Digital Commons Network^™

Mass Incarceration And Employment, Steven Raphael

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Validating The Octave Allegro Information Systems Risk Assessment Methodology: A Case Study, Corland Gordon Keating

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

An information system (IS) risk assessment is an important part of any successful security management strategy. Risk assessments help organizations to identify mission-critical IS assets and prioritize risk mitigation efforts. Many risk assessment methodologies, however, are complex and can only be completed successfully by highly qualified and experienced security experts. Small-sized organizations, including small-sized colleges and universities, due to their financial constraints and lack of IS security expertise, are challenged to conduct a risk assessment. Therefore, most small-sized colleges and universities do not perform IS risk assessments, which leaves the institution's data vulnerable to security incursions. The negative consequences of …

A Study Of The 8th Grade Technology Literacy Of A Michigan Charter School, James Edward Spruill

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

As states adopt the common core state standards and next generation assessments for the 2014 - 2015 school year, the importance of students' technology literacy will increase Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. The next generation assessments will require students to complete technology performance tasks. For the first time in mandatory testing, students' technology literacy will directly impact a school's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) rating. Technology literacy is defined as the ability to operate hardware and software (computer literacy), conduct effective research for and then evaluate digital content for accuracy and merit (internet and information literacy), and digitally communicate effectively(digital media literacy). …

Effects Of Cultural Awareness Training In Conjunction With An Established Bullying Prevention Program, Megan Kallie Polanin

Dissertations

While many school bullying prevention programs have been designed to thwart school bullying perpetration, victimization, and physical aggression, empirical support is limited. To date, few researchers have addressed bullying within the context of children's cultural systems, and cultural awareness training has not yet been utilized as a mechanism to decrease bullying behaviors in the context of school bullying prevention programs.

This study examined the utility of incorporating multicultural training aimed at reducing prejudice within the context of school bullying prevention programming efforts within a diverse educational setting. This researcher hypothesized that the addition of meaningful culture curriculum would further reduce …

Private Control Over Access To Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use Of Private Standards, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

To save resources and build on private expertise, federal agencies have incorporated privately drafted standards into thousands of federal regulations — but only by “reference.” These standards range widely, subsuming safety, benefits, and testing standards. An individual who seeks access to this binding law generally cannot freely read it online or in a governmental depository library, as she can the U.S. Code or the Code of Federal Regulations. Instead, she generally must pay a significant fee to the drafting organization, or else she must travel to Washington, D.C., to the Office of the Federal Register’s reading room. This law, under …

American And Brazilian Children With Primary Urolithiasis: Similarities And Disparities., Maria Goretti Moreira Guimarães Penido, Marcelo De Sousa Tavares, Milena Maria Moreira Guimarães, Tarak Srivastava, Uri S. Alon

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Objectives. Considering the differences in location, socioeconomic background, and cultural background, the aim of this study was to try to identify possible factors associated with the increased incidence of urolithiasis by comparing American and Brazilian children with stones.
Methods. Data of 222 American and 190 Brazilian children with urolithiasis were reviewed including age, gender, body mass index, imaging technique used (ultrasound and computed tomography), and 24-hour urine volume and chemistries.
Results. There were no differences between age and gender at diagnosis. Brazilian children were leaner but in no population did obesity rate exceed that of the general population. Ultrasound was …

Quantitative, Qualitative, And Collaborative Methods: Approaching Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Heterogeneity, Jeremy Spoon

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

I discuss the use of quantitative, qualitative, and collaborative methods to document and operationalize Indigenous ecological knowledge, using case studies from the Nepalese Himalaya and Great Basin. Both case studies applied results to natural and cultural resource management and interpretation for the public. These approaches attempt to reposition the interview subjects to serve as active contributors to the research and its outcomes. I argue that the study of any body of Indigenous knowledge requires a context-specific methodology and mutually agreed upon processes and outcomes. In the Nepalese Himalaya, I utilized linked quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how tourism influenced …

Book Review Of, Dhana Hughes. Violence, Torture And Memory In Sri Lanka: Life After Terror, And Gordon Weiss. The Cage: The Fight For Sri Lanka And The Last Days Of The Tamil Tigers, Michele Ruth Gamburd

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the books "Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror" by Dhana Hughes and "The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers" by Gordon Weiss

Assessing Possible Cruise Ship Impacts On Huna Tlingit Ethnographic Resources In Glacier Bay, Douglas Deur, Thomas Thornton

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report provides a thematic summary of an ethnographic study addressing the effects of cruise ships within Glacier Bay proper on the people known as the Huna Tlingit. Occupying the heart of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Glacier Bay proper is considered to be the core homeland of Huna Tlingit. The Huna occupied the Bay prior to its most recent glaciation and, though they now live nearby in Hoonah and other communities, they have continued to use, occupy, and value the lands and waters within the Bay since the glaciers began to retreat over two centuries ago. Simultaneously, since …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, July 2014, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

United States Negotiates Prisoner Exchange to Secure Release of U.S. Soldier Held in Afghanistan • United States Refuses to Grant Visa to Iranian UN Envoy • Multilateral Naval Code of Conduct Aims to Prevent Unintended Conflict in Contested Areas of East and South China Seas • Senate Approves Treaties to Regulate Fishing • United States Indicts Chinese Military Officials for Economic Espionage • U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Terminate Long-Running Efforts to Force Argentina to Pay Defaulted Sovereign Debt • United States Condemns Uganda’s Antigay Law as Violating Human Rights • President Barack Obama Certifies That U.S. Peacekeepers in Mali …

3d Illustration Of Environments From The Chinese Legend "The Journey To The West", Fei Gao

Theses

The project "3D Illustration of Environments from the Chinese Legend 'Journey to The West'" explores the use of modern digital techniques, to reveal the look of traditional Chinese elements in both a realistic and creative way. This project is broken into two parts: the modeling, texturing and lighting section where most originality and restoration occurs; and the animated part illustrating the final result of the combinative exploration. The first stage of my project is on creating detailed and realistic-looking objects, which allows the audience to be immersed in both ancient and mystical Eastern environments. This project requires mainly Maya and …

Tort As A Substitute For Revenge, Scott Hershovitz

Book Chapters

In 1872, the Supreme Court of Illinois decided a case called Alcorn v Mitchell. It was not the first litigation between the parties. Some years earlier, Alcorn had sued Mitchell for trespass. That suit did not go well, and at the close of the trial, just after the court adjourned, Alcorn spit in Mitchell’s face. Mitchell then turned the tables and sued Alcorn for battery. He won a judgment for $1,000, which was a lot of money back then—depending on how you think about the change in value of money over time, the present day equivalent would range from just …

The Impact Of Adaptation Delays On Routing Protocols Formobile Ad-Hoc Networks (Manets), Yamin Al-Mousa

Theses

MANETs are coping with major challenges such as the lack of infrastructure and mobility which causes networks topology to change dynamically. Due to limited resources, nodes have to collaborate and rely packets on the behalf of neighbors to reach their destinations forming multi-hop paths. The selection and maintenance of multi-hop paths is a challenging task as their stability and availability depend on the mobility of participating nodes, where paths used a few moments earlier would be rendered invalid due to ever changing topology. The purpose of a routing protocol is to establish and select valid paths between communicating nodes and …

Grassmann Learning For Recognition And Classification, Sherif Azary

Theses

Computational performance associated with high-dimensional data is a common challenge for real-world classification and recognition systems. Subspace learning has received considerable attention as a means of finding an efficient low-dimensional representation that leads to better classification and efficient processing. A Grassmann manifold is a space that promotes smooth surfaces, where points represent subspaces and the relationship between points is defined by a mapping of an orthogonal matrix. Grassmann learning involves embedding high dimensional subspaces and kernelizing the embedding onto a projection space where distance computations can be effectively performed. In this dissertation, Grassmann learning and its benefits towards action classification …

Minus 25 Betty Tyson, Taunja Isaac

Theses

Betty Tyson was convicted of murder in May 1973 in Rochester, NY. She was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Her trial was hasty and the jury of peers she faced was all white. The evidence against her was tainted yet she was still found guilty. I was 9 years old when I first heard this story. When I decided to pursue my Master in Fine Art, I remembered this story and wanted to use my journalism instincts that I developed during my undergraduate degree at SUNY Brockport. I approached my thesis committee for approval to pursue this …

Design For Slow Living, Siyang Gong

Theses

"As speed is seemingly equated with efficiency and professionalism, however, slowness can become a way of signaling an alternative set of values or a refusal to privilege the workplace over other domains of life." (Parkins, W., & Craig, G., 2006)

This thesis defines what slow living is, its background and why it is becoming important today. Slow living can be defined as a way to improve socialization. It is a lifestyle that helps people slow down their pace and spend more time with their families and friends doing meaningful things together. As a reward, they can feel more relaxed and …

Design For Implementation Of Image Processing Algorithms, Jamison D. Whitesell

Theses

Color image processing algorithms are first developed using a high-level mathematical modeling language. Current integrated development environments offer libraries of intrinsic functions, which on one hand enable faster development, but on the other hand hide the use of fundamental operations. The latter have to be detailed for an efficient hardware and/or software physical implementation. Based on the experience accumulated in the process of implementing a segmentation algorithm, this thesis outlines a design for implementation methodology comprised of a development flow and associated guidelines.

The methodology enables algorithm developers to iteratively optimize their algorithms while maintaining the level of image integrity …

A Summer Reading Enrichment Experience: One District's Effort To Prevent Summer Reading Loss, Angela R. Sopko

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to gain insights into effective literacy practices and key factors that promote reading achievement for elementary age students during summer break. More specifically, the study examined the effectiveness of a summer reading enrichment experience offered to children from low-income families in an effort to prevent summer reading loss. The students involved in this study were considered to have average reading skills.

The particular focus of this study led to the formation of the following question to guide this research: To what extent is a student's reading achievement impacted by extended literacy instruction or enrichment? …

Science Youth Action Research: Promoting Critical Science Literacy Through Relevance And Agency, Elizabeth Coleman

Dissertations

This three-article dissertation presents complementary perspectives on Science Youth Action Research (Sci-YAR), a K-12 curriculum designed to emphasize relevance and agency to promote youth's science learning. In Sci-YAR, youth conduct action research projects to better understand science-related issues in their lives, schools, or communities, while they simultaneously document, analyze, and reflect upon their own practices as researchers. The first article defines Sci-YAR and argues for its potential to enhance youth's participation as citizens in a democratic society. The second article details findings from a case study of youth engaged in Sci-YAR, describing how the curriculum enabled and constrained youth's identity …

Eq, Not Just Iq: The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence And The Success Of High School Principals Who Have Been Awarded The Illinois Principals Association's High School Principal Of The Year Award, Rowena Mak

Dissertations

As educational reforms become more complex, the role of the principal as a change agent also becomes more challenging and dynamic. To confront the leadership demands of schools, principals require focus, passion, wisdom, courage, and integrity.

An underlying assumption of these traits is the principal's emotional fortitude. Emotional intelligence is as complicated as it is organic, in that its foundation rests on an individual's awareness of himself/herself and how these emotions drive his/her ability to relate with others. With this comes the question, what makes a successful principal? The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between a …

Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This Article will address the question of whether publicly traded U.S. corporations owe a duty to their shareholders to minimize their corporate tax burden through any legal means, or if instead, strategic behaviors like aggressive tax-motivated transactions are inconsistent with corporate social responsibility (“CSR”). I believe the latter holds true, regardless of one’s view of the corporation. Under the “artificial entity” view, such behavior undermines the constitutive relationship between the corporation and the state. Under the “real view,” such behavior runs contrary to the normal obligation of citizens to comply with the law (even absent effective enforcement). And under the …

Understanding Insurance Antidiscrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Schwarcz

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Law At A Crossroad: Enforcing Corporate Responsibility In International Investment Through The Alien Tort Statute, Jennie Green

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Geography Of Solving Global Environmental Problems: Reflections On Polycentric Efforts To Address Climate Change, Hari M. Osofsky

Articles

This essay considers how we might fit local efforts to address climate change, especially those by very small, suburban cities, within models for solving "global problems." While acknowledging the need for more action on climate change at international, national, and state levels, and regional ones in between, this essay explores how different types of cities, as they participate in multilevel networks, can provide models for action and complement efforts to address climate change through the treaty regime. Using a diverse group of suburbs in the Twin Cities metropolitan region making innovative climate change and sustainability efforts as a case example, …

El Lugar De Las Lenguas En Las Lenguas Modernas: Hacia Una Nueva Cartografía De La Lingüística Hispánica En Eeuu, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This article analyzes the status of linguistic studies in departments of modern languages in the USA and argues for the promotion of sociological approaches to language at the expense of formal approaches to language.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Corruption, David Jancsics

Publications and Research

Corruption has become one of the most popular topics in the social scientific disciplines. However, there is a lack of interdisciplinary communication about corruption. Models developed by different academic disciplines are often isolated from each other. The purpose of this paper is to review several major approaches to corruption and draw them closer to each other. Most studies of corruption fall into three major categories: (i) rational-actor models where corruption is viewed as resulting from cost/benefit analysis of individual actors; (ii) structural models that focus on external forces that determine corruption; and (iii) relational models that emphasize social interactions and …

Variance Predicts Salience In Central Sensory Processing, Ann M. Hermundstad, John J. Briguglio, Mary M. Conte, Jonathan D. Victor, Vijay Balasubramanian, Gašper Tkačik

Publications and Research

Information processing in the sensory periphery is shaped by natural stimulus statistics. In the periphery, a transmission bottleneck constrains performance; thus efficient coding implies that natural signal components with a predictably wider range should be compressed. In a different regime—when sampling limitations constrain performance—efficient coding implies that more resources should be allocated to informative features that are more variable. We propose that this regime is relevant for sensory cortex when it extracts complex features from limited numbers of sensory samples. To test this prediction, we use central visual processing as a model: we show that visual sensitivity for local multi-point …

The Impact Of Global Trends On Ilds, Beth Posner

Publications and Research

There are a variety of important developments in digital information, globalization, demographics, economics, education, technology and more affecting all aspects of 21st century life. These trends are also reflected in changes in new ways that libraries are facilitating the discovery and delivery of information. Using the 2014 New Media Consortium’s “Horizon Report: Library Edition” and the discussion draft of the American Library Association Policy Revolution! Initiative’s “Trends Report: Snapshots of a Turbulent World” this article examines several key trends and disruptions impacting libraries and the world and how these are likely to influence the ways libraries facilitate the discovery and …

Idiots Savants, Retarded Savants, Talented Aments, Mono-Savants, Autistic Savants, Just Plain Savants, People With Savant Syndrome, And Autistic People Who Are Good At Things: A View From Disability Studies, Joseph N. Straus

Publications and Research

People identified as idiot savants have long comprised an identifiable group (a high level of skill in the context of perceived mental deficiency) whose story has mostly been told by psychiatrists and psychologists within a medicalized model of disability that assumes deficiency and seeks remediation and normalization. More recently, people identified as savants have become common figures of literary and cinematic representation. Both of these narrative frames have enfreaked them as alien Others, whose gifts and disabilities place them outside the normal run of human intelligence and creativity. With a focus on music, this article tries to see through these …

Proceedings Of The 1st Annual Cuny Games Festival, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Francesco Crocco, Carlos Hernandez, Kathleen Offenholley, Leah Potter, Maura A. Smale, Cuny Games Network

Publications and Research

Proceedings of the CUNY Games Conference, held from January 17-18, 2014, at the CUNY Graduate Center and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Topics in Game Design - Teaching with Virtual and Augmented Realities - Writing with Games - Breaking the Magic Circle: Games & Real Life - Interactive Game Design (What's Your Game Plan? - Designing Ethical Games - Games and Gender - Gaming English Language and Literature - Game, Narrative, Literacy - Teaching with Games - Games, Storytelling, and Narrative - Games and STEM - Learning by Design - Students as Game Designers - Experiencing Reality in Popular Games …