Digital Commons Network^™

Shifting The Ultimatum: Political Alienation And Participation, Grace Cale

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Common knowledge dictates that cynicism and mistrust of politics is rampant among US citizens, wreaking havoc on participation in the American political process. Social Capital theories are commonly used to effectively explain US political behavior, but fail to account for alienation from the political process or the influence of peers. I argue that models of political participation would be improved by the inclusion of political alienation variables, which have fallen into disuse in recent decades. Using data from the US Citizenship, Involvement, and Democracy Survey (2006), this paper relies upon negative binomial regression with nested models to compare the explanatory …

Social Networks, Drug Use, And Drug Abuse Help-Seeking: A Test Of The Network Episode Model Among African American Women, Erin L. Pullen

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Untreated substance use disorders are a major public health concern that has costly consequences at both the societal and individual level. Identifying the characteristics and resources of those who seek help for substance abuse problems in order to inform more effective intervention and treatment techniques is therefore an important research objective. Using the Network Episode Model (NEM) as a theoretical framework, this dissertation examines both substance abuse help-seeking (i.e. inpatient/outpatient treatment and 12-Step meeting attendance) and patterns of drug use over time among low-income African American women, with a special focus on the role of the social network system in …

Identity And Social Relations: A Case Of Chinese Graduate Students In The U.S., Baiqing Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

This dissertation research separates out the social relations implied in identity theory and empirically shows the interaction of identity and social relations. I conducted 60 interviews and one online survey with respondents at two public universities in two cities with distinctive sociocultural characteristics. The respondents were graduate students from mainland China pursuing their master’s or doctoral degrees in the U.S. The students’ lengths of stay in the U.S. varied, but all experienced a major life transition from China to the U.S.

The qualitative interview data show that the adoption of a religious identity in the two places, defined as different …

Talking Food: Motivations Of Home Food Preservation Practitioners In Kentucky, Lisa Conley

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Recent reports detail a rise in the practice of home food preservation in the United States due to economic woes, nutritional concerns, and increasing devotion to local food production.Home food preservation is the processing of foods in order to extend its shelf-life. Current common approaches to preserving foods at home include pressure canning, freezing, drying, water bath canning, and cellaring/storing. Local food production in four Kentucky counties were examined through in-depth qualitative interviews with home food preservation practitioners to yield a rural/urban comparison. Forty home food preservation practitioners were interviewed between Fall 2009 and Fall 2013. The primary question driving …

Within-Day Test-Retest Reliability Of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Measurements Of Corticomotor Excitability For Gastrocnemius And Tibialis Anterior Muscles, Beth E. Fisher, Ya-Yun Lee, Todd E. Davenport, Stephen F. Reischl, Elizabeth Ruckert, Kornelia Kulig

School of Pharmacy Faculty Articles

Background: Manual therapy interventions targeting the talocrural joint can improve gait and balance functions in individuals following ankle sprains. Less is known about the underlying mechanisms of functional improvements after manual therapy. One hypothesis involves change in corticomotor excitability (CE) following manual therapy procedures. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a brain imaging method that could provide important information regarding potential changes in CE associated with manual therapy techniques applied to the talocrural joint. However, within-day reliability of TMS to measure CE must first be established in order to measure CE changes associated with manual therapy procedures.

Objective: To determine the …

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, History, Spring 2014, Richard Harrison

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Rater Characteristics In Performance Evaluation Accuracy, Shotaro Hakoyama

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined how various rater-level variables are related to performance ratings. Student participants watched a series of video clips depicting high, medium, and low levels of employee work performance. The participants then rated the performance of the employee depicted in the video on a graphic rating scale. The rater level variables examined for the current study included rater goals, cognitive ability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The results indicated that focusing the on the strength of the employee (strength goal) was associated with rating elevation and that rater conscientiousness was associated with rating deflation. Strength goal, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and cognitive …

A Feminist Oversight: The Reproductive Rights Of Women In Prisons, Rebecca Burgan

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Historically, the value of a woman has been based on her ability to produce healthy and successful (male) children, leaving little room for worth based on intelligence or other achievements. Second wave feminists made significant strides for women's reproductive choices, acknowledging that motherhood is not the only way for a woman to have fulfillment or value. While women throughout the United States have more access, opportunity, and choice, women in United States prisons have not benefited from the same advancements in reproductive freedom. The denial of women's reproductive freedoms in prison can be attributed to the high costs of pregnancy …

Distributed Local Trust Propagation Model And Its Cloud-Based Implementation, Dharan Kumar Reddy Althuru

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

World Wide Web has grown rapidly in the last two decades with user generated content and interactions. Trust plays an important role in providing personalized content recommendations and in improving our confidence in various online interactions. We review trust propagation models in the context of social networks, semantic web, and recommender systems. With an objective to make trust propagation models more flexible, we propose several extensions to the trust propagation models that can be implemented as configurable parameters in the system. We implement Local Partial Order Trust (LPOT) model that considers trust as well as distrust ratings and perform evaluation …

American Insanity: The Demise Of The Elite And A Critical/Historical Analysis Of The Dsm, Tiffany B. Hunter

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The International Classification of Diseases, Sixth Edition (ICD-6; World Health Organization, 1949) is a universal health care management tool for examining the pathology of diseases and how to properly diagnose and treat said diseases. The birth of the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I; American Psychiatric Association, 1952) is the product of the ICD and the American Medico-psychological Association and first delivered shortly after the end of the Second World War. As per request of the American Armed Forces, which were ill-equipped to manage the surge of mental disorders after the war, the need …

Alternative Indices Of Performance: An Exploration Of Eye Gaze Metrics In A Visual Puzzle Task, Sheldon M. Russell

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Of interest to the U.S. Air Force is the ability to develop and characterize the level of workload that operators are under at any given point. When an operator's cognitive resources exceed demands, a 'red line' of performance may be crossed after which performance breaks down. What is needed is an estimate of operator state; a 'dipstick' for the operator in order to assess the level of 'resources' available, in order to avoid performance problems. Traditional approaches use secondary tasks (e.g., mental arithmetic) or secondary physiological measures (e.g., heart rate variability) for state assessment. However, the current work was motivated …

Goal Orientations And Self-Efficacy Interactions On Self-Set Goal Level, Truman Joseph Gore

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the interactive effects of goal orientations (the tendencies of an individual to set specific types of goals, i.e., learning or performance goals), and self-efficacy (an evaluation of one's own competence on a task) on self-set goal levels and performance in an academic context. Past research has found that learning goal orientation and self-efficacy are both positively related to the difficulty of self-selected goals and to performance whereas avoid-performance goal orientation is negatively associated with both the difficulty of self-set goals and performance. The current study found that learning goal orientation and self-efficacy were positively related to …

Fear Of Discrimination And Leveraging Of Leadership Experience In Individuals Of Lgbtq Organizations, Megan Brianne Morris

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Awareness of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community has exposed these individuals to unequal treatment in the workplace. One area where this mistreatment occurs is in the job application process. As a result, it is important to examine the job seeking behaviors of the LGBTQ community that are associated with this process. Student leaders of LGBTQ-focused groups face a unique challenge in the application process in regard to whether they should include their leadership experience on their resume, possibly exposing themselves to discrimination and bias. Only one study, to current knowledge, has focused on resume construction behavior …

Imperfect Situation Analysis: Representing The Role Of Error And Uncertainty In Modeling, Simulation And Analysis, Victor Eaton Middleton

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Much of traditional modeling, simulation and analysis (MS&A) is supported by engineering models - deterministic, Newtonian physics-based representations of closed systems. Such approaches are not well-suited to represent the intricacies of human behavior. This research advocates and seeks to articulate the concept of a more human- centric approach to MS& A, one that better represents decision-making and other cognitive aspects of human behavior as well as it does physical activity.

It starts with a view of individuals and groups as complex adaptive systems, which are best represented using agent-based modeling. Representation of human behavior through intelligent agents incorporates models of …

Investigation Of Capabilities Of Observers In A Watch Window Study, Ositadimma Nnanna Eziolisa

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Due to an abundance of data and dynamic nature of tasks, challenges with information retrieval in surveillance and target identification tasks have risen in today's Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) community. In this study, two variables, Area of Coverage and Amount of Activity (AOC/ACT), are manipulated to study their effects on the number of Watch Windows an observer can monitor. This research describes the analyst's task model, and explains how the level of AOC/ACT and number of Watch Windows affects the analyst's cognitive load. Results showed a significant difference in performance and physiological indicators of workload between high AOC/ACT conditions …

White Blood Cell Counts, Parasite Prevalence, And Plasma Cortisol Levels Of Dogs In A County Animal Shelter: Changes Over Days And Impact Of A Program Of Repeated Human Interaction, Emily S. Dudley

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Animal shelter housing is highly stressful for a dog, compromising welfare and leading to undesirable behaviors and unknown health consequences. We documented the changes in circulating numbers of white blood cells, plasma cortisol, and fecal parasite shedding of dogs housed for 10 days at a county animal shelter. White blood cell changes were most prominent on Day 10 after arrival to the shelter. Changes included increased total leukocytes, mature neutrophils, and lymphocytes, with less consistent increases in monocytes and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (N:L). Fecal parasite shedding was elevated and not affected by day. Cortisol levels of shelter dogs declined …

A Novel Synergistic Model Fusing Electroencephalography And Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging For Modeling Brain Activities, Konstantinos Michalopoulos

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Study of the human brain is an important and very active area of research. Unraveling the way the human brain works would allow us to better understand, predict and prevent brain related diseases that affect a significant part of the population. Studying the brain response to certain input stimuli can help us determine the involved brain areas and understand the mechanisms that characterize behavioral and psychological traits.

In this research work two methods used for the monitoring of brain activities, Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Magnetic Resonance (fMRI) have been studied for their fusion, in an attempt to bridge together the …

Effects Of Delayed Pharmacological Treatment And Limb Rehabilitation On Infarct Size And Functional Recovery After Stroke, Maria Helen Harley Balch

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies show a fluoxetine/simvastatin drug combination successfully reduced infarct size and increased functional recovery when administered 20-26 hours post stroke. This project tested the hypothesis that earlier drug delivery at 6-12 hours post stroke will improve functional recovery and decrease infarct size, and that limb rehabilitation will improve functional recovery.

Pre-stroke function was determined in rats, a stroke was induced, and daily treatment began 6-12 hours post stroke. Baseline functional deficit was established, and additional testing over 90 days monitored functional recovery. Limb rehabilitation was provided for designated animals, and brain analysis measured infarct size.

In animals with no …

Multicultural Public Policy And Homegrown Terrorism In The European Union, Macklin Keith Everly

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Western European democracies embraced multiculturalist public policy (MCPP). This was in an effort to address and accommodate the minority rights of immigrants who found their way to Europe during its post-WWII labor force recovery. By the mid-1990s, there was a backlash against such policy and movement towards integrationist values. This has been exacerbated in the wake of radical Islamist terror attacks like those of 9/11, the London 7/7 bombing, and the Paris Metro Bombings of 1995. Attention has been focused on the threat, incidence, and causal factors of homegrown jihadism within Europe. The research …

Rab3a As A Modulator Of Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity, Andrew G. Koesters

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The nervous system is faced with perturbations in activity levels throughout development and in disease or injury states. Neurons need to adapt to these changes in activity, but also need to maintain circuit firing within a normal range to stabilize the network from becoming too excited or too depressed. Homeostatic synaptic plasticity, the compensatory increase or decrease in synaptic strength as a result of excessive circuit inhibition or excitation, is a mechanism that the nervous system utilizes to keep network activity at normal levels. Despite intense effort, little is known about the mechanisms underlying homeostatic synaptic plasticity. Numerous studies have …

Stop Cheating!: An Evaluation Of A Scientific Integrity Writing Strategy In General Chemistry I, Michelle L. Edwards

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Cheating in America has become an epidemic, which has unfortunately spread to academia. Researchers have long been interested in the trends in cheating behavior and the factors that influence these trends among undergraduate college students. Though cheating can take on many forms, in science, there is a deep concern about scientific misconduct related to research. Because training for future scientists begins in undergraduate courses, this study investigated the use of scientific integrity writing strategy in General Chemistry I at Wright State University. The goal of the study was to determine if providing scientific integrity and ethics training, while teaching students …

Using Differential Functioning Of Items And Tests (Dfit) To Examine Targeted Differential Item Functioning, Erin L. O'Brien

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Current studies of differential item functioning (DIF) look at look at how groups differ in responding to items across an entire trait continuum. This is important for detecting the presence of consistent patterns of responses across items between groups of people. Current tests of DIF are limited in that they only detect differences between groups across all levels of the trait. However, selection decisions are usually made within specific ranges of trait levels. The purpose of this research was to determine if restricting theta values in an existing framework would be better at detecting DIF as current methods for restricted …

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Judaic Studies, Spring 2014, Richard Harrison

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Music, Spring 2014, Richard Harrison

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Psychology, Spring 2014, Hal Mendelsohn

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Communication, Spring 2014, Richard Harrison

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Asymmetrical Interference Effects Between Two-Dimensional Geometric Shapes And Their Corresponding Shape Words, Bradley R. Sturz, Joshua E. Edwards, Ty W. Boyer

Psychology: Faculty Publications

Nativists have postulated fundamental geometric knowledge that predates linguistic and symbolic thought. Central to these claims is the proposal for an isolated cognitive system dedicated to processing geometric information. Testing such hypotheses presents challenges due to difficulties in eliminating the combination of geometric and non-geometric information through language. We present evidence using a modified matching interference paradigm that an incongruent shape word interferes with identifying a two-dimensional geometric shape, but an incongruent two-dimensional geometric shape does not interfere with identifying a shape word. This asymmetry in interference effects between two-dimensional geometric shapes and their corresponding shape words suggests that shape …

Retaining Color, Veronica Root

Journal Articles

It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have more difficulty retaining attorneys of color — in particular black and Hispanic attorneys …

Queer Alchemies: Radical Futurity In The Shell Of The Now, Elizabeth R. Canfield

Theses and Dissertations

This work operates at the intersection of academics, art, and activism. Within queer studies there is a tension between assimilation and liberation, sometimes situated as between pragmatism and utopia. This work re-examines Frankfurt school Marxist views of utopia through a queer theoretical lens in order to employ the radical imagination and queer futurity to examine new ways of practicing liberation. Drawing from theorists like Judith Butler, Jose Esteban Munoz, and Gloria Anzaldua, this work uses art (film, writing, zine-making, and sound) as a way to envision and enact a better world situated in the present.

Restructuring The Michigan Child Care Fund: Reducing Costs And Improving Outcomes, David Wingard, Kieran J. Fogarty, Mary Lagerwey, Joshua Scott

Michigan Journal of Public Health

Michigan’s policy to distribute the Child Care Fund (CCF) to counties at a flat rate of 50% as stated in the Michigan Comprehensive Laws 400.117a provides no structured incentive to the counties to use evidence based practices that are cost-effective for locally based delinquent youth intervention programs. This policy analysis answers the following questions: (1) would retaining delinquent youth in the community produce a cost benefit and/or better outcomes than confinement and (2) is public safety at risk if delinquent youth are retained in the community? Utilizing a policy analysis framework our evidence found that community based services provide better …