Digital Commons Network^™

What's Wrong With Me?: An Autoethnographic Investigation Of The Co-Cultural Communicative Practices Of Living With Tourette Syndrome During Adolescence, Mark Congdon Jr.

The Qualitative Report

Using an Autoethnographic methodology, this essay explores how I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. My experience illustrates a dynamic and difficult process of understanding and negotiating assimilation, using a variety of communication strategies related to self-perception, perceptions of others, and interactions with others. Using Co-Cultural theory (CCT) as a theoretical framework, three themes emerged from my experience: (1) nonassertive assimilation: negotiating with relationships of authority, (2) aggressive assimilation: negotiating relationships with peers, and (3) nonassertive separation: the convergence of negotiating relationships of authority and with peers. It is my hope that my story expands the awareness and conversation among and …

The Effects Of Gamifying Optional Lessons On Motivation, Aaron Zemach

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Adding video-game elements to non-video-game interfaces (“gamification”) has become a common engagement strategy over the past several years in the domain of education. While prior studies have found that adding game elements to mandatory educational materials can increase students’ motivation to complete the materials, there has yet to be a study to investigate if game elements can make users more likely to engage with optional educational materials. In this study, we investigate whether users of a gamified educational interface are more motivated than users of a non-gamified interface to voluntarily complete educational materials. We found users of a gamified interface …

The Synchronized Filtering Dataflow, Peng Li

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In the past decade, the world has seen the rise of big data, which calls for a paradigm shift in data processing. Streaming processing, where data are processed in their spatial or temporal order, is increasingly common. Meanwhile, parallel computing has become a household term in the computing world. The combination of streaming processing and parallel computing, streaming computing, has been playing an important role in data processing.

A streaming computing system is a network of nodes connected by unidirectional first-in first-out (FIFO) data channels. When a node has multiple input channels, to ensure the deterministic behavior of the whole …

Modeling Algorithm Performance On Highly-Threaded Many-Core Architectures, Lin Ma

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The rapid growth of data processing required in various arenas of computation over the past decades necessitates extensive use of parallel computing engines. Among those, highly-threaded many-core machines, such as GPUs have become increasingly popular for accelerating a diverse range of data-intensive applications. They feature a large number of hardware threads with low-overhead context switches to hide the memory access latencies and therefore provide high computational throughput. However, understanding and harnessing such machines places great challenges on algorithm designers and performance tuners due to the complex interaction of threads and hierarchical memory subsystems of these machines. The achieved performance jointly …

Approximation And Relaxation Approaches For Parallel And Distributed Machine Learning, Stephen Tyree

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Large scale machine learning requires tradeoffs. Commonly this tradeoff has led practitioners to choose simpler, less powerful models, e.g. linear models, in order to process more training examples in a limited time. In this work, we introduce parallelism to the training of non-linear models by leveraging a different tradeoff--approximation. We demonstrate various techniques by which non-linear models can be made amenable to larger data sets and significantly more training parallelism by strategically introducing approximation in certain optimization steps.

For gradient boosted regression tree ensembles, we replace precise selection of tree splits with a coarse-grained, approximate split selection, yielding both faster …

Real-Time And Energy-Efficient Routing For Industrial Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks, Chengjie Wu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

With the emergence of industrial standards such as WirelessHART, process industries are adopting Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks (WSANs) that enable sensors and actuators to communicate through low-power wireless mesh networks. Industrial monitoring and control applications require real-time communication among sensors, controllers and actuators within end-to-end deadlines. Deadline misses may lead to production inefficiency, equipment destruction to irreparable financial and environmental impacts. Moreover, due to the large geographic area and harsh conditions of many industrial plants, it is labor-intensive or dan- gerous to change batteries of field devices. It is therefore important to achieve long network lifetime with battery-powered devices.

This dissertation …

Mitigating The Effects Of Climate Change With Wind Energy And Gis, Rachael Isphording, Richard Snow, Mary Snow

Publications

The climate is changing, and humans are heavily exacerbating these changes. As the effects of climate change are being felt across the planet, scientists and policy makers are uniting to increase mitigation efforts and are researching renewable, clean energy sources to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere during energy production. Of the different renewable energy technologies, wind energy is one of the most researched and implemented. Over the past twenty years, researchers have been applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to their climate change studies. GIS allows the user to spatially view, manipulate, and analyze data …

Artist Entrepreneurship – A Necessity Or A Privilege?, Małgorzata Sternal

European Management Studies

This paper attempts to present some views on the concept of entrepreneurship in the context of professional musicians’ life and work. Entrepreneurship has been increasingly regarded as an important aspect of music professions, even though it has not been universally welcomed. It has been mostly seen as a necessity resulting from the difficulties on a labour market. However, it can be argued that an entrepreneurial approach might be an effective formula for those artists who appreciate independent and innovative ways of creating value, both economic and cultural. The paper is focused on defining possible areas of musician’s entrepreneurship and exploring …

Construction And Deconstruction Of Manager’S Role – Students Images And Practitioners’ Point Of View, Julita Majczyk, Magdalena Kubów

European Management Studies

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of managers in organizations. Practitioners’ point of view, who fully engaged in the role, on that problem is compared with images constructed by students who use their imagination instead of knowledge or experience. The paper presents results of qualitative research conducted in two types of organizations – international organizations operating in the financial services industry and public university.

How Has Poland Done The Eu Cohesion Policy Lesson? The Case Of Polish Regional Development System Modification, Izabela Siekierska-Rosiak

European Management Studies

In the beginning of the last decade of XX century regional policy in Poland constituted a small part of all the actions under the public policy. In the second decade of XXI century, regional policy become the main policy realizing the development policy in Poland. During this twenty years the system of regional policy has changed a lot. The changes were mainly caused by transformation of polish economy from the central planning economy to market economy as well as the accession to European Union. The research concentrates on changes of the system of regional policy. The article starts with presentation …

The Cultural Determinants Of Entrepreneurship. An Example Of The Vietnamese Immigrants Running Their Own Business In Poland, Agnieszka Brzozowska, Agnieszka Postuła

European Management Studies

The paper focuses on the cultural approach to entrepreneurship. The results were developed on the basis of the study of Vietnamese entrepreneurs in Poland. The authors analyzed different typologies of national cultures popular on the ground of management theory (Hofstede, 2000; Hall, 1976; Gesteland, 1999; Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 1998; Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961; Schwartz, 1994) and highlighted the most important, in their opinion, dimensions which have influence on entrepreneurial attitude and competences (Glinka, Gudkova, 2011). Vietnamese culture was described according to these dimensions. Further, picture of Vietnamese culture from the literature was compared to the description of Vietnamese entrepreneurs culture …

Fiscal Federalism As A Solution For The Eurozone Problems, Tomasz Rosiak

European Management Studies

Recent economic problems have proved once again that the best trigger for European integration is crisis. As for now the causes of world financial crisis and European debt crisis are not the main subject of economists’ polemics. The key problems is how to avoid or prevent euro zone from next asymmetric shocks and improve its shock absorption capabilities? European Union (EU) introduced one of the most complex reform package in its history. Recent EU reforms solve many of current problems which led in some members countries of euro zone to debt crisis. But the key issue is whether they lead …

Elaborating Patient Agency In Breast-Cancer Care: A Grounded Theoretical Analysis Of Patients Asserting Treatment Preferences, Rachel Sofia Erdman

Dissertations and Theses

Successful physician-patient communication is increasingly being acknowledged as a vital aspect of healthcare today. Research in the field has not examined all aspects of patient-centered care and the aspects that have been studied have not been grounded in actual patient action. The research done in the field has largely been studied quantitatively. The present thesis research attempts to contribute to the gap in the field of physician-patient communication by qualitatively examining patient assertiveness. This thesis examines conversations between women in Portland, Oregon recently diagnosed with breast cancer talking to their surgeons about their diagnoses and treatment options. Using grounded qualitative …

Hydrodynamics Of Dna Confined In Nanoslits And Nanochannels, K. D. Dorfman, D. Gupta, A. Jain, Douglas R. Tree

Faculty Publications

Modeling the dynamics of a confined, semiflexible polymer is a challenging problem, owing to the complicated interplay between the configurations of the chain, which are strongly affected by the length scale for the confinement relative to the persistence length of the chain, and the polymer-wall hydrodynamic interactions. At the same time, understanding these dynamics are crucial to the advancement of emerging genomic technologies that use confinement to stretch out DNA and “read” a genomic signature. In this mini-review, we begin by considering what is known experimentally and theoretically about the friction of a wormlike chain such as DNA confined in …

Coral Spawning In The Gulf Of Oman And Relationship To Latitudinal Variation In Spawning Season In The Northwest Indian Ocean, E. J. Howells, D. Abrego, G. O. Vaughan, J. A. Burt

All Works

Despite a wealth of information on sexual reproduction in scleractinian corals, there are regional gaps in reproductive records. In the Gulf of the Oman in the Arabian Sea, reproductive timing was assessed in four common species of broadcast spawning corals using field surveys of gamete maturity and aquarium observations of spawning activity. The appearance of mature gametes within the same month for Acropora downingi, A. hemprichii, Cyphastrea microphthalma and Platygyra daedalea (≥ 75% of colonies, n = 848) indicated a synchronous and multi-specific spawning season. Based on gamete disappearance and direct observations, spawning predominantly occurred during April in 2013 (75- …

The Impact Of Documentation Status On The Educational Attainment Experiences Of Undocumented Hispanic/Latino Students, Brittanie Alexandria Roberts

Dissertations and Theses

The issue of undocumented immigration has recently taken center-stage in the media and national politics in the United States. A large population of undocumented youth grows up with legal access to public education through high school, following the Supreme Court decision of Plyler vs. Doe, but faces legal and economic barriers to post-secondary education. Following high school, undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth legal protections end, greatly limiting chances for upward mobility through traditional post-secondary education pipelines. In some cases, knowledge of future barriers to post-secondary education leads to a decline in educational motivation.

The current political atmosphere makes this study a bit …

Breast Cancer: Selected Cytokines In The Clinical Presentation, Sravan Ranjan, Anurag Sinha

Muthanna Medical Journal

Breast cancer is among the most commonly diagnosed cancer types in women worldwide and is the second leading cause of cancer-related disease in the USA. Recent data have suggested that many cytokines may be essential roles in the pathogenesis of breast cancer. The goal of this paper is to examine the major cytokines involved in breast cancer immunotherapy and discuss their basic biology and clinical presentation. IL-1, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and TNF-α in patients with breast cancer (n = 63) and healthy individuals as control (n = 68). We found that there were higher levels of IL-6, IL-8, IL-10 and …

Kpk Ajukan Kasasi Terkait Putusan Banding Century, Desca Lidya Natalia

Documents

No abstract provided.

Film Tourism: The Pre-Production Perspective. A Case Study Of Visit Somerset And The Hollywood Story Of Glastonbury., Na Semley, G Busby

Plymouth Business School

Film tourism has been researched now for many years and the consequences of post-production are clear. However, there has been little opportunity to explore the perceptions of filming, pre-production, until now. Using a case study approach to the making of one particular Hollywood film on a rural location, the paper focuses on evaluating the business of film tourism and establishing the perceived impacts of film tourism from advanced practitioners and local residents, respectively. Two stages of data collection were adopted during pre-production: elite interviews and focus groups. The findings reveal that the role of each practitioner shapes their level of …

Anyone Else But Me, David Meischen

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

The Poverty Tours, Ken Poyner

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

The Man Between Costumes, Austin Kodra

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Pyramid Schemes, Leland Cheuk

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Express Care, Dwight Hilson

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Waterslide, Neil Mathison

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Night In The Jungle, 1962, Jennie Rathbun

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Prefatory Notes

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Cover Art

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

“The Last Acceptable Prejudice”: Student Harassment Of Gay Public School Teachers, Matthew Bernstein

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

In the United States, where the “marketplace of ideas” is a key social philosophy, few Americans receive the benefits of attending public schools with “out” gay and lesbian teachers. Even in an era where civil rights for homosexual public employees are increasing, more than one quarter of adults in the United States continue to believe that school boards should be permitted to fire teachers known to be homosexual. Amid a permissive legal climate that too easily puts aside the rights of teachers in a myopic focus on students, incidents where students harass teachers based on the teachers’ sexual orientation go …

Continued Disparities In School Facilities: Analyzing Brown V. Board Of Education’S Singular Approach To Quality Education, Corsica D. Smith

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.