Digital Commons Network^™

"Effects Of A Specific Acetylcholine Receptor Agonist In A Rat Glaucoma Model", Maha Alfaidi

Honors Theses

PURPOSE: This study was designed to investigate the neuroprotective effects of a specific nicotinic ACh agonist, PNU-282987, on the loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in a rat glaucoma model. A time-dependent study using 2 mM PNU-282987 was performed to determine the neuroprotective effect in the vertebrate retina.

METHODS: Hypertonic saline solution (2M NaCl) was injected into the episcleral vein of the rat’s eye to reduce the numbers of RGCs and mimic the effect of glaucoma. In one set of studies, PNU-282987 was applied to the right eye of each experimental animal as eye drops in combination with the NaCl …

Breaking In My Anthropological Shoes: Reflections On My First Days Of Fieldwork, Casiana I. Pascariu

Journal of Contemporary Anthropology

This paper explores the first day of ethnographic fieldwork conducted by an M.A. student. Starting in a non-Roma community, and trying to reach the Roma, I describe the difficulty of conducting fieldwork for the first time. I discuss the day I introduced myself to the community, the awkward and unnatural behavior of teachers toward my future informants, and the confusion and shyness of the Roma students felt in my presence. 

“Last Night All The Synagogues In Germany Were Burned”: Intimacy And Ethnographic Practice In A Familial Life History, William Lempert

Journal of Contemporary Anthropology

Through a series of life history interviews with my Grandmother in her Ft. Lauderdale apartment, I reflect on the underappreciated advantages of fostering intimate interpersonal relationships in ethnographic practice. Relating examples from my grandmother’s description of her experiences in Nazi Germany, I argue that intimacy can in many cases serve as a powerful tool to make research more rigorous by helping to forestall temptations to overgeneralize interview data to confirm preconceived expectations, while also promoting deeper insights into the diversity and subtly of individual conceptions of self. I connect this argument to larger debates regarding the advantages and disadvantages of …

Measuring The Evolution Of Toolmaking Complexity: Indices Of Operational Complexity, Robert A. Mahaney

Journal of Contemporary Anthropology

Archaeologists and animal behaviorists have provided increasingly sophisticated descriptions of how hominids and animals construct operational sequences. The ability to translate these detailed descriptions into a measurable comparative format of relative complexity would provide a useful tool for describing patterns of evolutionary change. Cyclomatic Complexity, k-paths, and k-cycles are three metrics from computer science and graph theory that can index the Operational Complexity of an operational sequence. These methods are applied to the production of an Acheulean handaxe and various animal behaviors.

The Social Construction Of Childhood Bullying Through U.S. News Media, Rachel Wayne

Journal of Contemporary Anthropology

For the past ten years, childhood bullying has been heavily discussed in public discourse, through increased news reporting, discussion in awareness campaigns, and court proceedings. The characterization of bullying in the media is symptomatic of this discourse; moreover, it reflects the social construction of bullying. In particular, news media’s emotional and scientific portrayal of bullying has inspired criminalization of the act and defined bullying as a normative trend of deviant behavior—a marked difference from its previous portrayal as an isolated but treatable act. In this paper, I report the findings from a content analysis of articles from mainstream U.S. news …

An Exploration Of The Social Effectiveness Of Political Kidnapping Testimonios In Colombia, María Del Pilar File-Muriel

Journal of Contemporary Anthropology

The social destruction resulting from seven-decades of armed conflict places Colombia among the top countries in human rights violations in the Americas. Advocates for kidnapping victims in Colombia believe that survival stories or testimonios present a possibility for generating social awareness in the general society that could lead to social change. Through textual analysis, tracing the circulation of three testimonios, and interviews with Colombian university students and members of NGOs, this paper explores whether testimonios produced in the Colombian context by political elites and victims of kidnapping serve as vehicles to increase social awareness. Initial interviews reveal that though there …

Indigenous People And Political Agenda: The Issue Of Social And Ecological Change Of The Nomadic Siberian, The Evenki, In Russia, Jaehoon Lee

Journal of Contemporary Anthropology

Siberia is one of a few regions of the world in which hunter-gatherer communities survived until very recently. Many of their descendants have sustained their old subsistence economies, such as hunting and fishing, nomadism, or reindeer herding. This paper contains the ethnohistory of the indigenous Evenki people in Siberia and provides a critical summary of how changes of colonial political systems and management policies throughout the Evenki’s history have affected their cultural identity and changed their concept of territorial value. It is emphasized in this paper that, as seen in the case of the Evenki in Siberia, a sophisticated understanding …

Differentiation Of Solutions Of Second-Order Bvps With Integral Boundary Conditions, Alfredo Janson, Bibi Juman

Mathematics Colloquium Series

Janson’s and Juman’s research involves differentiating solutions of boundary value problems with integral conditions, as well as showing that the resulting functions solve an associated boundary value problem—called the variational equation—with new integral boundary values.

Opportunity For Research Grant From Children’S Literature Association

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

First Opinion/Second Reaction, Combined Effort: Gone Fishing: An Eclectic Collection Of Poetic Forms Tell A Story, Christy Wessel Powell

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

First Opinion/Second Reaction, Combined Effort: Walking With Nature Through Poetry, Christy Wessel Powell

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

First Opinion: Playing With Identity In Children’S Picture Books, Joe Sutliff Sanders

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

First Opinion: Boy Or Beast?, Donna R. White

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

Think Piece The Journey Back: Whereupon There Are No Heroes With Whom To Identify, Joseph Michael Sommers

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

Editorial: What Does It Mean To Be A Child? Childhood And Adolescent Identity In Books, Janet Alsup

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

An Econometric Analysis Of The “Backward-Bending” Labour Supply Of Canadian Women, Adib J. Rahman

Undergraduate Economic Review

This econometric study investigates the labour supply behaviour of Canadian women at different composite hourly wages of all paid jobs. The objectives of this study are to test the canonical model of labour supply and to observe women's responsiveness to changes in the wage rate by using 2009 cross-sectional data. The results show a backward bending labour supply schedule for Canadian women, and thereby confirm the conclusions reached by the Nakamuras (1981), and Robinson and Thomes (1985).

Cal Poly Poinsettia Sale Runs Through Mid-December, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

An Experimental Test Of Culturally Specific Versus Standard Smoking Cessation Messages Targeting Hispanics, Denise Rodríguez Esquivel

Open Access Dissertations

Culturally specific smoking cessation interventions have been recommended for racial/ethnic minority smokers in the U.S., though few cessation trials have focused on Hispanics. As a result, little is known about effective intervention delivery or factors that should be considered. The aims of this study were to test the acceptability and efficacy of a smoking cessation intervention varying in cultural specificity and language. Participants (N = 222) were English-Spanish bilingual Hispanic smokers recruited from the community. A 2 (Language: preferred vs. less preferred) X 2 (Intervention type: standard vs. culturally specific) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Language preference was assessed, and participants …

Towards On-Site Detection Of Nucleic Acids For Pathogen Monitoring, Daohong Zhang

Open Access Dissertations

As a leading cause of death in developing countries and a persistent problem elsewhere, pathogenic organisms are as ubiquitous as they are dangerous. Significant worldwide resources are directed toward their detection and eradication, leading to a broad coalition of government agencies, healthcare providers, academic researchers, and food manufacturers dedicated to providing the best-available prevention strategies for mitigating exposure risk. At the forefront of this effort is the field of pathogen detection. Our work directly addresses the current lack of simple, rapid, sensitive, and selective pathogen detection methods needed for frontline intervention in the most at-risk populations. To begin, we focused …

Partial Purification And Characterization Of Texas Live Oak (Quercus Fusiformis) Lectin, Carmen Guadalupe Cruz

Theses and Dissertations

Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins with agglutination properties. There is a continuous interest in lectins due to their biological properties that can be exploited for medicinal and therapeutic purposes. The objective of this study was to isolate and characterize lectin in Texas Live Oak (Quercus fusiformis). More specifically, the study aimed to determine the lectin’s blood group specificity and pH stability, determine effects of seasonal variation, soil moisture and soil pH on lectin activity. The study also aimed to determine the presence of antifungal activity in Q. fusiformis extracts. Lectin activity was detected and compared via agglutination and protein assays. Protein …

Diffusion Of Innovation: The Introduction Of A Point-Of-Use Ceramic Water Filter To South Texas Colonia Residents, Sara A. Buentello

Theses and Dissertations

People living in South Texas colonias continue to face developing world living conditions. Many residents of the colonias still live without basic and fundamental utilities including running water in their homes. Worldwide lack of access to clean running water is a major social problem and found in new colonias. Research has found that point-of-use ceramic water filters (CWFs) are a viable and cost effective way to purify water and developing countries throughout the world use them today. This study employs Everett Rogers’s 1964 Diffusion of Innovation Theory. Rogers’s theory has been applied in countless studies to analyze the processes through …

Cultural Predictors Of Academic Motivation In Hispanic College Students, Laura Yvette Mendez

Theses and Dissertations

Latinos make up 16 percent of the overall U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010); however, in 2012, they only represented 9 percent of individuals obtaining a college degree (NCES, 2012). Several studies suggest that social-cultural factors (i.e. familismo, parental involvement, acculturation, etc.) play a significant role in the academic motivation and academic success of Latino students (Jeynes, 2003; Perez et al., 2009; Perna & Titus, 2005). This study explored the extent to which familismo, parental involvement, and academic motivation are related to one another. This study also explored the extent to which parental involvement and familismo predict academic motivation in …

How Intrinsic Motivation And Extrinsic Motivation Affect Organizational Commitment And Job Satisfaction: A Cross-Cultural Study In The United States And China, Yundong Huang

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research is designed to identify how an individual’s work motivation affects his/her organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Work motivation is divided into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The three components of organizational commitment proposed by Meyer and Allen are examined separately. This study is a cross-cultural study based on data collected from the United States and China. The data are analyzed using partial least square (PLS) based structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of the SEM analysis are compared between the US and the China sample. The results of this study show that intrinsic motivation is positively associated with …

Get Them In The Door, Sarah Myers

Blogging the Library

If blowout sales bring crazed shoppers to department stores on Black Friday and the perfect 75⁰ day draws people outside to enjoy the fresh air, then what brings the students to the library? With countless books, journals, and videos available at the click of a button, it might be easy or obvious to suppose that the library building would be an empty space gathering dust. It might be surprising, but quite the opposite is true. What makes a college library appealing? How can the academic library, as a place, continue to be important to the life of campus? [excerpt …

Significant Rhedc Gift Underscores Value Of Winthrop-Rock Hill Partnership, Winthrop University

Winthrop News 2013

• The check was presented at the RHEDC’s Dec. 3 lunch meeting at the City Club.
• A member of the RHEDC, Comstock talked about the university’s great capacity to contribute time, talent and resources to benefit the city, and most of all, the impact of more than 9,000 alumni who come to college at Winthrop and end up settling in Rock Hill.

Chemistry Associate Professor Aaron Hartel To Be Recognized At Dec. 14 Commencement, Winthrop University

Winthrop News 2013

• President Jayne Marie (Jamie) Comstock, presiding at her first commencement, will give Hartel the 2013 James Pinckney Kinard and Lee Wicker Kinard Award for Excellence in Teaching during the 11 a.m. ceremony at the Winthrop Coliseum.
• Since Hartel joined the Winthrop Department of Chemistry, Physics, and Geology in 2004, he has emphasized the highest professional standards, mentored undergraduate students in their research and reinvigorated the organic chemistry program.

Distinguished Professor Marilyn Smith Will Deliver Commencement Address, Winthrop University

Winthrop News 2013

• Marilyn Smith, professor of management and Winthrop’s 2013 Distinguished Professor, said she will talk about change. Like many professionals and educators who have had to learn technology for a rapidly changing world, Smith said she has had to adapt her teaching skills to help prepare business students for a global world.
• Winthrop last had a commencement speaker in May 2007. Smith’s message will be heard by 274 December graduates and their guests attending the Dec. 14 undergraduate ceremony at Winthrop Coliseum.

City Christmasville Celebration Features Several Spirited Winthrop Events, Winthrop University

Winthrop News 2013

• The Lighting of the Winthrop Christmas Tree is a beloved ChristmasVille and university tradition.

Hands On With Tablets, Debbie Ginsberg

Presentations

This Brown Bag compared the iPad Air, the Microsoft Surface 2, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android). Faculty were invited to try tablets hands on.