risk in the disease process. 4- nonylphenol (4-NP), an endocrine-disrupting compound (EDC), has been shown to affect brain development …

Investigating The Validity Of A Survey Intended To Gauge Mathematics Problem-Solving Disposition Along The Impulsive-Analytic Dimension, Miguel Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates the validity of the Likelihood-to-Act (LtA) survey developed to assess respondents' problem-solving disposition along the impulsive-analytic dimension. Sixteen pre-service teachers were strategically selected from a pool of 495 LtA survey respondents to participate in a semi-structured task-based interview approximately one hour in length. The interview consisted of three main parts: a problem solving section, a consistency section, and a classification section.

* Part 1 of the interview was developed to get interviewees to solve five open-response problems meant to elicit an impulsive response. Interviewees were also asked to verbalize their thought process in order for the researchers …

A History Of Peer-Led Team Learning, 1990-2012, A.E. Dreyfuss

Publications and Research

From Workshop Chemistry in 1991 at the City College of New York, CUNY, to implementation in other disciplines and development of Peer-Led Team Learning and its Six Critical Components, this paper reviews the contributions of faculty at a variety of higher education institutions to the dissemination and growth of PLTL as a successful model of student engagement with the position of the student Peer Leader.

The Effect Of Birth Order On Age At First Sex And Total Number Of Lifetime Sexual Partners, Lacey Christine Clark Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Research in the field of birth order is expansive and has been used to explain many social processes, including the sexual behavior of young adults. However, results regarding the influence of birth order on risky sexual behavior are somewhat limited, sometimes contradictory, and often lack generalizability to larger populations. In this thesis, using

data from the National Health and Social Life Survey (1992) and multiple regression techniques, I investigate the influence of ordinal position on two measures of sexual behavior,age at first sex and total number of lifetime partners, among young adults age 18 to 30. Results show that birth …

The Jury (Or More Accurately The Judge) Is Still Out For Civil Rights And Employment Cases Post-Iqbal, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

From Space-Off To Represented Space, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

In Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home, author Anita Hill explores some of the literal and figurative meanings of "home," focusing specifically on African-American women in their quest for home. Hill layers discussions of law, literature, and culture with stories of individual women, both historic and contemporary. In Reimagining Equality, Hill takes on a topic clearly distinct from the Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings, the episode for which she is best known. Her work here is, nonetheless, evocative of her struggle in those hearings, because the book addresses the interrelation between gender, race, place, space, …

Rewriting Revision: A Case Study Of First Year Composition Students, Myshie M. Pagel

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study focuses on the revision practices of seven first year composition students at a U.S./Mexico border community college. The analysis of revision practices is framed by the negotiation of dissonance between gist and intention. Three types of data were collected: screen captured writing sessions, instructor comments, and participant interviews. The data was analyzed through a grid based on Faigley and Witte's taxonomy grid of revision changes. This included three major categories: surface level, meaning preserving, and text base level changes. As in past studies on revision, the participants in this case study followed a similar trend. A majority …

The Chicana Experience In Indonesia: An Autoethnography And Dialogic Performance Evaluating The Influence Of Cultural Identity And Gender, Bianca Ramirez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study seeks to evaluate how aspects of cultural identity, gender and religion play a role on a Chicana's (mestiza's) experience of studying abroad internationally through an Indonesian conservation program. The experience of traveling to Indonesia, engaging in cross-cultural dialogue, and experiencing adversities prohibiting multiculturalism, influences the ability of the Chicana/o ethnographer to examine cross-cultural parallels in dialect and behavior. I also analyzed the rhetoric contained within the dialogic performances of the mestiza ethnographer's documented experiences. Lastly, the intersections of cultural identity, gender, and class were evaluated to determine their influence on the mestiza ethnographer's ability to successfully engage in …

A Diathesis-Stress Approach To Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Associated With An Hiv Diagnosis: Implications For Medication Non-Adherence., John Andrew Sauceda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Introduction. We fit a diathesis-stress model with childhood trauma and neuroticism as predictors of depressive and HIV-related PTSD symptomatology in a sample of HIV+ Latino men who have sex with men (MSM). We then examined the impact of depressive and HIV-related PTSD symptomatology on medication adherence. We hypothesized the primary stressor from the diathesis-stress model to be symptoms of dissociation at the time of being diagnosed with HIV.

Method. We sampled 149 Latino adult MSM living with HIV at a local HIV treatment clinic in El Paso, Texas. We administered all surveys in paper-and-pencil form, with viral loads and CD4 …

Can Coping Information Enhance The Effectiveness Of A Personalized Normative Feedback Intervention, Angelee Gigi Shamaley

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In reaction to the national health objective of reducing the proportion of college students engaging in heavy at-risk drinking, the addition of a stress and coping component to a Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF) intervention was examined. Approximately 501 college students at the University of Texas at El Paso were recruited to participate during the spring, summer, and fall 2011 semesters. The purpose of the study was to investigate if the addition of a stress and coping component to a standard PNF intervention would have a stronger impact on reducing alcohol-related problems and consumption than using standard PNF intervention. A secondary …

Individual Predictors Of Hindsight Bias: A Longitudinal Study, Sonya M. Stokes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The hindsight bias, a person's tendency to overestimate their ability to predict the outcome of an event after the fact, is a phenomenon present in nearly every area of our lives (Arkes, Faust, Guilmette & Hart, 1988). The bias can be mitigated by factors such as analytical and deep thought regarding an outcome and increased expertise (Gray et al., 2007; Knoll, 2009; Arkes et al., 1988). In this study, we examined the growth of hindsight bias over 4 time points using a within-subjects memory model. For our analysis, we quantified hindsight bias in two ways: the number of "flips" a …

Life And Health Outside Prison, Tiffany Amorette Young

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative study explores the subjective understandings of formerly incarcerated individuals' experiences of health and healthcare prior to, during, and post release. The study incorporates in depth ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and life charting to formulate a holistic understanding of how incarceration has impacted the health and lives of the participants recruited for this study. All participants were incarcerated for a minimum of one year in the U.S. prison system. This interdisciplinary study contributes to the fields of sociology, criminology, and public health, and builds on the literature of race, health, and corrections in the United States.

Communicating Resilience: A Discursive Leadership Perspective, David H. Torres, Jeremy P. Fyke

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

In this essay we challenge whether current conceptions of optimism, hope, and resilience are complete enough to account for the complexity and nuance of developing and maintaining these in practice. For example, a quick perusal of popular outlets (e.g., Forbes, Harvard Business Review) reveals advice to managers urging them to “be optimistic,” or “be happy” so that these types of emotions or feelings can spread to the workplace. One even finds simple advice and steps to follow on how to foster these types of things in the workplace (McKee; Tjan). We argue that this common perspective focuses narrowly …

Promises And Challenges Of Teaching Statistical Reasoning To Journalism Undergraduates: Twin Surveys Of Department Heads, 1997 And 2008, Robert J. Griffin, Sharon Dunwoody

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This research is dedicated to the memory of Victor Cohn, former science reporter for the Washington Post and often considered the dean of science writers, who collaborated on the first wave of the survey. The 1997 survey was supported by a grant from the American Statistical Association and the 2008 survey by a grant from the Communication graduate program at Marquette University. Special thanks to research assistants Kathryn Zabriskie and Gongke Li for their valuable help in the survey. The analyses and conclusions are solely those of the authors.

Connectedness And The Sociopolitical Involvement Of Same-Gender-Loving Black Men, Juan Battle, Angelique Harris

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Employing a national sample of over 800 same-gender-loving black men, we explore the relative impact of community-level support/comfort and the importance of sexual orientation and racial identity on two dependent variables—sociopolitical involvement within lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities and sociopolitical involvement within people of color (POC) communities. Findings indicate that feelings of connectedness to LBGT communities is the most important predictor of sociopolitical involvement within both LGBT and POC communities; while, counterintuitively, being comfortable within the LGBT community had a negative impact on the sociopolitical involvement of these men. Further, the impact of the importance of identity was …

Ethical Obligations And The Dental Office Team, Toni M. Roucka, Pamela Zarkowski, Evelyn Donate-Bartfield, Donald E. Patthoff

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

A hypothetical case of alleged sexual misconduct in a practice with high employee turnover and stress is analyzed by three experts. This case commentary examines the ethical role expectations of an office manager who is not directly involved but becomes aware of the activities. The commentators bring the perspectives of a dental hygienist. academic administrator. and attorney; a teacher of behavioral sciences in a dental school; and a general dentist with many years of practice experience.

Reducing Disparities In Palliative Care For Pediatric Intensive Care Nurses: Utilizing The Synergy Model Of Patient Care, Meghan E. Braden

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

[Introduction To] Leadership Ethics, Joanne B. Ciulla, Mary Uhl-Bien, Patricia H. Werhane

Bookshelf

Research into the topic of leadership ethics has grown and evolved gradually over the past few decades. This timely set arrives at an important moment in the subject's history. In a relatively new field, such a collection offers scholars more than articles on a topic; it also serves to outline the parameters of the field. Carefully structured over three volumes, the material runs through an understanding of the key philosophic and practical questions in leadership ethics along with a wide range of literature - from disciplines including philosophy, business and political science, to name a few- that speaks to these …

[Introduction To] Heroic Leadership: An Influence Taxonomy Of 100 Exceptional Individuals, Scott T. Allison, George R. Goethals

Bookshelf

Heroic Leadership is a celebration of our greatest heroes, from legends such as Mahatma Gandhi to the legions of unsung heroes who transform our world quietly behind the scenes. The authors argue that all great heroes are also great leaders. The term ‘heroic leadership’ is coined to describe how heroism and leadership are intertwined, and how our most cherished heroes are also our most transforming leaders.

This book offers a new conceptual framework for understanding heroism and heroic leadership, drawing from theories of great leadership and heroic action. Ten categories of heroism are described: Trending Heroes, Transitory Heroes, Transparent Heroes, …

Untoward Consequences: The Ironic Legacy Of Keyes V. School District No. 1, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The Keyes case began with high hopes that desegregation would lead to educational equity for black and Latino students in the Denver Public Schools. The lawsuit made history by successfully using circumstantial evidence to establish intentional discrimination and bring court-ordered busing to a school system outside the South. In the intervening years, that initial success became laden with irony. Because Denver was a tri-ethnic community of whites, blacks, and Latinos, the litigation revealed the complexities of pursuing reform in a school district not defined by a history of black-white relations.

The courts had to decide whether Latinos would count as …

Executive Summary (2013), Gina S. Warren

Faculty Scholarship

This 2013 Survey on Oil & Gas provides an annual summary, bringing together the judicial, regulatory, and legislative activities of thirty-four states. In addition to the typical court cases addressing lessee and lessor disputes, two apparent overarching themes have emerged this year. First is a heightened regulation of, and litigation regarding, hydraulic fracturing and its potential negative environmental impacts. At the forefront of these potentially negative environmental impacts are concerns for water quality and quantity, earthquakes, and increased air pollution emissions. Second, several states are reporting litigation over leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management, mostly claiming a failure …

When Are Damages Tax Free?: The Elusive Meaning Of “Physical Injury”, Ronald H. Jensen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this article traces the evolution in the tax treatment of litigation damages from 1918 through the enactment of the 1996 Amendments and reviews the various rationales that have been offered for such treatment. In Part II, I set forth a number of hypothetical cases illustrating some of the issues created by the 1996 Amendments. In Parts III through Part VI, I set forth my analyses of these issues. Finally, In Part VII, I critique the 1996 Amendments and make a proposal that would eliminate much of the uncertainty and inequity that the 1996 Amendments created while satisfying …

Socioeconomic Bias In The Judiciary , Michele Benedetto Neitz

Cleveland State Law Review

Judges hold a prestigious place in our judicial system, and they earn double the income of the average American household. How does the privileged socioeconomic status of judges affect their decisions on the bench? This Article examines the ethical implications of what Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski recently called the “unselfconscious cultural elitism” of judges.** This elitism can manifest as implicit socioeconomic bias. Despite the attention paid to income inequality, implicit bias research and judicial bias, no other scholar to date has fully examined the ramifications of implicit socioeconomic bias on the bench. The Article explains that socioeconomic bias …

E-Jurors: A View From The Bench, Hon. Antoinette Plogstedt

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article provides a comparative analysis of foreign jury systems and reviews the history of juries. The Article then explores emerging technology and its effect upon electronic juror misconduct. It further identifies juror misconduct resulting from innovative technology. The Article assesses solutions initiated in various U.S. state and federal jurisdictions. The Article reviews the role of more active juries, which incorporate note taking and jury notebooks. The Article analyzes the process of juror questioning and pre-deliberation juror discussions. The Article evaluates initiatives developed in various jurisdictions to deter juror misconduct by confiscating cell phones and improving jury instructions. Finally, this …