Digital Commons Network^™

Social Capital And Relational Work: Uncertainty, Distrust, And Support In Azerbaijan, Dustin S. Stoltz

Master's Theses - Sociology and Anthropology

Much of the social capital literature focuses on unambiguous social situations where actors share generalized trust or interpersonal trust. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in northwest Azerbaijan, this thesis focuses instead on distrust and the negotiation of conflicting interpretations of shared norms within moments of informal social support. In such situations, participants engage in an on-going negotiation of the situation, drawing on available cultural conventions to make sense of situations and perform relational work. They ultimately create meaning out of on-going social interaction and accomplish locally viable forms of social support.

Sismología En La Fiesta Del Chivo De Mario Vargas Llosa: Heteroglosia En La Narración Del Trauma, Pablo Francisco José Carreño Cabrejos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (1891-1961), the ruthless Dominican Republic ruler dominated his island’s politics for over thirty years. In his acclaimed 2000 novel, The Feast of the Goat, Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa creates Urania Cabral, a 49-year-old émigrée who at 14 left her nation after becoming Trujillo’s sexual victim. The novel, told from many perspectives, focuses on her return, the dictator’s last day, and the story of the four conspirators waiting to ambush him the night of May 30th 1961. My study analyzes the complex narrative structures of the novel as masterful “rupturing” techniques. Through these the reader pieces …

Development Of An Integrated Incident And Transit Priority Management Control System, Faisal Ahmed

Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to develop a distributed adaptive control system which can work standalone for a single intersection to handle various boundary conditions of recurrent, non-recurrent congestion, transit signal priority and downstream blockage to improve the overall network in terms of productivity and efficiency. The control system uses link detectors’ data to determine the boundary conditions of all incoming and exit links. Four processes or modules are deployed. The traffic regime state module estimates the congestion status of the link. The incident status module determines the likelihood of an incident on the link. The transit priority module …

Defining Patent Quality, Christi J. Guerrini

Fordham Law Review

    Depending on whom you ask, the state of U.S. patent quality is either dismal or decent, in decline or on the upswing, in need of intervention or best left alone. Absent from the ongoing debate about the quality of U.S. patents, however, is much thoughtful discussion about what constitutes a patent’ “quality” in the first place. What features of a patent make it “good” in quality, what features make it “bad” in quality, and whose opinion matters? Surprisingly, scholars and policymakers have shown little interest in these questions. Yet their answers are critical to the direction of the patent agenda …

The George-Anne, Georgia Southern University

The George-Anne

• News
• Opinions
• Arts & Entertainment
• Classifieds
• Puzzles & Comics
• Sports

Exploring The Relationship Of Motivation, Anxiety, And Virtual Worlds In The Experiences Of Two Spanish Language Learners: A Case Study, Amy Katherine Wehner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Virtual Worlds (VWs) in foreign language education are slowly becoming more popular. Many studies have looked at the affordances of these worlds and how they affect some aspects of language acquisition. However, it is still unknown to what extent, if any, these virtual worlds can play a role in affecting motivation and anxiety. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between motivation, anxiety and virtual worlds to see how participation in activities within these environments interacted in two individual language learners, Jessica and Melissa.

Using a case study approach, I observed and interviewed the two participants in …

Book Review/Response: Maartje De Visser And Laurent Pech On Comparative Constitutional Review In Europe, Laurent Pech, Maartje De Visser

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Laurent Pech reviews Maartje de Visser’s recent book on Constitutional Review in Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Maartje de Visser then responds to the review.

In Search Of Ubuntu: An Examination Of Enslaved African Domestic And Labor Environments On St. Eustatius, Deanna Lynn Byrd

Theses and Dissertations

The discovery of dry stone rock features in the northern hills on the Dutch island of St. Eustatius presented a unique opportunity to investigate an enslaved African environment during the time of enslavement. Abandoned after emancipation, the area has remained virtually undisturbed by eco-tourism, making it an archaeological gem. The intact nature of the sites held potential to add significantly to our understanding of choices enslaved Africans made in slave village design, orientation, and the construction of their dwellings, as well as the labor activities of daily life. In doing so, this investigation attempted to detect whether higher levels of …

Mechanical Communication Guts -- . -.-. .... .- -. .. -.-. .- .-.. / -.-. --- -- -- ..- -. .. -.-. .- - .. --- -. / --. ..- - ..., Cole (Pei-Yu) Lu

Graduate School of Art Theses

Aesthetics can be proposed through language. Metaphysical experience through technology is an accumulation of information. My practice accentuates the failure of languages that are mediated through technology. Using readymade objects as a signifier for collective experience, I create sets for films that have never existed. Rooted in the conceptual terrain, I seek to concretize the intangible, my sculptural installation was assembled by objects conceived as unknown, or coded messages, and largely applied the color matte black. Matte black, for its non-color, accomplishes openness – freedom. The immersive experience of darkness also echoes with the cinematic environment. Ultimately, my work functions …

An Exploratory Study Of Generational Differences In Health Information Seeking And Smoking Behaviors In Bulgaria, Iva Stoyneva

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Smoking is a serious global public health threat that causes more than 6 million deaths annually (WHO, 2013). Smoking is also the single, most preventable cause of death (CDC, 2014). According to a recent study, Bulgaria was ranked as one of onlyl 1 countries in the world, in which half of the adult male population smokes, as well as one of 11 countries in which more than one-quarter of the adult female population smokes. Research suggests that the most significant predictors of smoking behavior in Bulgaria were age and geographic location (Balabanova, Bobak & McKee, 1998). Contributing to these finings, …

Alice's Adventure Through Second Language Acquisition: An Educator's Perspective, Jessica Pryor Lee

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The author employs narrative writing to illustrate annotated bibliographies, classroom observations, research and research proposals, and self-reflections for second language learning. Elementary, secondary, adult, and college-level teachings are addressed. The author focuses on communicative language teaching, brain-based teaching, and dual language immersion with content based instruction. She addresses the importance of writing, authentic materials, task-based activities, communication, and the recognition of heritage learners. The main character is Alice and she travels through Argentina and Chile. Footnotes are used to keep the narrative style of the portfolio coherent. While the storyline is fictitious, all information included is based on the author’s …

Coaching A Second Language, Kyle Asa Hatch

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this portfolio the author expresses his views of successful second language teaching. The author’s beliefs are centered on the teacher’s responsibility to provide an atmosphere in which students are presented material in an effective way, to offer students opportunities to engage with the language, and to understand the learners’ unique needs and interests. Also included in the portfolio are three artifacts which illustrate various teaching strategies the author has used to help create this atmosphere. The Culture Artifact explains the use of multimedia authentic texts to teach language and culture. The Language Artifact gives examples of how I have …

Relations Between Teachers' Implicit Theories Of Intelligence, Standardized Achievement Testing, And Classroom Goals, Sydnie W. Ringle

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

An achievement gap between ethnic minorities and whites continues to exist within the US, as well as between the US and varying countries (Peterson, Woessmann, Hanushek, & Lastra-Anadon, 2011). Research has identified several factors that contribute to this gap, such as differences in curricula across countries, teacher quality, and school funding. In addition to these factors, teachers’ implicit theories of intelligence may also contribute to the achievement gap. Whether teachers view intelligence as fixed (entity theory) or malleable (incremental theory) can impact instructional practices, specifically the use of performance and learning goals. Performance goals focus on evaluation, ability, and performance …

Dual Language Learners Home Literacy Environment: A Training Workshop For Head Start Professionals, Kerry A. Shea

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Given that demographic statistics in early childhood settings show an increase in the number of children who are Dual Language Learners (DLLs), it is necessary to provide early childhood education professionals with information and skill-building opportunities regarding how to best serve DLL children. Head Start, a federally funded preschool for children and families living in poverty, provides services for an increasing number of DLLs. Head Start professionals are in need of effective professional development about DLLs and their families. This study examined the effects of a training on Head Start professionals' knowledge and skills for working with DLL families. Participants …

Second Language Teaching And Learning: The Roles Of Teachers, Students, And The Classroom Environment, Martin Briggs

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is a compilation of the concepts and practices that the author believes constitute effective second language teaching. It is centered on the author’s teaching philosophy, which is based on the teacher’s roles as facilitator and the students’ roles as active participants in a student-centered, communicative classroom. The author claims that as teachers and students understand and carry out their respective roles, student proficiency in the target language will increase. In support of this teaching philosophy, three artifacts are included that discuss the following: 1) The use of television commercials and other media from the target culture to facilitate …

Drawing Borders: The Political And Symbolic Importance Of The United States In The Creation Of Czechoslovakia, Samantha Borgeson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In 2011, a statue of Woodrow Wilson, based on the original erected in 1928, was re-installed at Woodrow Wilson Train Station in the capital of the Czech Republic. The original statue commemorated Wilson's involvement in the creation of interwar Czechoslovakia, and his support for its independence. It also symbolized the democratic ideals which brought the two nations together following the Great War. Woodrow Wilson played a major part in the history and memory of Czechs during their formative years of their state following World War I, a role which has not been forgotten. Today the Wilson statue is the site …

Human Interaction Recognition With Audio And Visual Cues, Ranya Almohsen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The automated recognition of human activities from video is a fundamental problem with applications in several areas, ranging from video surveillance, and robotics, to smart healthcare, and multimedia indexing and retrieval, just to mention a few. However, the pervasive diffusion of cameras capable of recording audio also makes available to those applications a complementary modality. Despite the sizable progress made in the area of modeling and recognizing group activities, and actions performed by people in isolation from video, the availability of audio cues has rarely being leveraged. This is even more so in the area of modeling and recognizing binary …

Mímesis, Ficción Y Ética: El Dinero En Los Cuentos De Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Karen Garcia Escorcia

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

La presente investigación analiza la función del dinero en los cuentos de Julio Ramón Ribeyro utilizando la teoría del realismo de Darío Villanueva, la teoría de la dependencia de acuerdo a Grosfoguel y conceptos económicos de la filosofía de Karl Marx y Michael Sandel. Se argumenta que el dinero mantiene tres funciones principales. A través de éste, la realidad social y económica del siglo XX del Perú es reflejada. Asimismo, se intenta demostrar que funciona también como un recurso meramente narrativo para causar la ficción misma del cuento. Finalmente, se analizan los efectos que el dinero ocasiona en los personajes …

The Construction And Performance Of Masculinity Through The Voice Of Mexican American Male Authors: Arturo Islas' "The Rain God" And Rigoberto González's "Men Without Bliss", Edna Elizabeth Camacho

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The thesis closely analyzes Arturo Islas’ novel The Rain God (1984) and Rigoberto Gonzalez’s collection of short stories Men Without Bliss (2008) as representations of Mexican American literature that attempt to construct and define masculinity through the actions of male characters. The Rain God, explores the performance of masculinity through the image of the body, similarly to the performance of an actor on a stage. Islas introduces four men who hide, and deny a space for expunging their emotions. Men Without Bliss, showcases the emotions that men suppress and exemplifies their vulnerability as their strength rather than a debilitating characteristic …

Narrative Structure In The Works Of Frederic Rzewski, Bree K. Guerra

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis examines the compositional strategies Rzewski applies to affect his audience’s expectations so that the experience of the work parallels the political and philosophical ideas within it. Employing musical narrative theory as a way to characterize the process of expectation that can guide the perception of musical meaning, I explore how Rzewski’s pieces support or reject interpretation through a musical dramatic trajectory in ways that reflect the concepts behind the work to argue that: 1) Rzewski’s early variation works follow a linear narrative whose sequence of musical transvaluation conveys dynamics of socio-political problems and suggest solutions through collective action; …

The Effect Of Group Level Factors On Affective Convergence In Teams: An Agent Based Model, Chaunette Marie Small

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research supports the idea that affective convergence occurs in teams. The phenomenon of group affect has been well documented, however the group level conditions through which affective convergence emerges has received very little research. The current study helps to fill this gap by using agent-based modeling to examine affective convergence under varying group conditions. Agent-based modeling is a recently developed approach to research that uses the power of computers to model individual level behaviors and examine group level emergent constructs. The current study examined display rule presence, display rule breadth, social influence, interdependence, and team size on affective convergence. …

Using The Web 1t 5-Gram Database For Attribute Selection In Formal Concept Analysis To Correct Overstemmed Clusters, Guymon Hall

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Information retrieval is the process of finding information from an unstructured collection of data. The process of information retrieval involves building an index, commonly called an inverted file. As part of the inverted file, information retrieval algorithms often stem words to a common root. Stemming involves reducing a document term to its root. There are many ways to stem a word: affix removal and successor variety are two common categories of stemmers. The Porter Stemming Algorithm is a suffix removal stemmer that operates as a rule-based process on English words. We can think of stemming as a way to cluster …

The Mental Organization Of People's Permanent And Situational Attributes, Kathleen Larson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis investigated whether readers would integrate physical descriptions of characters into one coherent mental representation or if they would keep mental representations separate. The integration of multiple concepts has been examined in the context of the fan effect, which is the finding that an increase in the number of learned associations for a concept can result in an increase in retrieval times and error rates (Anderson, 1974). However, there is typically not a fan effect when people are able to organize the related information into a single integrated situation model (Radvansky & Zacks, 1991). Previous studies investigating the fan …

Through The Eyes Of The Present: Screening The Male Homoerotics Of Shakespearean Drama In Anglophone Cinema, 1936-2011, Anthony Guy Patricia

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This is an analysis of representations of male homoeroticism in Anglophone Shakespeare film. Using the strategies made available by close reading, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and presentism, critical attention is directed to a corpus of fourteen movies, ranging from Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle's 1936 production ofA Midsummer Night's DreamPrivate Romeo, Alan Brown's 2011 homoerotic appropriation ofRomeo and Juliet. The overall purpose of the project is both to map and to interpret how Anglophone filmmakers have dealt with - or not dealt with, as the case may be - the male homoerotic elements Shakespeare wove into the textual …

The Ethos Of Conspiracy Argument : "Character" As Persuader In Conspiracy Rhetoric., Michael James Sobiech

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conspiracy theory has, as Timothy Melley states in Empire of Conspiracy (2000), “animated our political culture from the early Republican period to the present, at times powerfully swaying popular opinion” (vii). Though it has attracted attention from a wide range of disciplines, conspiracy theory has not received significant notice within rhetoric and composition. My dissertation adds to the interdisciplinary body of scholarship concerning conspiracy theory by examining it as rhetoric, focusing on how the construction of a conspiracy proponent’s ethos/character affects the persuasiveness of a conspiracy theory. I argue that ethos construction plays a much more significant role in conspiracy …

A Conjoint Analysis Of The Value Of Book Covers In E-Book Buying Decisions, Holly Rollins

Theses

The objective of this Thesis was to determine the relative value of the cover design, price, and customer rating (e-book attributes) to consumers of science fiction or fantasy e-books. The motivation for this research was that the way we shop for digital books is different from the way we shop for print books. This led authorities to take positions as different as "[Book covers are] dead because the way we touch digital books is different than the way we touch physical books," (Mod, 2012), and "[Typographic covers] are one way to go," (Bridle, 2010).

A conjoint analysis was designed to …

The Language Politics Of Doctoral Studies In Rhetoric And Composition : Toward A Translingual Revision Of Graduate Education In The Field., Carrie Byars Kilfoil

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation critiques graduate education in rhetoric and composition in relationship to recent calls for a “translingual” approach to the teaching of writing and a transnational, cross-cultural approach to writing research (Horner, Lu, Royster, Trimbur; Canagarajah; Donahue). Building on this scholarship, I attend to the (re)production of disciplinary dispositions toward language difference in rhetoric and composition doctoral studies. Through textual analysis of the Rhetoric Review surveys of doctoral programs in the field (1987, 1995, 2000, 2007, and the current wiki), archival materials from various programs (including three focal schools), and a survey of doctoral students currently enrolled in the University …

'Tis Murder's Best Face When A Vizard's On, Lauren Vezina

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Theater as an art form demands disguise for many reasons. It allows a character to act in uncharacteristic ways against society’s customs and expectations. It frees the user from society’s rules as well as his own sense of morality; nonetheless, it also restricts the wearer to certain behaviors and actions. This dichotomy is reflected in how the masked character is free to act outside of the law but is still its subject in the end. Disguise allows a character freedom from social obligations but he is still responsible and punished for his actions by the end of the play. Although …

Visions Of Terror : Reconstructing Literature Through 9/11 Texts, Jennifer Michelle Agens

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The shift in communication since the turn of the century necessitates an understanding of visual rhetoric. Critics claim that verbal communication is more effective than using images to communicate ideas. However, visual rhetoricians argue that images appeal to the reader’s emotions, thus making an immediate, truthful, and powerful impact. The purpose of my research is to examine the functionality of visual rhetoric and to determine how this field enhances 21 st century communication. In consideration of how visual rhetoric has shaped literature since the turn of the century, I have concluded that the September 11th terrorist attacks have made an …

Three Essays On Institutional Change, Kathleen M. Sheehan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation consists of three essays which empirically investigate different avenues of institutional change. The introduction opens with a discussion of the topics explored in the three essays and provides an overview of important results from each essay. Essay one is a joint effort with Dr. Andrew Young. In this essay, we examine how foreign aid affects institutional change using a panel of aid recipient countries and multiple measures of institutions. In essay two, I examine how globalization affects informal institutions, measured by the level of culture in a country. The final essay explores if there are spatial spillovers from …