Digital Commons Network^™

Depression, Negative Self-Disclosure, And The Response Of Others On Facebook, Daniel Barrett Landauer

Theses and Dissertations

Depression has a number of deleterious effects on the interpersonal functioning of adolescents and emerging adults. The interpersonal theory of depression posits that depression is developed and maintained by both the behaviors of the individual and the responses of others to the individual. Adolescents and emerging adults are spending a significant amount of time interacting on social networking sites, such as Facebook, yet few studies have looked at the interpersonal behavior of depressed youth in the context of the interpersonal theory of depression. This study examined the interpersonal behavior of 328 emerging adult college students on Facebook using questionnaires related …

Potential Juror Credibility Evaluations Of Gay And Lesbian Witnesses, Lisa Mae Olson

Theses and Dissertations

This study looked at whether the sexual orientation of a witness has an effect on a potential juror's determination of the witness's credibility, and examined traits such as respondent gender and college major, that may predict high levels of sexual prejudice. The sample consisted of 379 undergraduate students at a medium sized, upper Midwestern university. Results did not reveal an overall link between witness credibility ratings and sexual orientation, with the gay male witness receiving the highest credibility rankings followed by the heterosexual male witness, heterosexual female witness, and lastly, the lesbian female witness. It does not appear that the …

Perceptions Of Child Abuse And Neglect In Cases Of Intimate Partner Violence, Katlin Rhyner

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined perceptions of child abuse and neglect within the context of heterosexual intimate partner violence. Participants were asked to read a vignette describing a situation where a child either saw, heard, or was physically injured in an intimate partner violence altercation that took place between his parents. Within abuse exposure condition, the gender of the victim was also varied. Participants were asked to decide the extent to which the situation constitutes child abuse and neglect, as well as how much blame and responsibility should be assigned to each parent involved in the incident. Overall, it was found …

Intellectual Property Ownership, Technology Transfer, And Entrepreneurship Education: University Student And Administrator Perspectives, Craig Alan Silvernagel

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed methods study was designed to investigate student knowledge and attitudes concerning university intellectual property (IP) ownership, and the reaction of campus IP experts to the student perspective. Study participants included 226 students from a Midwestern research university and three employees with IP commercialization experience from that same university. A paper questionnaire was completed by students and the survey results were used to construct questions for semi-structured interviews with the campus IP professionals.

The student survey included demographic questions, Likert-type questions, and open-ended questions. The Likert-type questions were organized into three constructs: Student Knowledge, Student Fears, and Student Attitudes. …

Carbon Farming In Relation To Western Australian Agriculture, Robert Sudmeyer, Jackson Parker, Tanmoy Nath, Ananda Ghose

Bulletins 4000 -

Carbon farming activities need to return multiple economic and environmental co-benefits to be attractive to land managers. This bulletin summarises concepts underlying carbon farming, how Australia accounts for greenhouse gas emissions and the potential for Western Australian land managers to participate in, and benefit from, carbon farming.

Partnering For Success: The Principals' Role In Beginning Teacher-Mentor-Principal Relationships, Rachael Gayle Agre

Theses and Dissertations

This small-scale qualitative study examined the perceptions of elementary principals, mentors and beginning teachers regarding the principal's role in promoting beginning teacher professional growth within comprehensive induction programs. This role may not be clear to principals, mentors, beginning teachers or induction program leaders. In recent years, the call for principal instructional leadership is in the forefront of the literature with increasing emphasis placed on academic standards and accountability. This emphasis is shifting the focus of principal instructional leadership from teaching to student learning. Mentors and principals are working together with beginning teachers to accelerate professional growth and impact student achievement. …

American Exceptionalism And The Antebellum Slavery Debate, Travis Cormier

Theses and Dissertations

American exceptionalism is the idea that America is or was somehow unique or different compared to other nations throughout history. Many Americans also believed that America had a special mission to be an example to the rest of the world. Many politicians and intellectuals have debated America's exceptionality since the founding of the country. The debate over American slavery during the antebellum era was in many ways a debate over American exceptionalism. Could America claim American exceptionality while they held on to slavery? George Fitzhugh, an ardent supporter of slavery during the antebellum period, argued that America was not exceptional …

Assessing Student Learning: A U.S./U.K. International Comparative Study, Kristin Anne Garaas-Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the role of assessments of student learning in the United States, specifically a school system in North Dakota, comparatively to that of a school system in Surrey, England. Using a conceptual framework that is influenced by the work of Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, and Chappuis with the Assessment Training Institute (2011) and the Assessment Reform Group (2002) on creating effective, balanced assessments for learning, three questions guided my study:

1. What are secondary (students ages 14-18) educators' beliefs about what, why, how, and for whom school systems are assessing students' learning?

2. What is the difference between educators' …

The Long-Term Impact Of Educational And Health Spending On Unemployment Rates, Zafer Pirim, William A. Owings, Leslie S. Kaplan

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

This study used panel data regression analysis to evaluate the long-term effects of several measures of U.S. education expenditure on unemployment rates in 50 states and Washington D.C. over 25 years. The data included state-level statistics for fiscal effort, graduation rates, education spending per pupil, gross state product per capita, welfare spending, health spending, political party affiliation, union versus nonunion states, and unemployment rates. Results find that the best way to effectively reduce unemployment is investment in improving the quality of human capital through funding education. Findings specifically conclude that over the long term, investment in human capital through education …

The Story Behind A Letter In Support Of Professor Derrick Bell, Cheryl Nelson Butler, Sherrilyn Ifill, Suzette Malveaux, Margaret E. Montoya, Natsu Taylor Saito, Nareissa L. Smith, Tanya Washington

Publications

Professor Derrick A. Bell, Jr. had a long and proud history of disturbing authority. He is widely noted as one of the founders of Critical Race Theory. His scholarship on race was not only a direct challenge to the traditionally conservative legal academy, but also to the more liberal bastions within the academy, such as the Critical Legal Studies movement. His writings about the role of race in American law have made him one of the most prominent legal scholars of a generation.

However, Professor Bell did not merely write about racial injustices. He was willing to take risks to …

The Marrakesh Treaty For Visually Impaired Persons: Why A Treaty Was Preferable To Soft Law, Margot E. Kaminski, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid

Publications

This paper addresses the debates leading up to the recently adopted international treaty on copyright exceptions for the visually impaired, the Marrakesh International Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled. This treaty was successfully adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in June 2013.

Leading up to the negotiation of this instrument, multiple UN member states pushed for the instrument to be negotiated as soft law instead of a treaty. We argue that making this instrument soft law would have precluded its success. WIPO thus correctly chose to …

The Geography Of Racial Stereotyping: Evidence And Implications For Vra ‘Preclearance’ After Shelby County, Christopher S. Elmendorf, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) effectively enjoined the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act. The Court deemed the coverage formula, which determines the jurisdictions subject to preclearance, insufficiently grounded in current conditions. This Article proposes a new, legally defensible approach to coverage based on between-state differences in the proportion of voting age citizens who subscribe to negative stereotypes about racial minorities and who vote accordingly. The new coverage formula could also account for racially polarized voting and minority population size, but, for constitutional reasons, subjective discrimination by voters is the essential criterion. We demonstrate that …

On Creativity In Constitutional Interpretation, Pierre Schlag

Publications

In the present article a particular aspect of constitutional interpretation will be considered. This aspect is called "creative" and involves retrieving the meaning of an object of interpretation. It is with regard to this particular aspect or moment of interpretation that creativity is often viewed as something to be avoided, to be shunned. If the task at hand is to "retrieve" some meaning, then the idea that this meaning can be created, in whole or in part, seems quite simply antithetical to the enterprise at hand. It suffices to note that many jurists and legal thinkers believe that interpretation as …

Indigenous Peoples And The Jurisgenerative Moment In Human Rights, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

As indigenous peoples have become actively engaged in the human rights movement around the world, the sphere of international law, once deployed as a tool of imperial power and conquest, has begun to change shape. Increasingly, international human rights law serves as a basis for indigenous peoples' claims against states and even influences indigenous groups' internal processes of decolonization and revitalization. Empowered by a growing body of human rights instruments, some as embryonic as the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), indigenous peoples are embracing a global "human rights culture" to articulate rights ranging from …

The President And Congress: Separation Of Powers In The United States Of America, Harold H. Bruff

Publications

Although the framers of the Australian Constitution adopted many features of the United States Constitution, they rejected the separation of legislative and executive power in favour of responsible government in a parliamentary system like that of the United Kingdom. In doing so, Australians depended on existing conventions about the nature of responsible government instead of specification of its attributes in constitutional text. The United States Constitution contains detailed provisions about separation of powers, but unwritten conventions have produced some central features of American government. This article reviews conventions developed by Congress that constrain Presidents in the domestic sphere with regard …

Immigration And Cooperative Federalism: Toward A Doctrinal Framework, Ming H. Chen

Publications

What can the new federalism teach us about what is happening in immigration law? The changing relationship of federal-state government in the regulation of immigrants has led to the creation of “immigration federalism” as a field of scholarship. Most of this scholarly attention has been directed at resisting restrictionist legislation that encourages vigorous law enforcement against undocumented immigrants. The scholarly tilt is especially pronounced since the Supreme Court recently struck down several provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s restrictive law enforcement legislation. However, law enforcement is only one type of regulation, and the overwhelming focus on it skews the broader debate …

Governing By Guidance: Civil Rights Agencies And The Emergence Of Language Rights, Ming Hsu Chen

Publications

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this Article asks how federal civil rights laws evolved to incorporate the needs of non-English speakers following landmark immigration reform (the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act) that led to unprecedented migration from Asia and Latin America. Based on a comparative study of the emergence of language rights in schools and workplaces from 1965 to 1980, the Article demonstrates that regulatory agencies used nonbinding guidances to interpret the undefined statutory term "national origin discrimination" during their implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their efforts facilitated the creation of language rights, …

Classcrits Mission Statement, Justin Deystone, Angela P. Harris, Martha Mccluskey, Athena Mutua, James Pope, Ann Tweedy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Race To Incarcerate: Punitive Impulse And The Bid To Repeal Stand Your Ground, Aya Gruber

Publications

Stand-your-ground laws have come to symbolize, especially for many in the center-to-left, the intense racial injustice of the modern American criminal system. The idea now ingrained in the minds of many racial justice-seekers is that only by narrowing the definition of self-defense (and thereby generally strengthening murder law) can we ensure Trayvon Martin's death was not in vain. However, when the story of Martin's killing first appeared on the national stage, the conversation was not primarily about the overly lenient nature of Florida's self-defense law. It was a multi-faceted dialogue about neighborhood warriors, criminal racial profiling, and especially the racially …

Pragmatic Liberalism: The Outlook Of The Dead, Justin Deystone

Publications

At the turn of the twentieth century, the legal profession was rocked in a storm of reform. Among the sparks of change was the view that "law in the books" had drifted too far from the "law in action." This popular slogan reflected the broader postwar suspicion that the legal profession needed to be more realistic, more effective, and more in touch with the social needs of the time. A hundred years later, we face a similarly urgent demand for change. Across the blogs and journals stretches a thread of anxieties about the lack of fit between legal education and …

Murder, Minority Victims, And Mercy, Aya Gruber

Publications

Should the jury have acquitted George Zimmerman of Trayvon Martin's murder? Should enraged husbands receive a pass for killing their cheating wives? Should the law treat a homosexual advance as adequate provocation for killing? Criminal law scholars generally answer these questions with a resounding "no." Theorists argue that criminal laws should not reflect bigoted perceptions of African Americans, women, and gays by permitting judges and jurors to treat those who kill racial and gender minorities with undue mercy. According to this view, murder defenses like provocation should be restricted to ensure that those who kill minority victims receive the harshest …

Internships As Invisible Labor, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Domestic Violence, Rethinking Violence, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

Design And Synthesis Of Porous Organic Frameworks For H2 And Ch4 Storage And For Selective Co2 Adsorption, Venkata Neti

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Three new boronate-ester based covalent organic frameworks (CoPc-PorDBA, CoPc-BPDA and HHTP-PorDBA), an imine-linked porphyrin porous polymer (CuPor-BPDC) and imine and benzothiazole based porous polymers (IBTP), and a triazole based phthalocyanine "click" polymer (Pc-POP) were synthesized. The CoPc-PorDBA and CoPc-BPDA COFs exhibited high BET surface areas (1087, 1315 m2 g-1, respectively) whereas HHTP-PorDBA showed a low BET surface area of 205 m2 g-1. The H2 storage capacities of CoPc-BPDA and CoPc-PorDBA range between 0.8-1.2wt% at 77K, 1bar and the CH4 storage capacities range between 0.4-0.8wt% at 298K, 1bar. These materials also had good thermal stabilities up to 350° C. The BET …

Self-Reliance Beyond Neoliberalism: Rethinking Autonomy At The Edges Of Empire, Karen Hébert, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

Across scholarly and popular accounts, self-reliance is often interpreted as either the embodiment of individual entrepreneurialism, as celebrated by neoliberal designs, or the basis for communitarian localism, increasingly imagined as central to environmental and social sustainability. In both cases, self-reliance is framed as an antidote to the failures of larger state institutions or market economies. This paper offers a different framework for understanding self-reliance by linking insights drawn from agrarian studies to current debates on alternative economies. Through an examination of the social worlds of semisubsistence producers in peripheral zones in the Global North, we show how everyday forms of …

Employment-Related Geographic Mobility In Canada And Collective Bargaining: A Report Prepared For The On The Move Partnership Research Team, Eric Tucker, Brendan Breckman Jowett

All Papers

Report prepared for: On the Move, Policy Component, July, 2014.

The "Majestic Equality" Of The Law: Why Constitutional Strategies Do Not Produce Equality, Harry Arthurs

All Papers

Paper Presented at a workshop on Equality, at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Nantes, France, in June, 2014. Two epidemiological studies — the Whitehall Studies of 1967 and 1988 — famously demonstrated that socio-economic status is a primary determinant of health outcomes. By locating a large cohort of British civil servants on a social-class gradient, researchers were able to show that individuals at successively lower levels on that gradient experienced diminishing prospects of good health and longevity. This conclusion was complemented by subsequent studies that concluded that degrees of inequality in a society — rather than absolute levels of wealth …

Food Miles: Environmental Protection Or Veiled Protectionism?, Meredith Kolsky Lewis, Andrew D. Mitchell

Journal Articles

This article examines the international trade, environmental, and development implications of campaigns to convince consumers to make food purchases based on food miles. Buying food from nearby sources has become a popular objective. One of the unmistakable messages of the “locavore” movement is that importing food – particularly food that comes from far away – causes environmental harm. The theory is that transporting food long distances results in the release of high levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere and is thus a dangerous contributor to climate change. Proponents of this view therefore argue that “food miles” – the …

The Woman Question In Post-Socialist Legal Education, Isabel Marcus

Journal Articles

Sex equality—a significant contribution to the international human rights canon—was one of the legitimating principles of socialist states in Eastern Europe and, at least formally, of their post-socialist democratic successors. Why then has the subject been ignored or deeply marginalized in post-socialist legal education? Using socio-legal analysis to establish a legitimation or delegitimation dynamic regarding law in theory and practice in both eras, the author provides answers to this question and suggests various options for reforming post-socialist legal education to provide adequate training in the subject of women’s rights consistent with states’ international and regional human rights obligations.

Exploring The Electromagnetics Of Millimeter-Wave Through Terahertz Spectrum: De Novo Studies Vis-À-Vis Materials Science, Biomedical Applications And Wireless Communication, Bharti Sharma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

The present research is a targeted endeavor to study the underlying characteristics and novel applications of millimeter (mm) wave through terahertz (THz) spectrum of electromagnetic (EM) energy. Focused thereof are the following specific tasks broadly considered pertinent to the said EM spectral range: (i) To elucidate the material characteristics vis-à-vis the interaction with EM energy at the test frequencies; (ii) to identify biomedical applications based on the material characteristics studied and applied to biomedia; and (iii) to model the wireless communication channels supporting EM waves at the test frequency bands of interest. Commensurate with the scope as above, the objectives …