Digital Commons Network^™

A Snapshot Of Successful Female Participants In A Drug Court Program With A Sub-Focus On Prescription Drug Abusers, Mallory E. Pugh

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study will identify characteristics associated with successful female participants in one of Indianas drug court programs. It will also provide a snapshot of the female prescription drug abusers within the program. Data was reviewed for participants in the VCDC program during a three year period (n=259) with a sub-focus on female participants (n=76) and a further look at the female prescription drug abusers (n=34). This study examined a wide range of self-reported and staff-reported variables including health insurance, prior attempts at treatments, criminal history, history of drug abuse, victimization, family history of substance abuse,Education level, and employment in order …

Examination Of Pre-Kindergarten Programming And Kindergarten Success In The State Of Indiana, Scott Allen Deetz

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. government appropriates billions of dollars each year to all states and territories in America through Head Start and Title I programs (Hurley, 2014). These monies are either solely dedicated to school readiness or can be used to narrow the readiness gap by the time the child is of school age. Even with this financial support, Indiana was still one of 10 states that did not contribute its own monies or provide guidance for implementing a statewide pre-kindergarten program (National Institute for EarlyEducation Research, 2014). Without governance at the state level, no certification requirements for program administrators or curricular …

Religious Fundamentalism, Problem Solving Style, And Psychological Well-Being, Joseph A. Creedon

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Religious belief serves an important role in the lives of many individuals. Religious affiliation has been associated with a number of benefits, including social support, a sense of purpose, and it may increase self-esteem and act as a protective factor against depression. Particularly when faced with adversity or in times of crisis, religious belief provides meaning and support for many people. However, some variations of religiousness have been suggested to be detrimental mental and physical health. For example, certain aspects of religious fundamentalism, such as the rigid, authoritarian structure and strict behavioral requirements, have been negatively associated with facets of …

A Model Of Packet Loss Caused By Interference Between The Bluetooth Low Energy Component Of An Ios Wearable Body Area Network And Residential Microwave Ovens, William C. Barge

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the United States. Advances in wireless technology have made possible the remote monitoring of a patient's heart sensors as part of a body area network. Previous studies have suggested that stray wireless transmissions in the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band cause interference resulting in packet loss in Bluetooth piconets. This study investigates the impact that wireless transmissions from residential microwave ovens have on the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) component of the body area network. Using a systematic data collection approach, two variables were manipulated. The distance between the microwave oven …

What We Know, What We Do And What We Could Do: Creating An Understanding Of The Delivery Of Health Education In Lower Secondary Government Schools In Western Australia, Donna Michelle Barwood

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Australian health data indicates that childhood is a significant time for young Australians to develop health and well-being issues. Concurrently, health advocates herald in-school delivery of skills-based participatory health education as making significant contributions to developing behaviour change and supporting health enhancing dispositions in children and young people. In Western Australia (WA), skillsbased participatory health education is characterised by linking knowledge and understandings of what it means to be safer, healthier and more physically active to skills that action these states. Skills-based is a preferred approach to teaching and learning in the Health and Physical Education Learning Area (HPE LA), …

An Examination Of Social Desirability Confounds In A New Ipsative Measure Of Murray's Psychogenic Needs, Lisa Harris

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

A reliable and valid instrument for the direct measurement of the relative strength of psychological needs is currently lacking. In response to this shortcoming, a new ipsative instrument, the Psychogenic Need Scale (PNS), is currently being developed; this is a 190-item forced-choice self-report measure that is based upon Murray’s psychogenic needs. For the development of a valid forced-choice instrument, it is critical to minimise the confounding effects of social desirability (the tendency for respondents to describe oneself in the most favourable light). Whilst other measures typically use specifically designed scales to detect social desirability confounds, this approach is unsuitable for …

Evaluation Of A Modified Food Frequency Questionnaire To Measure Lignans In Australian Men And Women, Ying Qi Winnie Li

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Phytoestrogens are plant compounds that possess estrogenic and biological properties that have been postulated to protect against chronic diseases. Isoflavonoids and lignans are two main classes of phytoestrogen that have been investigated for their estrogenic efficacy and occurrence in the human diet. Isoflavonoids are found in soy and related products, whereas lignans are found in a wider range of plant-based foods, such as cereals, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds; and in beverages such as tea, coffee and wine. In Western populations with low dietary intake of soy products, compared to the Asian counterparts, lignans could be a more important …

Landlord’S Liability For Tenant’S Nuisance: Uksc Clarifies The Law In Lawrence V Fen Tigers (No. 2), Kee Yang Low

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Where an occupier of premises creates or causes a nuisance and affects his neighbour’s enjoyment of land, the neighbour may sue him under the tort of nuisance. Where the occupier is a tenant, the neighbour may also have recourse to the landlord. This area of law, however, has not been the subject of rigorous judicial analysis and appears to be still lacking in clarity, precision and sophistication. The position prior to the UKSC decision in Lawrence and another v Fen Tigers Ltd and others (No. 2),1 (“Lawrence”) as discerned by the authors of Markesinis & Deakin’s Tort Law2 is that, …

Interview With The Honourable Justice Chang-Fa Lo (Justice, Constitutional Court, Taiwan; National University College Of Law) And Dr Winnie Jo-Mei Ma, (Honorary Associate Professor, Bond University Faculty Of Law, Australia) On The Draft Convention On Cross-Border Enforcement Of International Mediated Settlement Agreements, Nadja Alexander

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Boundaries Of Governance: Social Responsibility In Mining In Western Australia, Gemma L. Broderick

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research investigated the boundaries of governance of social responsibility in three multinational mining organisations based in Perth, Western Australia. The mining industry has economic, environmental and social impacts, both positive and negative. While most of the attention of the media and supporters in government seems to focus on the positive impacts, a growing concern regarding the social implications of mining is clearly evident in public discourse and the academic literature. In response to public concern, the mining industry has adopted terms such as ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘social licence to operate’ and ‘social responsibility’. Such phrases are widely used in …

Music In Site: Integrating Elements Of Site-Specificity Into Composition, Mace Francis

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Architectural spaces and their acoustic characteristics offer unique musical material for the compositional process. Acoustic and physical design features of unorthodox performance spaces can become part of works and their performances. This thesis examines ways to integrate acoustic characteristics of an architectural space into the compositional process, and discusses how different levels of site-specificity may be engaged in this process.

This research grew from an interest in composing music for the acoustic problems of performance spaces rather than trying to resist them, after a jazz ensemble performance in a large reverberant space. This led to exploring built environments that offered …

Characterisation And Applications Of Iron Ore Tailings In Building And Construction Projects, Francis Atta Kuranchie

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The mine tailings are generated as the wastes worldwide as a result of exploration, excavation, blasting, beneficiation and extraction of mineral ores. In Western Australia, due to the extensive mining activities and increasing low grade ores, there is generation of mine tailings in large quantities, which could lead to environmental and disposal problems. The common practice of handling the tailings are to store them in tailing dams or as stockpiles near mine sites. Limited quantities are sometimes used as backfills and other applications. The utilisation of tailings in building and construction projects, which may consume a large volume of wastes, …

Analysis Of Plant Analytes Using Capillary Electrophoresis And High Performance Liquid Chromatography, Umme Kalsoom

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Plants contain an enormous array of organic and inorganic components, the analysis for which may involve a wide range of methods. The focus of this study was to develop high performance liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis methods for the analysis of three classes of analytes: osmoregulants, minerals and amino acids.

Firstly, this study explored the potential of capillary electrophoresis for the analysis of three very common osmoregulants (proline, glycine betaine and mannitol). A diverse array of methods has been reported for determining each of these analytes, however, the literature on osmoregulants and their analysis is quite disjointed and traverses both …

Electrical Resistivity Of Sandy Soil With Water, Leachates And Seawater, Lopa Mudra Pandey

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Liners are used in the engineered containment systems such as landfills for controlling the migration of contaminants. Although there are several techniques for detecting the leakages through the liners, use of the electrical resistivity method can assist in timely detection of contaminant migration in cost-effective manner. This method is based on the well-established fact that the electrical resistivity of soils and other geomaterials is much higher than the electrical resistivity of water, leachates or any liquid effluents which may permeate the landfill foundation material. Additionally, the geotechnical properties of a soil exhibit a close relationship with its electrical resistivity values …

Using Collaborative Review To Deepen Conceptual Engagement?, Jude Elund, Lelia Green, Carmen Guinery

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In December 2013 the Design Research Institute at RMIT University, and CREATEC at Edith Cowan University, collaborated in a Symposium addressing the topic of ‘Digital interventions in everyday creativity’. Partly sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, this Symposium was one of a Digital Interventions series organised by Professor Sarah Pink of RMIT. The Call for Papers noted that the symposium was to examine “how digital media are implicated in processes of change, [… interrogating] how people engage digital media in creative practices that intervene in their own and others’ lives, the intentionalities through which …

Towards An Online Ethnography Of Children's Virtual Worlds: A Review Of Current Literature And Research Methods, Ashley Donkin, Donell Holloway, Lelia Green

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The research around children’s use of the Internet has focused on some of the benefits and risks of online play, as well as the digital skills children require to use the Internet safely, particularly virtual worlds. These benefits, risks and digital skills have been examined in European studies, but minimal research attention has been given to young Australian children’s use of virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are simulated environments embedded with social network functions, which allow young children to explore and experiment with identity formation, interactive play and social networking. These Web sites for young children have become increasingly popular. Young …

Examining The Social Aspects Of Enterprise Architecture Implementation: A Morphogenetic Approach, Edi Nuryatno, Philip Dobson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper argues that existing research in Enterprise Architecture (EA) tends to emphasise the technical aspects of implementation and neglects the role of ‘people’. The paper uses Archer’s Morphogenetic Approach (MA) to elaborate the social context of EA. This approach examines the relationships between agency, structure and culture to understand how stakeholders affect and are affected by EA implementation. A university just commencing an EA program is used as a case example. The case example describes the challenging university environment and provides an illustration of the important situational logics that direct agency action within the complex social context of a …

Current Land Bird Distribution And Trends In Population Abundance Between 1982 And 2012 On Rota, Mariana Islands, Richard J. Camp, Kevin W. Brink, P. Marcos Gorreson, Fred A. Amidon, Paul Radley, S. Paul Berkowitz, Paul C. Banko

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The western Pacific island of Rota is the fourth largest human-inhabited island in the Mariana archipelago and designated an Endemic Bird Area. Between 1982 and 2012, 12 point-transect distance-sampling surveys were conducted to assess bird population status. Surveys did not consistently sample the entire island; thus, we used a ratio estimator to estimate bird abundances in strata not sampled during every survey. Trends in population size were reliably estimated for 11 of 13 bird species, and 7 species declined over the 30-y time series, including the island collared-dove Streptopelia bitorquata, white-throated ground-dove Gallicolumba xanthonura, Mariana fruit-dove Ptilinopus roseicapilla, collared kingfisher …

Cognitive Fatigue: Exploring The Relationship Between The Fatigue Effect And Action Video-Game Experience, James Brooks

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

the effects of cognitive fatigue. Despite this, there remain advantages to regularly playing action video games. In Study 1, VGPs were significantly better at multitasking on the MATB-II compared to the NVGPs. Further, VGPs also demonstrated superior multitasking when driving, as they made significantly fewer traffic violations compared to NVGPs when not fatigued. VGPs demonstrated eye-movements similar to those of expert drivers; however, this did not result in any difference in performance between the two groups. There was also some evidence of a positive effect of video game training, although there was no advantage of one training technique over the …

The Use Of Ontologies In Forensic Analysis Of Smartphone Content, Mohammed Alzaabi, Thomas Anthony Martin, Kamal Taha, Andy Jones

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Digital forensics investigators face a constant challenge in keeping track with evolving technologies such as smartphones. Analyzing the contents of these devices to infer useful information is becoming more time consuming as the volume and complexity of data are increasing. Typically, such analysis is undertaken by a human, which makes it dependent on the experience of the investigator. To overcome such impediments, an automated technique can be utilized in order to aid the investigator to quickly and efficiently analyze the data. In this paper, we propose F-DOS; a set of ontologies that models the smartphone content for the purpose of …

Location Gathering: An Evaluation Of Smartphone-Based Geographic Mobile Field Data Collection Hardware And Applications, Joel Clark

Master's Theses

Mobile field spatial data collection is the act of gathering attribute data, including spatial position, about features in a study area. A common method of field data collection is to use a handheld computing device attached to a global navigation satellite system in which attribute data are directly inputted into a database table. The market for mobile data collection systems was formerly dominated by bulky positioning systems and highly specialized software. However, recent years have seen the emergence and widespread adoption of highly customizable and user-friendly mobile smartphones and tablets. In this research, smartphone devices and smartphone data collection applications …

Effects Of Acute Exercise, Mindfulness Meditation, And Mindfulness Meditation Neurofeedback On Stroop Performance, Claire Evelyn Balgemann

Master's Theses

Empirical research has demonstrated that acute aerobic physical exercise, neurofeedback, and mindfulness meditation independently have positive effects on executive performance. Technology has enabled a new intervention that combines neurofeedback and mindfulness meditation; however its effects on executive function are unknown. The aim in the present study was to understand how executive function may be enhanced in healthy individuals. Forty-two participants were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups: acute physical exercise, mindfulness meditation, or mindfulness meditation neurofeedback delivered via the Muse brain-sensing headband. Participants completed 50 trials of the Stroop task, a well-established measure of executive function. A statistically …

Scaling And Splitting, New Approaches To Health Insurance, Christopher Robertson, Keith A. Joiner

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, cost-sharing in health insurance coverage has become the primary mechanism for reducing insurance expenditures and, by extension, maintaining affordable coverage. Cost-sharing involves patients making various out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for their own health care aside from whatever the insurer pays. As a patient’s spending on health care grows month by month in any given year of coverage, she moves through three different “zones” of insurance, from no insurance, to partial insurance, and finally to full insurance.

Taxation Of State Owned Enterprises: A Review Of Empirical Evidence From China, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

This chapter reviews empirical evidence from China that bears on the general theory of the income taxation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Prior theoretical literature has offered three conflicting views of SOE taxation. The first is that SOE taxation is superfluous, because the government shareholder can simply demand profit distributions. The second is that SOE taxation is necessary to put state-owned and private firms on an equal competitive footing. The third view holds that the significance of SOE taxation lies in the fact that SOE managers, like managers of private firms, may be dividend averse; in the absence of other effective …

Reactive To Proactive: Title Ix's Unrealized Capacity To Prevent Campus Sexual Assault, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the efforts to use Title IX to address the problem of sexual assaults on college campuses. It seeks to explain an odd phenomenon: universities seem to put more resources into addressing assaults that have already occurred than they do into preventing sexual assaults from occurring. To better understand how universities implicitly frame their options for addressing sexual assault, I’m going to posit that there are two particularly prevalent analytic approaches to sexual assault prevention. I’m going to call one the law enforcement approach and the other the public health approach. I’m going to link the law enforcement …

Effects Of Sex And Mycorrhizal Fungi On Gas Exchange In The Dioecious Salt Marsh Grass Distichlis Spicata, Kassandra Reuss-Schmidt, Todd N. Rosenstiel, Sally R. Rogers, Allie G. Simpson, Sarah M. Eppley

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Premise of research. In dioecious plant species, males and females often differ in physiology, and mycorrhizal fungal relationships are likely to influence these differences. However, few data are available on the potential role of mycorrhizal fungi in altering sex-specific physiology and population sex ratios of dioecious plant species.

Methodology. In this study, we measured leaf gas exchange in a multifactorial greenhouse experiment with and without mycorrhizal fungal additions and under field conditions in Distichlis spicata, a dioecious C4 salt marsh grass, displaying extreme spatial sex ratio variation.

Pivotal results. We found a significant interaction between gas exchange, plant sex, and …

Judicial Rhetoric & Lawyers' Roles, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Notwithstanding the rich scholarly literature debating the proper roles of lawyers and the precise contours of lawyers’ ethical conduct, as a descriptive matter, the American legal system operates as an adversarial system, premised in part upon clear demarcations between the functions of different lawyers within the system. Broadly speaking, prosecutors have the distinct role of serving justice, which includes the duty to try to convict criminal defendants who are deserving of punishment, in a way that is consistent with both substantive and procedural justice. In contrast, private attorneys have a duty to zealously represent the best interests of their clients, …

Discoverymania: Plausibility Pleading As Misprescription, Fabio Arcila Jr.

Scholarly Works

In replacing notice pleading with plausibility pleading, the Supreme Court chose to use a pleading solution to address a perceived discovery problem. This dissonance calls into question both the wisdom and legitimacy of the Court’s choice because plausibility pleading is too blunt an instrument to serve the Court’s goals: it is destabilizing because it ignores the interrelationship between discovery and other Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; it is unfairly overinclusive because it impacts all plaintiffs in all federal cases rather than only those in the minority of cases in which discovery is likely to be problematic; and it is unfairly …

The Law And The “Spirit Of The Law” In Legal Ethics, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

This article aims to explore the notion of the lawyer’s ethical responsibility to go “beyond” the letter of the law and to comply with the “spirit” or “purpose” of the law. The article suggests that, notwithstanding its promotion of admirable principles and goals, a spirit of the law model may prove inconsistent with basic legal and ethical obligations of lawyers. The lawyer’s duties as fiduciary, as agent, and as zealous advocate, responsible for representing the best interests of the client, preclude the lawyer from focusing on the spirit and purpose of the law rather than on the aims of the …

A Critique Of Hobby Lobby And The Supreme Court's Hands-Off Approach To Religion, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Over the past several decades, the United States Supreme Court has demonstrated an increasing refusal to engage in a close evaluation of the religious nature of Free Exercise and Establishment Clause claims, instead deferring to adherents’ characterizations of the substance and significance of a religious practice or belief. The Supreme Court’s hands-off approach, which it has justified on both constitutional and practical grounds, has attracted considerable scholarly attention, producing a substantial and growing body of literature assessing and, at times, critiquing the Court’s approach.

Part I of this Essay provides a brief overview for analyzing the Supreme Court’s hands-off approach …