Digital Commons Network^™

Audit, Accountability And Commitment: School Business Officials' Perceptions Of An Audit Regime, Michael A. Torak

Dissertations - ALL

Prior research has suggested that models intended to explain the organizational commitment of public employees have not accounted for the substantial and often intense external controls imposed on public organizations. A public scandal involving corruption and mismanagement in a New York State public school district resulted in the state legislature implementing a program of reforms intended to increase the financial accountability of public school districts. The aim of this exploratory, multi-subject qualitative study is to gain insight about how financial managers in public school districts experienced the reform and think about external controls that feature an extensive regimen of auditing. …

All Joking Aside: The Role Of Religion In American Jewish Satire, Jennifer Ann Caplan

Dissertations - ALL

Jewish humor is a well-known, if ill-defined genre. The prevalence and success of Jewish comedians has been a point of pride for American Jews throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. What I undertake in this dissertation is to isolate one particular form of humor-namely satire-and use it as a way to analyze the changing relationship of American Jews to traditional religious forms. I look at the trends over three generations, the third generation (who came of age in the 40s and 50s), the Baby Boom generation (who came of age in the 60s and 70s) and the contemporary generation (who …

Modulation And Interactions Of Charged Biomimetic Membranes With Bivalent Ions, Adolphe Kazadi Badiambile

Dissertations - ALL

The biological membrane of an eukaryotic cell is a two-dimensional structure of mostly phospholipids with embedded proteins. This two-dimensional structure plays many key roles in the life of a cell. Transmembrane proteins, for example, play the role of a gate for different ions (such as Ca2+). Also found are peripheral proteins that are used as enzymes for different purposes in the inner leaflet of the plasma membrane. Phospholipids, in particular play three key roles. Firstly, some members of this group are used to store energy. Secondly, the hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties inherent to phospholipids enable them to be used as …

Students' Attitudes Towards Socially--But Not Scientifically--Controversial Subjects: Evaluating Ways In Which These Attitudes May Be Shifted, Benjamin Elijah Carter

Dissertations - ALL

Chapter1: Numerous anti-science bills introduced into state legislatures reference the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific subjects, but the subjects they target, most commonly evolution and global climate change, are not topics of contention within the scientific community. This brief work provides a researched rebuttal to the notion that evolution and climate change have strengths and weaknesses of the form implied by anti-science legislation while providing examples of actual scientific disagreement about these subjects. The disagreement is not, of course, about whether or not evolution or climate change are factual occurrences, but rather over ideas such as the finer points of …

Comparison Of Cost Function Against Positional Analysis For Automated Tracking Of Three-Cell Interactions, Ye He

Dissertations - ALL

Localization and tracking of cells generates raw digital information from microscopy images, including images of stained nuclei and highly precise determination of central positions of cells, which can be analyzed for investigation of cell motility. In a previous study by this group, an algorithm termed automated contour-based tracking for in vitro environments (ACTIVE) was established for tracking large cell populations for long periods of time. For the two-cell interaction events on which ACTIVE was initially focused, error rate was reduced as much as 43% compared to a traditional positional analysis algorithm by Kilfoil and colleagues. In the present thesis, we …

Essays On Local Political Economy In Brazil And The United States, Evan Andrews

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation covers different aspects of political institutions and fiscal policy in local governments. The first essay examines the political consequences of an increase in the district magnitude (the number of open seats) for legislatures. The second essay studies how the size of a local legislature affects the size and composition of public spending. The third essay develops and tests a theory of how transaction costs might affect the use of earmarked revenues by local budgeting authorities. The last essay compares the relative impacts of factors that might make a local government more likely to adopt own-source revenues. These questions …

Spectroscopic Confirmation Of The Existence Of Large, Diffuse Galaxies In The Coma Cluster, Pieter Van Dokkum, Aaron Romanowsky, Roberto Abraham, Jean Brodie, Charlie Conroy, Marla Geha, Allison Merritt, Alexa Villaume, Jielai Zhang

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Shusterman’S Thinking Through The Body And Everyday Aesthetics, Tom Leddy

Faculty Publications

How does Richard Shusterman’s Thinking Through the Bodyapply to the issues of everyday aesthetics? As it turns out, many chapters contribute significantly to everyday aesthetics, in particular the work on architecture, self-styling, the body as background, lovemaking, and the process of making a photographic portrait. Shusterman’s concentration on the art of living has special importance to everyday aesthetics. Current debates within the field of everyday aesthetics also raise problems for somaesthetics. I also question the limits of somaesthetics and Shusterman’s rejection of defamiliarization in making the ordinary extraordinary.

White Woods And Blue Jasmine: Woody Allen Rewrites A Streetcar Named Desire, Verna Foster

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The film's reviewers almost invariably commented on the parallels with Streetcar, many noting, too, that Cate Blanchett, who plays the title character, Jasmine, had also successfully played Blanche Dubois in Liv Ullmann's 2009 production of the play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.2 But for all the similarities in character types and plot structure and for all the allusions to specific lines in Streetcar, the themes of Blue Jasmine are very different from those of Williams's play because the story that Allen tells also channels the fall of Bernie Madoff and his wife, Ruth. The flashbacks are a filmic equivalent …

The Importance Of Humour In Educational Staffrooms, Kmita Maria

Plymouth Institute of Education Theses

Staffroom humour constitutes an integral part of teachers’ workplace culture and contributes to the quality of workplace relationships, yet it remains under-researched in the field of educational research. This thesis explores the importance of humour in relationships between teachers and its meaning for the overall workplace culture. This research has two foci; one intended and one acquired. Originally this research was set up to investigate staffroom humour in three educational settings. However, humour between participants and I became another focus of the research. Therefore, apart from exploring how staff use humour in the staffroom and what influences staffroom humour, this …

Being A Judge In The Modern World, Lady Justice Hallett Lady Justice Hallett

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

No abstract provided.

Jus Cogens: The History, Challenges And Hope Of 'A Giant On Stilts', Stefano Congui

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

This article broadly engages with international law and human rights protection. Its focus is on jus cogens, but it also considers universal jurisdiction and erga omnes. In its examination of jus cogens, this article analyses its history, trajectory and philosophical underpinnings.

The Only Game In Town' - But Is It A Legal One? American Drone Strikes And International Law, James Kirton

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

In 2002 a US Predator drone operating above Afghanistan's Paktia province spotted three men in Zhawar Kili, a complex slightly north of the infamous Tora Bora cave system, an area used by al-Qaeda leadership to train and regroup. One of the men was tall; supposedly the others were acting reverently towards him. Convinced the tall man was Osama bin Laden a Hellfire missile was fired from the Predator, killing all three men instantly. The tall man was not bin Laden. None of the men were even affiliated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban; they were simply civilians in the wrong place …

Life After Death, Louis Blom-Cooper Sir

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

No abstract provided.

Does The Mental Capacity Act 2005 Adequately Protect Persons With Learning Difficulties Against Needless Non-Consensual Sterilisation?, Jordane Watson

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

Non-consensual contraceptive sterilisation of people with learning difficulties is inherently controversial. As such any legal framework that provides for such a procedure needs to rigorously scrutinised in terms of its adequacy to protect vulnerable people. This article aims to 'determine whether the post-MCA judicial approach adequately protects adults with learning difficulties against needless nonconsensual contraceptive sterilisation'. This will be achieved by assessing how the MCA has changed the judicial approach to non-consensual contraceptive sterilisation since the common law approach. Further comparisons will also be made between sterilisation and vasectomies. The capacity section will determine whether the judiciary are approaching the …

Liberty And Security In The Age Of Terrorism: Negotiating A New Social Contract, Ifeolu Tokimi

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

The prevalent rise in terrorism related attacks and the susceptibility of the State to such attacks has, in an effort to counter future threats and neuter the ability of terrorists, brought to the fore the tensions between liberty and security. Ironic as it might seem the values that made western democracies the shining examples of free and rules governed societies are the same values that provide fertile ground for planning and executing horrific acts of terror. Taking a historical look at the concepts of security and liberty, this paper aims to understand if these ideals can still co-exist in a …

Using Ocean Bottom Pressure From The Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (Grace) To Estimate Transport Variability In The Southern Indian Ocean, Jessica K. Makowski, Don P. Chambers, Jennifer A. Bonin

Marine Science Faculty Publications

Previous studies have suggested that ocean bottom pressure (OBP) from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) can be used to measure the depth-averaged, or barotropic, transport variability of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). Here, we use GRACE OBP observations to calculate transport variability in a region of the southern Indian Ocean encompassing the major fronts of the ACC. We use a statistical analysis of a simulated GRACE-like data set to determine the uncertainty of the estimated transport for the 2003.0–2013.0 time period. We find that when the transport is averaged over 60° of longitude, the uncertainty (one standard error) …

Using The Dna Testing Of Arrestees To Reevaluate Fourth Amendment Doctrine, Steven P. Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

With the advent of DNA testing, numerous issues have arisen with regard to obtaining and using evidence developed from such testing. As courts have come to regard DNA testing as a reliable method for linking some people to crimes and for exonerating others, these issues are especially significant. The federal government and most states have enacted statutes that permit or direct the testing of those convicted of at least certain crimes. Courts have almost universally approved such testing, rejecting arguments that obtaining and using such evidence violates the Fourth Amendment.

More recently governments have enacted laws permitting or directing the …

Law And People With Disabilities, Janet E. Lord, Deepti S. Raja, Peter Blanck

All Faculty Scholarship

This article describes the progressive development of disability law, particularly in light of international developments that are transforming domestic disability law frameworks. It provides an overview of the conceptualization of disability in law, charting the shift from a medical model to a social model of disability and more recently to a human rights model. The abstract covers the implications of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the processes and approaches for translating international disability law standards into national level law. It sheds light on the contemporary disability rights landscape in the light of dramatic legislative …

The 95 Theses: Legal Research In The Internet Age, Amy E. Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

There Is No Such Thing As Litigation: Access To Justice And The Realities Of Adjudication, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Does a "contest by judicial process" describe litigation's "means and applications"? Overwhelmingly, no. Litigation is not about judges: it is about default judgments, settlements, plea bargains. It sometimes does not even involve judges at all. Litigation is not about trials: the amount of litigation that goes to trial is infinitesimal. It is not about "process": the process is so minimal that to dignify it with that term stretches the word beyond recognition. It is not a "contest": it is an exercise where one side has no plausible chance of winning, especially since that side either has no lawyers or lawyers …

The Holmes School Of Law: A Proposal To Reform Legal Education Through Realism, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes the formation of a new law school, the Holmes School of Law. The curriculum of the Holmes School would draw upon legal realism, particularly as articulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The proposed curriculum would focus on educating students about "law in fact"—how law is actually experienced. It rejects the idea that legal education should be about reading cases written by judges who not only bring their own biases and cultural understandings to their role, but who also ignore law as experienced, which, in the end, is what law is. This disconnect is especially troubling because virtually all …

The Innovator's Dilemma, Max Stul Oppenheimer

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Case For Reviving A Statutory Invention Registration System, Max Stul Oppenheimer

All Faculty Scholarship

When Congress overhauled U.S. patent law in 2011, the main debate

focused on the merits (and constitutionality) of converting from the incumbent

first-to-invent system, in effect since 1790, to a first-to-file system. With little

attention or analysis, the statutory overhaul also did away with what was

perceived as a rarely used relic of the pre-Internet era: the Statutory Invention

Registration system. Concluding that the Statutory Invention Registration system

was essentially useless under the outgoing law, Congress eliminated a system

with potentially significant uses under the new law, including uses that would

help redress the disadvantage imposed on U.S. inventors by …

"Law Is Coercion": Revisiting Judicial Power To Provide Equality In Public Education, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is an attempt to start a conversation about where we find ourselves in the plight to help our most challenged public schools. It is not intended to be a comprehensive solution to the problem, but rather a hard look at how, after decades of many efforts, we are further away from the equal education contemplated by the United States Supreme Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This article does not desire to simply cast blame for the failures of our children, but to send a reminder that, as Frederick Douglass would say, we can hardly …

Euclidean Reconstruction Of Natural Underwater Scenes Using Optic Imagery Sequence, Han Hu

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

The development of maritime applications require monitoring, studying and preserving of detailed and close observation on the underwater seafloor and objects. Stereo vision offers advanced technologies to build 3D models from 2D still overlapping images in a relatively inexpensive way. However, while image stereo matching is a necessary step in 3D reconstruction procedure, even the most robust dense matching techniques are not guaranteed to work for underwater images due to the challenging aquatic environment. In this thesis, in addition to a detailed introduction and research on the key components of building 3D models from optic images, a robust modified quasi-dense …

An Electrophysiological Investigation Of Reward Prediction Errors In The Human Brain, Thomas Sambrook

School of Psychology Theses

Reward prediction errors are quantitative signed terms that express the difference between the value of an obtained outcome and the expected value that was placed on it prior to its receipt. Positive reward prediction errors constitute reward, negative reward prediction errors constitute punishment. Reward prediction errors have been shown to be powerful drivers of reinforcement learning in formal models and there is thus a strong reason to believe they are used in the brain. Isolating such neural signals stands to help elucidate how reinforcement learning is implemented in the brain, and may ultimately shed light on individual differences, psychopathologies of …

Survivability Of Wave Energy Converter And Mooring Coupled System Using Cfd, Edward Ransley

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

This thesis discusses the development of a Numerical Wave Tank (NWT) capable of describing the coupled behaviour of Wave Energy Converters (WECs) and their moorings under extreme wave loading. The NWT utilises the open-source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software OpenFOAM(R) to solve the fully nonlinear, incompressible, Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations for air and water using the Finite Volume Method (FVM) and a Volume of Fluid (VOF) treatment of the interface. A method for numerically generating extreme waves is devised, based on the dispersively-focused NewWave theory and using the additional toolbox waves2Foam. A parametric study of the required mesh resolution shows …

Brain Inspired Approach To Computational Face Recognition, Joao Paulo Da Silva Gomes

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Face recognition that is invariant to pose and illumination is a problem solved effortlessly by the human brain, but the computational details that underlie such efficient recognition are still far from clear. This thesis draws on research from psychology and neuroscience about face and object recognition and the visual system in order to develop a novel computational method for face detection, feature selection and representation, and memory structure for recall. A biologically plausible framework for developing a face recognition system will be presented. This framework can be divided into four parts: 1) A face detection system. This is an improved …

High-Performance Near-Time Processing Of Bulk Data, Martin Swientek

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Enterprise Systems like customer-billing systems or financial transaction systems are required to process large volumes of data in a fixed period of time. Those systems are increasingly required to also provide near-time processing of data to support new service offerings. Common systems for data processing are either optimized for high maximum throughput or low latency. This thesis proposes the concept for an adaptive middleware, which is a new approach for designing systems for bulk data processing. The adaptive middleware is able to adapt its processing type fluently between batch processing and single-event processing. By using message aggregation, message routing and …