Digital Commons Network^™

Contesting A Contestation Of Testing: A Reply To Richard Delgado, Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

This article was written as part of an ongoing dialog about the author’s previous article, Does Testing = Race Discrimination?: Ricci, The Bar Exam, the LSAT, and the Challenge to Learning, which defended the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, as well as defending testing more generally against charges of irrelevance, racial obtuseness, and most seriously, race discrimination.

This article specifically responds to Richard Delgado’s article, Standardized Testing as Discrimination: A Reply to Dan Subotnik.

An Assessment Of Mayor Bloomberg's Public Health Legacy, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

This article contains Rodger D. Citron's interview with Lawrence O. Gostin, Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center and the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, regarding Gostin's article for the Hasting Center Report addressing former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s public health legacy.

A Developmental Perspective For Promoting Theory Of Mind, Lee Robinson

Faculty Publications

Social neuroscience research has resulted in changing views of the theory of mind (ToM) construct. Theory of mind is no longer viewed as a unitary construct, but rather as a multidimensional construct comprising cognitive and affective ToM and interpersonal and intrapersonal ToM, each of which has differing neurophysiological/neuroanatomical foundations and behavioral manifestations. Clinicians working with persons with social communication/pragmatic communication disorders should consider evaluating these dimensions of ToM and the cognitive, social–emotional, and language components underlying them. Then they might use this information to develop a ToM profile for each client so they are better able to implement specific intervention …

State's Rights, Last Rites, And Voting Rights, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There are two ways to read the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County Alabama v. Holder: as a minimalist decision or as a decision that undermines the basic infrastructure of voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. In this Article, we present the case for reading Shelby County as deeply destabilizing. We argue that Shelby County has undermined three assumptions that are foundational to voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. First, the Court has generally granted primacy of the federal government over the states. Second, the Court has deferred to Congress particularly where Congress is regulating at the intersection of race …

Liberty Without Capacity: Why States Should Ban Adolescent Driving, Vivian E. Hamilton

Georgia Law Review

Car crashes kill more teens each year than any other cause, and of the crashes in which they are involved, teens are overwhelmingly at fault. Teens crash at rates far higher than those of older drivers, and the younger the teen driver, the higher the risk-sixteen-year-old drivers have crash rates 250% higher than those of eighteen-year- olds. Driving experience does not explain the difference; younger beginners crash at rates higher than those of older beginners. Instead, younger teens' increased crash risk results primarily from immature regulatory competence. In other words, the capacities required for driving competence are still immature in …

Nondiscrimination In Insurance: The Next Chapter, Mary L. Heen

Georgia Law Review

For nearly 150 years, American insurance companies have engaged in race and gender pricing practices that would be illegal if followed today by any other major commercial enterprise. The insurance industry has defended its long-standing practices, first for race and now for gender, based on ideas about insurance "equity" developed in the nineteenth century. The continued application of these ideas, and the practices that have resulted from them, conflict with fundamental civil rights principles and should not be tolerated as exceptions to our national civil rights laws. As that history shows, classifications used by insurers to determine rates and benefits …

Creation Of In Vitro Disease Models Using Micro-Nanoengineering, Allison Bruce

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Cells are typically housed in a complex microenvironment (ECM) in vivo, where the cells interact with the extracellular matrix (ECM) and neighboring cells. The ECM provides physical support for cells and affects cell adhesion, migration, proliferation, differentiation, and gene expression. Primary components of the ECM include fibrous proteins which contribute significant nanotopography cues to cells. Due to limitations of two-dimensional (2-D) in vitro studies where cells are cultured on flat, plastic substrates, the conventional cell culture does not mimic the in vivo scenario. This manifests the critical need for biomimetic cell culture platforms which mimic the in vivo microenvironment. During …

Comparison Of Two Protocols For Maxillary Protraction: Tooth Anchored Versus Bone Anchored Protraction Facemask, Nicole M. Deshon

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Early orthopedic interventions have been advocated for patients presented with Class III malocclusion. However, many conventional treatment modalities have negative dental changes that accompany the positive skeletal changes. There is a lack of literature on comparing a new hybrid hyrax bone anchored maxillary protraction to conventional tooth anchored maxillary protraction. The objective of this retrospective study is to quantify and compare differences in craniofacial morphology, if any, between patients treated with tooth anchored versus bone anchored maxillary protraction. A total of 40 patients (16 males, 24 females) with Class III malocclusion who had received early orthopedic treatment with tooth anchored …

Factors That Are Associated With Readiness To Transition From Pediatric To Adult Health Care In Cystic Fibrosis, Lindsay A. Corman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Life expectancy of patients with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) has been increasing, with most children with CF expected to live at least into middle age adult years. Consequently, the majority of patients with CF will have to transition from a pediatric to an adult clinic. Unfortunately, few transition programs exist that attend to the physical, developmental, and psychological factors of adolescents with CF who need to transfer to adult clinics. Moreover, to date, there is a dearth of quantitative research that has been conducted to assess factors that may influence readiness to transition. The purpose of this study is to examine …

Desired Leadership Styles In Classroom And Court: Comparing Ideal Coaching And Teaching Styles Of Collegiate Student-Athletes, Elzbieta Klein

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this study was to compare student-athletes' ideal coaching leadership styles and teaching leadership styles. Further, this study examined the relationship between student-athletes' level of argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness and their ideal leadership styles. Student-athletes (N=67) were surveyed about their ideal coaching and teaching leadership styles and their communication traits. The averages of each leadership styles were compared to rank them from most ideal to least ideal. Student-athletes prefer the leadership styles of Paternalistic, Democratic, and Transformational for coaches and the leadership styles of Laissez-Faire and Transactional for teachers. Student-athletes' argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness were related to some …

Optimization Of An Optical Thermal Absorber Plasmonic Metamaterial: Understanding The Two Particle Interactions, Anitesh Anand Lal

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In the recent years, the emergence of electromagnetic metamaterials (MMs) have ushered in an exciting new field with many promising applications in direct energy conversion. One of the more promising applications of MMs is the ability to fully harness the solar energy through the design of a perfect electromagnetic absorber. Electromagnetic MMs posses the ability to manipulate a material's response resulting in augmented properties such as negative index of refraction, artificial permittivity, and permeability. One of the proven methods for the construction of electromagnetic metamaterials is to use a metal-dielectric composite whereby the electromagnetic response is governed by oscillating surface …

Effects Of A Postpartum Sleep Schedule On Childless Women's Sleep, Circadian Amplitude, Daytime Sleepiness, Performance, And Mood, Amanda L. Mcbean

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

OBJECTIVES: A complex process of physiological and environmental changes during the postpartum period confounds our understanding of the discrete impacts of postpartum sleep fragmentation. The aim of this dissertation was to isolate the effects of postpartum sleep fragmentation by manipulating the sleep of childless women in the laboratory to model a postpartum sleep fragmentation schedule. Actigraphically and polysomnographically-recorded sleep, daytime functioning, mood, and melatonin amplitude were quantified.;METHODS: Eleven healthy, childless women (25.4 [SD+/-2.3] years, 72.7% white, {dollar}23,000 [SD+/-{dollar}11,000] household income) contributed continuous wrist actigraphy and daily psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) for one baseline week followed by 3 consecutive nights of …

"It's Not Just Your Dad And It's Not Just Your Coach..." The Dual-Role Relationship In Female Tennis Players, Olivier N. Schmid

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Parents and coaches were encouraged to keep their roles separate in order to promote optimal youth sport participation and avoid excessive and pressuring involvement (Gould, et al., 2008; Wolfenden & Hoyt, 2005). Despite these recommendations, the phenomenon of parents volunteering to coach their own children has dramatically increased (Brown, 1998). Managing the blurred boundaries of these coaching dual-role relationships throughout the athlete's development is a delicate endeavor and remains unexplored in individual sports (Jowett, 2008; Weiss & Fretwell, 2005). Tennis has been identified as an ideal context to examine the dynamics of parenting and coaching relationships and is notorious for …

The Role Of Self-Efficacy In Predicting Treatment Adherence In Youth With Cystic Fibrosis, Margo M. Szabo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Adolescents with cystic fibrosis (CF) demonstrate relatively poor treatment adherence in comparison to other age groups, which can lead to adverse health outcomes. Though previous research has examined various factors associated with treatment adherence in pediatric CF samples, no studies to date have explored the interrelations among self-efficacy, parental style, level of responsibility for CF care, and treatment adherence in this population. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of self-efficacy, parental style, and level of responsibility for CF care in predicting treatment adherence in adolescents with CF. A sample of 59 adolescents with CF (M …

A 5-Year Review Of Aahperd Poster Presentations In The Area Of Sport Education, David C. Barney, Brad Strand

Faculty Publications

One desired outcome of k-12 physical education is that all students will have positive experiences during their classes. If students have positive experiences in physical education, they will physically likely be physically active throughout their lives (Barney & Strand, 2008). Unfortunately, for some students the physical education experience has been boring, unnecessary, a waste of time, or just not cool (Rice, 1988). One tool physical educators can manipulate to ensure that student's have positive experiences in physical education, is the curriculum. Barney and Deutsch (2009) found that the curriculum used in a middle school program played a major role in …

Why Teach Pe? Factors That Affect Students' Decisions To Teach Physical Education Revisited, Patrick Mcgaha, David C. Barney

Faculty Publications

Many times a child will be asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The answers are varied, yet their responses usually reflect what their parents' employment may be. For this study, factors were investigated that have an effect on college students' decisions to become physical educators. For this study it was found that former physical education and coaches were the most influential people affecting college students' decision to become physical education teachers, not parents. It was also found that many of these college students were actively involved in high school athletics, thus also affecting their decision …

Burden Of Breast Cancer And Associated Health And Economic Outcomes In Elderly Women In West Virginia: Comparison With National Estimates, Ami Maulik Vyas

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

West Virginia (WV) which is the only state which lies entirely in Appalachia and which is predominantly rural and medically underserved region, has lower incidence of breast cancer (BC) but a higher BC-related mortality as compared to the national averages in elderly women age 65 and above. This may be due to lower mammography utilization in these rural elderly women, limited physical access to services, shortage of healthcare professionals and services, and untimely and/or inappropriate care. This is dearth of epidemiological studies that have focused on understanding the factors associated with these disparities among these rural and underserved population such …

Prophets Rendering Christlike Service: Looking To Peter As An Example, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This chapter (from the 2014 book “An Eye of Faith,” a festschrift for Dr. Richard O. Cowan, published by the Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center) shares examples of prophetic service from Peter the Apostle to each of the prophets of the Restoration—from Joseph Smith, Jr. to Thomas S. Monson. Many of the stories included about modern prophets are not widely known.

A Post-Installed Subsea Monitoring System For Structural And Flow Assurance Evaluation, David Brower, Alexis Brower, John Hedengren, Reza Asgharzadeh Shishavan

Faculty Publications

This paper describes major advancements for deploying sensing systems on existing subsea structures as part of the Clear Gulf study. In the past, a major shortcoming of post-installed monitoring systems has been poor coupling between the sensor and structure; this study provided methods to overcome this problem. Both subsea field testing and laboratory testing were performed to verify these advancements. The Clear Gulf study is a collaboration between the offshore energy industry and NASA with the goals of risk mitigation, safety, efficiency and environmental concerns in the offshore energy industry. The study is ongoing and has investigated new methods to …

Mycoplasma Genitalium Promotes Epithelial Crossing And Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell Infection By Hiv-1, Kishore Das, Georgina De La Garza, Edward B. Siwak, Virginia L. Scofield, Subramanian Dhandayuthapani

School of Medicine Publications

Background

Mycoplasma genitalium co-infection in HIV-infected individuals has been reported to increase the shedding of HIV in the urogenital region of females. To better understand this relationship, we investigated the influence of M. genitalium on the transmission and replication of HIV using an in vitro model.

Methods

The Transwell co-culture system was employed to assess the crossing of an endocervical cell barrier by HIV-1. Immunocytochemistry and confocal microscopy were used to assess the distribution of the nectin-1 molecule on M. genitalium -infected epithelial cells of the End1/E6E7 endocervical cell line, grown as monolayers in the insert wells. Peripheral blood mononuclear …

Hcv Among Male Injection Drug Users And Their Female Partners In Almaty, Kazakhstan: Implications For Hcv Treatment And Prevention, Nabila El-Bassel, Louisa Gilbert, Chris Beyrer, Assel Terlikbayeva, Elwin Wu, Xin Ma, Mingway Chang, Stacey Shaw, Baurzhan Zhussupov, Tim Hunt, Sholpan Primbetova, Yelena Rozental

Faculty Publications

HCV infection is a serious concern among people who inject drugs. Despite imposing a major disease burden in countries with high rates of injection drug use such as Kazakhstan, other Central Asian and East Asian countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia, HCV remains an understudied issue. This study includes 728 individuals (364 couples) from Almaty, Kazakhstan, where at least one member of the dyad reported recent injection drug use. Participants were recruited to participate in a couple-based HIV prevention study. We examine the prevalence of HCV and co-infections between HCV and HIV, correlates of HCV, and the association between HCV prevalence …

Design, Fabrication, And Control Of An Upper Arm Exoskeleton Assistive Robot, Reza Shisheie

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Stroke is the primary cause of permanent impairment and neurological damage in the United States and Europe. Annually, about fifteen million individuals worldwide suffer from stroke, which kills about one third of them. For many years, it was believed that major recovery can be achieved only in the first six months after a stroke. More recent research has demonstrated that even many years after a stroke, significant improvement is not out of reach. However, economic pressures, the aging population, and lack of specialists and available human resources can interrupt therapy, which impedes full recovery of patients after being discharged from …

Immunity-Based Accommodation Of Aircraft Subsystem Failures, Adil Togayev

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis presents the design, development, and flight-simulation testing of an artificial immune system (AIS) based approach for accommodation of different aircraft subsystem failures.;Failure accommodation is considered as part of a complex integrated AIS scheme that contains four major components: failure detection, identification, evaluation, and accommodation. The accommodation part consists of providing compensatory commands to the aircraft under specific abnormal conditions based on previous experience. In this research effort, the possibility of building an AIS allowing the extraction of pilot commands is investigated.;The proposed approach is based on structuring the self (nominal conditions) and the non-self (abnormal conditions) within the …

Developed A Remote Technique To Assess The Effectiveness Of Thermal Insulation In Households In West Virginia, Prateek Vaish

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Physical energy audits and interventional methods cannot sustain the increasing demand of assessing the effectiveness of existing thermal insulation in households. As for now, there does not exist a sufficiently accurate remote technology or method to assess the efficiency of a thermal envelope. Usually, the energy bills and the age of the furnace are good indicators of the performance of insulation in houses. To overcome the lack of availability of a proper framework to calculate the effectiveness of the thermal envelope, a standard methodology using multiple linear regression and temperature data acquired from a house has been developed. The major …

Head And Neck Cancer Invasion: Contributions Of Actin Regulatory Proteins And The Microenvironment, Elyse Lindsey Walk

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Metastasis of primary tumor lesions is the leading cause of cancer-related death. In head and neck cancer, a local-regional disease, metastasis is achieved mainly through invasion into surrounding tissue and spreads to cervical lymph nodes. Movement from the initial tumor site requires dynamic reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton, which utilizes the coordinated action of many actin regulatory proteins. However, there is increasing evidence that the tumor microenvironment is also a driver of invasion. This work aims to determine the contributions of proteins which regulate the actin cytoskeleton during head and neck cancer invasion both in vitro and in vivo, and …

Effects Of Ethanol On Pigeons' Near-Win Responding In A Slot-Machine Analog, Alexander A. Ward

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In slot machine play, near wins are losses that are visually similarity to wins and increase gambling persistence, but provide no reinforcer. To measure effects of ethanol on near-win responding, pigeons pecked for food in a slot-machine analog following ethanol administration. In any given trial, one of four outcomes was signaled by consecutive presentations of red or green key lights, followed by a white "collect key." Three red lights signaled a win and three green lights signaled a loss. Two red lights followed by a green light signaled a near win. On winning trials, food was delivered 5 s after …

A New Gaussian Process Method For Modeling And Design Of Multi-Source Data In Exposure-Response Toxicology Studies, Kai Wang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

One of the most fundamental steps in risk assessment is to quantify the exposure-response relationship for the material/chemical of interest. This work develops a new statistical method, referred to as SKQ (stochastic kriging with qualitative factors), to synergistically model exposure-response data, which often arise from multiple sources (e.g., laboratories, animal providers, and shapes of nanomaterials) in toxicology studies. Compared to the existing methods, SKQ has several distinct features. First of all, SKQ integrates data across multiple sources, and allows for the derivation of more accurate information from limited data. Second, SKQ is highly flexible and able to model practically any …

The Utilization Of Adventure Based Programming To Foster Posttraumatic Growth Within A Veteran Population: A Mixed Methods Study, Joseph A. Wassif

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

There is a lack of research exploring interventions that promote posttraumatic growth with veterans. The current project represents a first attempt to explore posttraumatic growth among veterans who participate in a strength-based program specifically designed for the healthy reintegration and socialization of returning members of the armed services. Through the use of a mixed methods approach, I hoped to show that veterans would report increases in posttraumatic growth following participation in an Outward Bound Veterans Program. Veterans that completed the program were compared to a waitlist control, which consisted of other military personnel that had signed up for, but had …

Analysis Of Haul Truck- Related Fatalities And Injuries In Surface Coal Mining In West Virginia, Meng Zhang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Trucks are the primary means of haulage in surface coal, metal, and nonmetal mining operations. The number of fatal accidents involving trucks is higher when compared to all other mining equipment. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) reports that 137 fatalities were haul truck- related in the United States between 1995 and 2011. A total of 12 truck-related accidents, including 13 fatalities, were recorded in surface coal mining operations in West Virginia (WV) during this period. The objectives of this research were to (i) analyze the root causes of these accidents, and (ii) develop effective intervention strategies to eliminate …

Plasmonic Gold Nanohole Arrays For Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering, Peng Zheng

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Localized and periodic optical modes co-exist in plasmonic nanohole arrays leading to a unique mix of optical properties. In this thesis, a simultaneous experimental and theoretical investigation is used to investigate the origin of each optical mode, explaining the mix between extraordinary optical transmission, enhanced absorption, and local electromagnetic field concentration. Additionally, the hole array diameter, film thickness, and periodicity are systematically varied to explore the tuning and cross over between the multiple optical modes. The nanohole array to nanotriangle array transition is investigated, showing how the localized surface plasmon resonance evolves into the periodic surface plasmon polariton mode. These …