Digital Commons Network^™

From University Press To The University's Press, Gary Dunham, Carolyn Walters

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Native Mandarin Speakers' Perception And Production Of English Stop + Liquid Clusters In Onset Position, Melissa Lea Walden

Theses - ALL

ABSTRACT

Much of the past research on Native Mandarin speakers' acquisition of English consonants has focused on codas because of the constraint against stop phonemes as codas. Native Mandarin speakers face a range of challenges in the process of acquiring English because of the variation between the syllable structures of English and Mandarin, and the variation between the two phonological systems. Past research has investigated native Mandarin speakers' perception, and production of English words. Based on the reviewed literature for this study, stop and liquid clusters in onset position which contrast according to voicing have not been the focus of …

The Natural Resource Curse In Sub-Saharan Africa: Transparency And International Initiatives, Meaza Zerihun Demissie

Dissertations

The Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region has become a classic case of the resource-curse phenomenon characterized by the abundance of natural resources, low economic development, and misuse of natural resources. Economic-development experts debate ways to overcome or avoid the resource curse to advance SSA countries into developed countries. Only one natural resource-rich country in the region, Botswana, has succeeded in becoming an upper middle-income country using its natural resources, making the possibility of replication of this achievement difficult. The literature aligns in the belief that the economic and political well-being of resource-rich nations depends highly on the actors involved. National and …

Impact Of Peer Praise Notes Issued During Recess: Effects On Office Disciplinary Referrals, Elise Ann Teerlink

Theses and Dissertations

School recess can be a problematic setting due to inadequate safety, supervision, and structure. Peer praise notes (PPNs) is a school-wide positive behavior support strategy that was implemented during recess to address these concerns at a Title I elementary school. An ABAB reversal design across all students was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of PPNs. Overall changes in office disciplinary referrals (ODRs) in each phase of the design, an effect size that reflects a highly effective treatment, and a moderately strong and statistically significant negative correlation suggest that PPNs decreased ODRs. Results from social validity surveys completed by eight recess …

Being Transformed By Being A Peer Mentor: An Examination Of High-Impact And Transformative Peer Mentor Experience, Bryce D. Bunting

Theses and Dissertations

This multi-article dissertation explores the potential for the undergraduate peer mentoring experience to contribute to transformative learning for those who serve in peer mentoring or peer leadership roles. While past research has established that peer mentors experience a variety of positive outcomes associated with their leadership experience, there are gaps in the literature with regard to how the peer mentor experience can be intentionally designed as a high-impact practice for student leaders. Through three qualitative studies, as well as a comprehensive literature review, this dissertation addresses this gap by exploring what peer mentors report learning through their mentoring experiences (Article …

Inclusive Recreation: The Malleability Of Attitudes Toward Disability Through Peer Interaction, Megan Fort

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the malleability of attitudes with the goal of improving social inclusion for a stigmatized group, specifically individuals with developmental disabilities. Contact Theory was used as an intentional structure for meaningful intergroup contact to assess, understand, and improve meanings applied to individuals with disabilities at an inclusive summer day camp. Adolescent volunteers were administered quantitative questionnaires utilizing the Contact with Disabled Persons Scale (CDP) and the Multi-Dimensional Attitude Scale (MAS). Collected data were used to determine the efficacy of involvement in an inclusive recreation program on adolescent participants' attitudes toward disability. After a covariate-adjusted regression analysis, contact with …

Latin American Data Drought: An Assessment Of Available River Observation Data In Select Latin American Countries And Development Of A Web-Based Application For A Hydrometerological Database System In Spanish, Stephen Joseph Bolster

Theses and Dissertations

The demand and collection of hydrometeorological data is growing to support hydrologic and hydraulic analyses, and other studies. These data can amount to extensive information that requires sound data management to enable efficient storage, access, and use. While much of the globe is using technology to efficiently collect and store hydrometeorological data, other parts, such as developing countries, are unable to do so. This thesis presents an assessment of available river observations data in Latin American countries in Central America and the Caribbean. The assessment analyzes 1) access to available data, 2) spatial density of data, and 3) the temporal …

Leisure Defined By Free Choice: Ugandan Women's Perceptions Of Leisure, Emilie Adams

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of leisure among women in the developing East African nation of Uganda. In this study, I evaluated the leisure experiences of 38 Ugandan women of various backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses through semi-structured interviews. I analyzed the data using the constant comparative method. Themes for the meaning of leisure include fortifying leisure, enjoyment, and rest and relaxation. Results point to free choice as the core variable. Finally, I discuss the implications and suggestions for future research.

Comparative Analysis Of Ceramics From Three Great Houses And One Small House Site In Southeast Utah, Rachel Marie Harris

Theses and Dissertations

Ceramics from three Utah great houses, Bluff, Cottonwood Falls, and Edge of the Cedars, were analyzed and compared with ceramics from Three Kiva Pueblo, which is not a great house site but was occupied contemporarily. Data on jar and bowl rim diameters were considered to understand great house feasting dynamics. Cooking jars with large rim diameters were more common at Three Kiva than they were at the great houses. This suggests that Three Kiva residents prepared large batches of food more frequently than great house residents. Distributions of Mancos Black-on-white bowl diameters were very similar at great houses and Three …

Design And Implementation Of An Inverse Modeling Framework Using The Method Of Anchored Distributions, Carlos Andres Osorio Murillo

Theses and Dissertations

Estimation of spatial random fields (SRFs) such as transmissivity or porosity is required for predicting groundwater flow and subsurface contaminant movement. Similarly, distributed parameter fields such as terrain roughness and evapotranspiration coefficients are required by other areas of environmental and earth sciences modeling. This dissertation presents an inverse modeling framework for characterizing SRFs called MAD#, which is an end-user software implementation of the Bayesian inverse modeling technique Method of Anchored Distributions (MAD). The MAD# framework allows modelers to “wrap” existing simulation modeling tools using an extensible driver architecture that exposes model parameters to the inversion engine. A compelling aspect of …

A Molecular Phylogeny Of Lampyridae With Insight Into Visual And Bioluminescent Evolution, Gavin Jon Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Fireflies are some of the most captivating organisms on the planet. Because of this, they have a rich history of study, especially concerning their bioluminescent and visual behavior. Among insects, opsin copy number variation has been shown to be quite diverse. However, within the beetles, very little work on opsins has been conducted. Here we look at the visual system of fireflies (Coleoptera: Lampyridae), which offer an elegant system in which to study visual evolution as it relates to their behavior and broader ecology. They are the best-known case of a terrestrial organism that communicates through the use bioluminescence. The …

The Effects Of Nebulized Saline Treatments On Diphthongal Vowel Production On Female Subjects With Sjögren's Syndrome, Keri Lynn Perry

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze and quantify the effects of a nebulized saline treatment on speech production in eight females with Primary Sjögren's Syndrome (SS). The duration, formant frequency onset and offset, and slope were measured to determine the quality of participants' production of diphthongal American English vowels. Acoustic data were examined before treatment began, immediately following treatment, and during a one-week follow-up to determine the effects of a laryngeal hydration program that used nebulized saline to increase hydration of structures in the vocal tract. The vowels produced during the initial baseline condition were acoustically relatively similar …

Institutional Adoption Of Blended Learning In Higher Education, Wendy Woodfield Porter

Theses and Dissertations

Relatively little research on blended learning (BL) addresses institutional adoption in higher education. Graham, Woodfield, and Harrison (2012) proposed a framework for institutional BL adoption, identifying three stages: (a) awareness/exploration, (b) adoption/early implementation, and (c) mature implementation/growth. The framework also identified key strategy, structure, and support issues universities may address at each stage. In this series of articles, the authors applied that framework to institutions of higher education implementing BL. In the first article, the authors applied the framework to 11 Next Generation Learning Challenge (NGLC) grant recipients transitioning from Stage 1 to Stage 2 of BL adoption. The authors …

A Proposed Change Leadership Plan For Bimmer Elementary School, Nicole Villaverde

Dissertations

My paper details a Change Leadership Plan (CLP) for a school with the fictious name of Bimmer Elementary School (BME). My study's purpose is to enhance student learning by collaborating with staff to explore ways to maximize time-on-task (TOT) for all subjects. Currently BME has a reading achievement problem and is using pull-out programs for 4th and 5th grade students that take needed instructional time from core academic programs. I used Wagner's As-Is and To-Be charts (see Appendix A) for BME to identify and present the current status and future desired state of the school's culture, context, conditions, and competencies. …

On Using The Roofline Model With Lower Bounds On Data Movement, Venmugil Elango, Naser Sedaghati, Fabrice Rastello, Louis Noël Pouchet, J. Ramanujam, Radu Teodorescu, P. Sadayappan

Faculty Publications

The roofline model is a popular approach for "bound and bottleneck" performance analysis. It focuses on the limits to the performance of processors because of limited bandwidth to off-chip memory. It models upper bounds on performance as a function of operational intensity, the ratio of computational operations per byte of data moved from/to memory. While operational intensity can be directly measured for a specific implementation of an algorithm on a particular target platform, it is of interest to obtain broader insights on bottlenecks, where various semantically equivalent implementations of an algorithm are considered, along with analysis for variations in architectural …

Vol. 6 No. 1, Fall 2014; 'Fixing' The First Sale Doctrine: Adapting Copyright Law To The New Media Distribution Paradigm, Samuel Perkins

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

This Article discusses Section 109 of the Copyright Act, the first sale doctrine, in the context of digital media and internet-based storage. Traditionally, the first sale doctrine served as an important limitation on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, allowing copies of lawfully obtained works to be resold without interference from the copyright owner. As a result of this limitation, physical media remains freely alienable after the first sale, providing secondary markets for used copies and more consumer choice. However, due to the nature of digital media and the recent market shift among media distributors, first sale doctrine has become …

Early Bilingual Education: An Examination Of Purposely Selected Teacher Viewpoints: South East China And San Francisco Area, Shan Chen

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

In the coming years, an increasing number of children in urban Chinese areas are taking a second language at an early age. It leads to an argument about whether it is appropriate for children to learn a second language in an early age Some people disagree that idea, because children are not developed enough to receive foreign language learning.

Learning a second language early is disadvantageous for young children because they should first learn to speak the primary language well. Whereas, other people support that children should start learning second language early for three main reasons: children’s talent for language …

Communication: The Key To Collaboration Between Special And General Education Teachers, Alexandra Slatoff

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Teachers often do not communicate with one another when working to meet the needs of their students. The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the need, nature and manner by which general and special education teachers communicate and collaborate to address the educational needs of their students.

A review of the educational literature reveals that a burden is placed on the educational community given the often conflicting statutory obligations to: fully include special needs students in the general classroom, comply with State mandated general education curriculum requirements and implement instructional guidelines required by Individual Educational Plans (IEP) …

Reformed Worship (Rw) 114 - Lent / Easter (December 2014), Reformed Worship Editors

Reformed Worship Magazine

Features

Worship Series: Metamorphosis by Peter Schuurman....3

Noteworthy: Singing the Meaning of Christ’s Death by Martin Tel....14

Articles

Editorial: Standing in the Gap by Joyce Borger....2

Come and See: Undying Life by Jim Dekker....10

Poem: The Rooster’s Crow by Ben Hulst....37

See with the Eyes of God by David W. Music....38

Punjabi Psalms: An Interview with Eric Sarwar, Part 1 by Emily R. Brink and Eric Sarwar....44

Q&A: Names for Public Worship in a Multilingual World: Playing with Language by John Witvliet....48

Resources

Unto Us a Messiah Is Given by Trudy Ash …

The Sciences Of Learning, Instruction, And Assessment As Underpinnings Of The Morningside Model Of Generative Instruction, Elizabeth M. Street, Kent Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

This paper focuses on a subset of the practices that have created the powerful learning technology developed and disseminated by Morningside Academy in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. We briefly describe this technology, known as the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction, and tell how it builds on the selectionist approach of B. F. Skinner and the pragmatic approach of John Dewey. We also describe the critical role Precision Teaching plays at Morningside Academy and its dependence on findings from the science of learning and the science of instruction, including placement of learners, task analysis, content analysis, instructional protocols, and principles of instructional …

The Green Factor, Hillary Tung

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

Robust Geotechnical Design - Methodology And Applications, Lei Wang

All Dissertations

This dissertation is aimed at developing a novel robust geotechnical design methodology and demonstrating this methodology for the design of geotechnical systems. The goal of a robust design is to make the response of a system insensitive to, or robust against, the variation of uncertain geotechnical parameters (termed noise factors in the context of robust design) by carefully adjusting design parameters (those that can be controlled by the designer such as geometry of the design). Through an extensive investigation, a robust geotechnical design methodology that considers explicitly safety, robustness, and cost is developed. Various robustness measures are considered in this …

The Challenges And Opportunities Throughout The Life Cycle Of Landscape-Scale Collaborative Conservation Organizations: Case Studies In The Southern Appalachians And The Northern Rockies Ecosystems, Jennifer Thomsen

All Dissertations

Currently our natural environment is threatened by climate change, habitat fragmentation, and other transboundary issues. To address these problems, it is thought that conservation organizations and land management agencies should attempt to manage at larger geographic scales and across political boundaries. The Crown Managers Partnership (CMP) and the Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere Cooperative (SAMAB) are two such organizations that work at an ecoregional scale to support collaboration among agencies, aboriginal groups, conservationists, scientists, and other stakeholders for the conservation and restoration of the Northern Rocky Mountain and the Southern Appalachian regions in North America. Over the past decades, …

The Update, December 2014, University Of Northern Iowa. College Of Humanities, Arts And Sciences.

Update

Inside this issue:

-- Harlem Hellfighters: UNI Alumnus Publishes Award Winning Book
-- Department News
-- School of Music Events
-- Science Students Travel to Minneapolis: 50th Anniversary of the Nobel Conference
-- Faculty Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Awards
-- Graphic Design Students Create Work for the Community: Students Created Work for the Hearst Center for the Arts and Cedar Rock State Park
-- Alumni Spotlight: Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry: Dane Jacobson
-- Alumni Spotlight: Department of Physics: Jack Dostal
-- Alumni Spotlight: Department of Earth Science: Cara Wright
-- Student Spotlight: Department of Philosophy & World Religions: …

Development Of A Digital Controller For Motor Control Experiments In The Ee472 Lab, Jeffrey David D'Amelio

Master's Theses

A digital motor controller for student lab use is designed, built, and tested. The controller uses an encoder for position measurement, and an H-bridge to drive the electromechanical plant.

A user interface is created to enhance usability of the device. The user interface is able to display key parameters of the control algorithm as well as the state of the system. It is also used to modify the gains and sample rate of the control algorithm.

The design of the system is refined, and 10 units are built for the EE472 Digital Controls Lab. The lab manuals for the first …

Tme Volume 11, Number 3

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

The Miracle Of Applied Mathematics, Frank Blume

The Mathematics Enthusiast

We provide an outline of a college-level lecture on systems of differential equations that is intended to offer an alternative, integrative view of the subject. Particular emphasis is placed on the fact that very elementary concepts and insights can be employed to gain access to a very wide range of important applications, including the Schr¨odinger equation, the Klein-Gordon equation, the Laplace equation, and the Poisson equation.

A Study On Malaysian Mathematicians’ Way Of Knowing, Lim Chap Sam

The Mathematics Enthusiast

“Can you name me a mathematician?” “Einstein??”

“Do you wish to become a mathematician one day?”

If these questions were asked to the public or any school students, the most likely answer to both questions might be a big ‘No!’. Why is this so?

The director of the Public Understanding of Mathematics Forum, Gene Kloz (1996) claims that the mathematics profession is the most misunderstood in all of academia. According to him, the public thinks that mathematicians contemplate ancient proofs and work as lonely recluses. Moreover, the most common public image of a mathematician has been furnished by a physicist …

Difficulties In Solving Context-Based Pisa Mathematics Tasks: An Analysis Of Students’ Errors, Ariyadi Wijaya, Marja Van Den Heuvel-Panhuizen, Michiel Doorman, Alexander Robitzsch

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The intention of this study was to clarify students’ difficulties in solving context-based mathematics tasks as used in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The study was carried out with 362 Indonesian ninth- and tenth-grade students. In the study we used 34 released PISA mathematics tasks including three task types: reproduction, connection, and reflection. Students’ difficulties were identified by using Newman’s error categories, which were connected to the modeling process described by Blum and Leiss and to the PISA stages of mathematization, including (1) comprehending a task, (2) transforming the task into a mathematical problem, (3) processing mathematical procedures, …

A Creative Problem Solving Toolkit For Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Survivors, Miriam S. Hoffman

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Abstract of Project

A Creative Problem Solving Toolkit for Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Survivors

Rebuilding and recreating one’s mental and physical life after traumatic brain injury is one of the most daunting of human experiences. At the same time, this is a perfect opportunity to adopt a creative life. With a mumble-jumble of seemingly random thoughts without much rhyme nor reason post-TBI, retraining one’s brain to deliberately establish a “new normal” life can be enhanced with the deliberate process of Creative Problem Solving. Working with a balance of divergent and convergent thinking, the major premise of creative problem solving, in …