Digital Commons Network^™

Summiting In The Last Wilderness: A Cultural And Environmental History Of Mountaineering In Alaska, Allison M. Barnwell

CMC Senior Theses

Mountaineering is not typically considered an academic subject. Nor is there much scholarship on the sport, let alone its history in the state with the smallest population, Alaska. Yet through analysis of the sport, deeper connections in the relationship between humans and the environment, the history of colonizing both indigenous peoples and land, and the place of gender and sport in Alaska come to light. Mountaineers that traveled to Alaska in the late 19th century and early 20th century were some of the first advocates for protecting its land, yet also displayed their imperialist and masculine values in the mountains. …

Say Goodbye To Hollywood: The Performance Discrepancy Of Franchise Films Between The Domestic And Foreign Box Office, James H. Havlicek

CMC Senior Theses

The increasing globalization of entertainment appears to be having a major impact on the dynamics of the American film industry. The U.S. box office is no longer predominant, meaning that in order to most effectively capitalize on the state of the theatrical market, domestic studios must now more heavily incorporate foreign preferences into production strategy. This study explores the financial nuances of the global box office in relation to sequel-driven film franchises, which have seemingly come to dominate commercial filmmaking as a result of their risk-minimized profitability. We focus on discrepancies between foreign and domestic performance in order to analyze …

The Rise Of Private Equity In China: A Case Study Of Successful And Failed Foreign Private Equity Investments, June Kim

CMC Senior Theses

China's transition from a planned economy to a market economy has brought about remarkably rapid economic growth. Year after year, China boasted of double-digit growth rates since the early 1990s. Attracted by China's so-called "economic miracle," foreign investors began entering the Chinese market hoping to benefit from the country's vast array of financial opportunities. Private equity, particularly a leveraged buyout, was an unfamiliar concept in China until late 1990s. Now China has become the most attractive destination among emerging markets for private equity investment. Global private equity firms are currently raising billions of dollars for funds focusing on China because …

The Deontological And Utilitarian Cases For Rectifying Structural Injustice In Sweatshop Labor Ethics: A Critical Assessment, Clark J. Kissiah

CMC Senior Theses

Sweatshop labor has been condemned by scholars, activists, students and consumers in more developed countries on charges of wrongful exploitation, and a failure to respect the dignity, and basic needs of sweatshop workers. This paper surveys charges against sweatshop labor, and some of the more influential arguments for, and against, rectifying the background structural injustices that perpetuate it. I argue that in certain sweatshop cases, compensating workers below a prima facie morally acceptable level can be most successful in striving towards the duty of beneficence that employers owe to their employees. Therefore, we ought to pursue utility-maximizing acts over others …

The Grand Strategy: A Study On Hannibal’S Stratagem During The Second Punic War, John T. Medin Iv

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper I sought to determine whether or not Hannibal Barca had a grand strategy to deal with the Romans during the Second Punic War. If Hannibal did have a strategy, I would try to determine what his strategy was and if it was actually feasible. I approached this question by looking into the background leading up to the Second Punic War, the primary sources explanation of Hannibal’s strategy during the Second Punic War, the logistical feasibility of the plan, and Hannibal’s movements throughout Italy during the war. In conclusion I decided that Hannibal did have a Grand strategy …

An Analysis Of The Substantive Effectiveness Of The National Environmental Policy Act: Lessons From Ivanpah, Stephanie C. Oehler

CMC Senior Theses

Nearly 45 years ago, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law to become the first national policy for the environment of the United States. As it has evolved over time through implementation and litigation, numerous countries and states around the world have emulated NEPA with similar environmental impact assessment requirements. Many scholars have evaluated the success of the legislation in accomplishing its lofty goals. Most commonly, however, these studies address the procedural performance of agencies through the creation of environmental impact statements. This thesis examines the effectiveness of NEPA in accomplishing its substantive, rather than procedural, goals …

The Environmental, Social, And Economic Impacts Of Hydraulic Fracturing, Horizontal Drilling, And Acidization In California, Christina Whalen

CMC Senior Theses

The oil extraction mechanisms of hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, and acidization have recently spread throughout the state of California. This thesis explores and assesses whether federal and state legislation should approve of fracking operations in California after studying its effects on human health, the environment, and the economy. This thesis assesses the impacts of fracking; analyzes the role of current legislation and regulation; compares California fracking to fracking in other states and countries; and provides recommendations for future action.

Claude Debussy: Harmonic Innovations In Historical And Musical Context, Ford Joseph Forqurean

Theses and Dissertations

Claude Debussy's music developed as a product of his environment and culminated in the creation of a unique harmonic vernacular that permeates the twentieth century's tonal language. Through a historical and musical context, his early life through his formative years as a composer will be examined as a natural progression of his environment. The first section of this work will discuss these developments while the second part will analyze the structure and form of the Premiere Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano to illustrate the culmination of this trajectory.

Late Romanticism pushed tonality to its breaking point. Composers were forced to …

Characterizing Wetland Hydrology, Chemistry, And Soils For An Endemic Crayfish, The Piedmont Blue Burrower, Jess H. Gilmer Ii

Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic alteration of Earth's ecosystems has pushed global biodiversity into a state of crisis. Freshwater species have been particularly vulnerable, with crayfish ranking as the second most imperiled taxonomic group in North America. Primary burrowers represent only 15% of crayfish species in North America; however, they constitute 32% of imperiled crayfish. Despite their conservation importance, little is known about the ecology of burrowing crayfish. To advance our knowledge about the habitat characteristics of burrowing crayfish, groundwater hydrology, water chemistry, and soil properties were assessed to determine their importance for the state-listed endangered, primary burrower Cambarns harti. Groundwater hydrology and …

Landscape And Impervious Surface Mapping In The Twin Cities Metropolitan Area Using Feature Recognition And Decision Tree Techniques, Philipp Nagel

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) and Impervious Surface Area (ISA) are important parameters for many environmental studies, and serve as an essential tool for decision makers and stakeholders in Urban & Regional planning. Newly available high spatial resolution aerial ortho-imagery and LiDAR data, in combination with specialized, object-oriented and decision-tree classification techniques, allow for accurate mapping of these features. In this study, a method was developed to first classify LULC using an object-based classifier, and then use the resulting map as input for a decision-tree model to classify ISA in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area in Minnesota. It was …

Cochlear Development And Auditory Function In The Absence Of Thyroid Hormone Transporters Mct8 And Oatp1c1, Richard Sinn

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Thyroid hormone (TH) is essential for the development and maturation of the nervous system. The thyroid gland secretes an active form of TH, triiodothyronine, and a prohormone, thyroxine, into the blood. TH is charged, which prevents it from passively diffusing across cell membranes and thus requires cell membrane transporters to facilitate its movement into and out of cells. However, whether TH transporters are required for TH-mediated developmental events, including the auditory system, is largely unknown.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate two specific TH transporters, monocarboxylate transporter 8 (Mct8) and organic anion transporting polypeptide 1c1 (Oatp1c1), and …

Person(S) Of Interest And Missing Women: Legal Abandonment In The Downtown Eastside, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Women are disappearing. Sixty-nine of them disappeared from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver between 1997 and 2002. Northern communities in British Columbia believe that more than 40 women have gone missing from the Highway of Tears in the past thirty years. The endangered do not come from every walk of life. Most of these women are Aboriginal. Many of them are poor. To be more precise then, poor women and Aboriginal women are disappearing. Aboriginal women in particular are the targets of an irrefutable epidemic of violence in Canada today.

Robert Pickton is thought to have murdered almost 50 of …

The World Needs More Rod Macdonald: The Potential Of Big Ideas, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, the author makes the case for thinking boldly and experimentally about the possibilities for legal education and law schools and urges us to embrace the potential for big ideas. She illustrates this approach through the lens of admissions, curriculum, and research. Within each of those aspects of legal education, the article suggests some guidelines that might be used to evaluate reform proposals and proposes one major change to spur reflection.

Arctic Climate Governance: Can The Canary In The Coal Mine Lift Canada’S Head Out Of The Sand(S)?, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper considers Canada’s climate policy at the federal and territorial levels of government in light of the accelerated impacts and vulnerability of Canada’s Arctic region. The paper considers the level of awareness of current and expected future climate impacts in the Arctic, and the effect of this awareness on climate policy. Climate policy is considered in three broad areas, climate adaptation, climate mitigation and the effect on each jurisdiction’s development path. The paper concludes that there is good awareness of the current and predicted future impacts of climate change in all jurisdictions studied. For reasons explored in the paper, …

Master Regulators, Regulatory Networks, And Pathways Of Glioblastoma Subtypes, Serdar Bozdag, Aiguo Li, Mehmet Baysan, Howard A. Fine

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common malignant brain tumor. GBM samples are classified into subtypes based on their transcriptomic and epigenetic profiles. Despite numerous studies to better characterize GBM biology, a comprehensive study to identify GBM subtype-specific master regulators, gene regulatory networks, and pathways is missing. Here, we used FastMEDUSA to compute master regulators and gene regulatory networks for each GBM subtype. We also ran Gene Set Enrichment Analysis and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis on GBM expression dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas Project to compute GBM- and GBM subtype-specific pathways. Our analysis was able to recover some of the …

The Origin Of Parental Rights: Labor, Intent, And Fathers, Dara Purvis

Faculty Scholarship

Most theories of parentage fail to explain the genesis of the right to parent - for example, why does a biological relationship generate parental rights? This Article shows that the law of parental rights mirrors theories of acquiring property, and that the law has shifted over time, from favoring a property right based in genetics to a Lockean theory of property rights earned through labor. The growth of Lockean labor-based theories is epitomized in reforms to parentage laws that incorporate functional theories of parenting, meaning that adults who perform caretaking work that creates a significant relationship with children are recognized …

Feeling Another's Pain: Sympathy And Psychology Saga Style, William I. Miller

Articles

Progress is hardly a given in the humanities or the suspect sciences. In many ways we are not quite as astute as our grandparents, and they not as much as theirs, and so forth in an infinite entropic regress. Would I trade Montaigne or Stendhal’s psychological acumen for even the best work that comes from social psychology departments? In this short essay I want to show just how good some medieval people, medieval Icelanders to be exact, were at understanding the mental and emotional states of others, and if of others then presumably, though not necessarily, also of themselves. And …

Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Most lawyers, law professors, and judges are familiar with two standard critiques of formalism in legal reasoning. One is the unacknowledged-policymaking critique. This critique argues that formalist reasoning purports to be above judicial policymaking but instead simply hides the policy decisions offstage. The other is the false-determinacy critique. This critique observes that formalist reasoning purports to reduce decision costs in the run of cases by sorting cases into defined categories, but argues that instead of going away the difficult questions of application migrate to the choice of the category in which to place a particular case.

Farm Business Management: A Localized Analysis Of Financial Tools Utilized In Agribusiness, Abby L. Lamothe

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Animal-Assisted Therapy: Motives And Rewards, Kailee Victoria Collins

Honors Theses and Capstones

Animal-assisted therapy is a complimentary therapy utilized in health care to provide goal-directed therapy using dogs. The purpose of this study was to understand what motivates individuals to being animal-assisted volunteering and rewards that encourage and sustain animal-assisted volunteering. This mixed methods study employed quantitative methods, a demographic questionnaire and the Volunteer Motivation Index (VMI), which ranks motives most important to animal-assisted volunteers (N=15) and qualitative methods, a semi-structured interview (N=13). The participants ranked Values most important as a motive on the VMI. Social related variables were ranked low. Content analysis of the interviews yielded five themes: No Ordinary Dog, …

Investigating Geometric Representation In Rodents, Samantha Ann Arsenault

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Em(Body)Ing Autonomy: Black Women’S Bodies And Self-Liberation In The Novels Of Zora Neale Hurston And Alice Walker, Caitlin Rose Riley Duttry

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

“Lifted Moments”: Emily Dickinson, Hymn Revision, And The Revival Music Meme-Plex, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

This essay focuses on Dickinson’s poem “The Soul has Bandaged moments - ” (Fr360), placing it in relation to several interrelated hymns (Independent, Unitarian, and gospel) that share a common pattern of imagery deriving from the popular “Crowning Day” motif. Through a linked sequence of paired readings, it shows how connections between two loosely related texts sharpen and become meaningful when the two texts are brought into dialog with a third text. Juxtaposing three overlapping pairs of lyrics—first by Daniel Webster Whittle and William Channing Gannett, then by Philip Doddridge and Emily Dickinson, and, finally, by Gannett and Dickinson (with …

“When The Cup Has Been Drained”: Addiction And Recovery In The Wind In The Willows, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Science Fiction In The United States, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

“If The Engine Ever Stops, We’D All Die”: Snowpiercer And Necrofuturism, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

Applying Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee’s “necrocapitalism” to the study of sf, this article reads the post-apocalyptic French comic Le Transperceneige (1982) and its film adaptation Snowpiercer (2014) as critiques of necrofuturist visions of the future. Necrofuturism posits a future that is doomed to continue modern capitalism’s unsustainable and immoral practices even as those practices become more and more destructive and self-defeating; films such as Snowpiercer interrupt this well-rehearsed vision of a world of universal death to open the mind to new possibilities for alternative futures. Key to Snowpiercer’s critique of necrofuturism is its depiction of …

Far Beyond The Star Pit: Samuel R. Delany, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Mcglones - Miscellaneous Book 1, Carter County Genealogical Society

Carter County Genealogy Collection

Genealogy of the McGlones family of Carter County, Kentucky.

The Impacts Of African Elephant (Loxodonta Africana) On Biodiversity Within Protected Areas Of Africa And A Review Of Management Options, Shelby Fazio

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Career Goal Change In The Medical Field: Gender Differences And The Pay Gap, Danielle Meirow

Honors Projects

This study analyzes the rates at which students in their undergraduate years alter their career aspirations within the medical field. Additionally, it investigates the causes of this change. Primary data was collected through a survey e-mailed to all Grand Valley State University Allied Health Sciences and Biomedical Sciences majors, while additional personal anecdotes were gathered through one on one interviews. All information was compared along traditional, binary gender lines to determine if differences exist between males and females. This study found, while males and females experience similar overall rates of career goal change, women alter their career goals to professions …