Digital Commons Network^™

Winter 2015

Insights

Notes from the interim dean; Ethnographer uncovers America's hidden history; Beck Research Initiative for Women, Gender and Community empowers through community-based research; Program spotlight: Master of Social Work; Professor offers a glimpse into the World of Wine; North-South Dialogue explores key figures across hemispheres; Political Science, WRD take the lead on reframing traditional liberal arts education; Community engagement is at the core of community service studies; In brief; Faculty publications

The Effects Of Training Programs Using Free Weights And Free Motion Machines On Strength In Untrained College-Age Females, Katherine Milton

Graduate Theses

No abstract provided.

El Paseo By Harold Trompetero: Approaching Popular Film From Colombia In A North American Classroom, Matias Martinez Abeijon Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This article explores the manner in which popular films from Colombia—

specifically comedies, such as the movie El paseo, directed by Harold Trompetero in 2010, which has been the highest grossing movie to date in the history of movies produced in Colombia–may be used in the classroom in the context of a World Language, Literature, and Culture department in the United States. It is the contention of this study that such a choice is far from common due to diverse issues, which include the limited access to international distribution of the majority of the so-called “national film” or, in …

Effects Of A Beaver Pond In Southwestern Montana On Metals Concentration And Loads, William J. Drury, Martin Lorenzo

Environmental Engineering

A 400-m² beaver pond on Cabbage Gulch (Deer Lodge County, MT) was investigated for its retention of total recoverable (TR) and dissolved arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), and total suspended solids (TSS) during three storm water runoff events in the summer of 2013. Water samples were collected and flow rates were measured at monitoring stations above and below the pond. Decreases in TR metals concentrations were -17 percent for As (that is, As concentrations increased), 10 percent for Cu, 7 percent for Pb, and 27 percent for Zn. Total recoverable metals retained in the …

The Synchronous City, Patricia Olivera

Architecture Thesis Prep

Architects’ conceptualizations of cities reference and reflect trends in their societies at their time of conception. During the early 1900's architects speculated on modernist visions of cities, during the mid-late 1900's radical visions of cities emerged, and now, this project will operate among the framework of previous visions of cities by architects and envision a city based on digital information and communications technologies. We are living a Digital Revolution and exist in the age of Information. This thesis will explore the ways in which a city will be conceptualized if it was based on digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) …

Subversive Supermarket: Tactical Interjections Into The Everyday Experience, Taylor Johnson

Architecture Thesis Prep

The architecture of the supermarket and the landscape of food production, processing, distribution, and consumption it is situated within, further isolates the relationships consumers have with their food and routines. Investigating the intersection between socio-political, and economic constructs that shape the supermarket, the psychology of the interior constructs, and uses of spatial theory to frame architectural tactics of intervention, the thesis aims to embed a narrative subscript into the existing supermarket experience, to expand beyond its systemic constructs and user policies.

Collaborating With Catastrophe: The User's Guide To, Patricia Cafferky

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis contends that the narrative nature of architecture gives it the potential to act as a jeremiad, taking the present day failings of society in the face of climate change and extrapolating out a potential future dystopia to instigate a critical dialogue and challenge the status quo. Here, architecture will act as a medium, as opposed to more typical literary works or photojournalism techniques which are usually associated with communicating social critique.

Algorithmic Settlements, Benjamin Anderson-Nelson

Architecture Thesis Prep

Utilizing a typological understanding of the spatial conditions of informal settlements to help suggest how interventions will affect conditions is the goal. Understanding the beneficial aspects of communal space created as well as the nature of adaptability within the settlement provides architects with a better understanding of where and how they might intervene. Simulating the conditions of an informal settlement digitally would help to better understand the individualistic agency involved in their creation. Modeling the inter-relational actions between neighboring entities within the system allows for the system to be understood more complexly than before. Designers would be able to add …

Private Room On The Wheel, Kathy Teng

Architecture Thesis Prep

The American highway is nationly used for commerce and commuting, but it creates diverse lifestyles as well. The cross-country highway and road trip are deeply rooted in the American psyche, supported the vast Federal Highway Network and the rapid growth in ownership of automobiles by American families since the 1940s, establishing a sense of freedom in their mobile lifestyles. Other highway users have less control over their daily routine.

Truck drivers spend a majority of their times on the road, while the remaining part of their day is spent sleeping in fixed truck cabins or eating at all-night truck stops. …

The Museum Of Ideas: Fantastic Wilderness Park, Alyssa Goraieb

Architecture Thesis Prep

The history of wilderness is the history of an idea. A missing element of the natural history museum is the human attitude within which nature is captured and displayed. This project wants to put the historical displays of the museum within a context by making an addition to the natural history museum that archives the historical attitudes, experiences and perceptions towards wilderness.

The Ottoman Han: Recovery Of A Lost Typology, Asli Germirli

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis will focus on the architectural interventions for the 17th century structure of Buyuk Valide Han. The project will be shaped through the multiple lenses of Critical Regionalism, urban planning, conservation and sustainability. The aim is to add value to the Hans District and to revive the commercial and cultural identity through the preservation of the older structures and the introduction of modern architecture.

Exploring Patterns Of Obsidian Conveyance In Baja California, Mexico, Lee M. Panich, Érika Moranchel Mondragón, Antonio Porcayo Michelini

Faculty Publications

The X-ray fluorescence analysis of obsidian artifacts from four study areas in Baja California, Mexico, suggests regional and local patterning in the geological sources used by indigenous hunter-gatherers during the late prehistoric and colonial periods. Obsidian artifacts were typically made from materials from the closest geological source, creating a distinct north-south pattern of obsidian distribution. In the northern region of Baja California, this pattern appears to correspond to ethnographically-documented language boundaries. However, within each study area, particular sites exhibit higher degrees of obsidian source diversity than others—a pattern that may suggest chronological or social variation in access to particular obsidian …

Selected Characteristics For Nebraska Counties From The 2010-2014 American Community Survey, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Past Publications

On December 5, 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau released five‐year American Community Survey (ACS) estimates for the combined years of 2009 through 2013, making available social, economic, housing and demographic statistics for Nebraska’s counties. Also available are estimates for every community and legislative district in Nebraska and the nation.

The data are based on a rolling national sample survey mailed to about 3 million addresses each year, resulting in nearly 2 million final interviews each year from 2010 through 2014. By pooling several years of survey responses, the ACS can generate detailed statistical portraits of smaller geographies such as counties. …

'Dust, Drought, And Dreams Gone Dry' Program Booklet, Eastern Illinois University

Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry: Program Booklet

No abstract provided.

Building Within Our Borders: Black Women Reformers In The South From 1890 To 1920, Tonya D. Blair

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the reform work of four unsung black women reformers in Virginia from the post-Reconstruction period into the early twentieth century. The four women all spearheaded social reformist institutions and organizations such as industrial training schools, a settlement house, an orphanage, a home for the elderly, a girl’s reformatory/industrial school and a state federation of black women’s clubs. One of the selected women includes Jennie Dean, a former slave from northern Virginia, who founded an industrial training school for African-Americans in post-Civil War Manassas. Dean’s industrial school resulted from her tenacious drive to imbue former slaves with literacy …

What Will The Neighbors Think? Perceptions Of Failure Intolerance On Individual Entrepreneurial Intention In The Rural Midwest, Brock M. Stout

Dissertations

Entrepreneurship is increasingly considered the most efficacious economic development intervention, but employing research-informed efforts is important. Extensive literature links the perception of a local culture’s intolerance of business failure to extinguishing of entrepreneurial intention in a community. Some research refutes that link. This study investigated the influence of perceived failure intolerance (PFI) on entrepreneurial intention—and the influence of self-efficacy on perceived failure intolerance—in the rural Midwestern United States. The study employed a modified Delphi methodology to analyze the decision-making processes of potential entrepreneurs as interpreted by experts in rural entrepreneurship. The study provides data about the interaction of human capital …

Planning With Transaction Logic, Reza Basseda

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Automated planning has been the subject of intensive research and is at the core of several areas of AI, including intelligent agents and robotics. In this dissertation, we argue that Transaction Logic is a natural specification, experimentation, prototyping, and potentially implementation language for planning algorithms. This enables one to see further afield and thus discover better and more general solutions than using one-of-a-kind formalisms that have been traditionally dominating this field. Specifically, we take the well-known STRIPS planning strategy and show that Transaction Logic lets one specify this strategy and several of its far-reaching extensions easily and concisely. In addition, …

Measuring Routing Policies On The Internet, Mohammad Haseeb Niaz

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Models of Internet routing are critical for studies of Internet security, reliability and evolution, which often rely on simulations of the Internet’s routing system. Accurate models are difficult to build and suffer from a dearth of ground truth data, as ISPs often treat their connectivity and routing policies as trade secrets. In this environment, researchers rely on a number of simplifying assumptions and models proposed over a decade ago, which are widely criticized for their inability to capture routing policies employed in practice. This thesis makes the following two contributions: Investigating Interdomain Routing Policies. First we put Internet topologies and …

A World Consuming Itself: Posthuman Cannibals After The End Of The World, Joseph Ronald Kampff

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

This thesis investigates the growing trend in late 20th- and early 21st-century post-apocalyptic fiction to feature cannibalism. I argue that these narratives reimagine the cannibal to reflect today’s global worldview. By comparing contemporary cannibal narratives such as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and the Wachowskis’ film series The Matrix to H. G. Wells’s classic novel The Time Machine, I show that today’s cannibal narratives radically destabilize the binary oppositions of (usually Western) civilized humanity and its savage, cannibal-animal others that traditional cannibal narratives tend to underwrite. The traditional cannibal figure has been an essential element in not only the construction of …

Snap And Tanf Administration In New York State Counties: Comparing Case-Based, Mixed Methods And Task-Based Processes, Ryan Gadzo

Public Administration Master’s Projects

The purpose of this study is to examine the administrative style used in New York State (NYS) counties for administering two needs-based federal programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Needs-based federally-funded policies have significant implications for public administration and intergovernmental relations because these programs involve public servants in the determination and delivery of services of federally-mandated programs which states deliver through a variety of models (state, county, or contracting with private or nonprofit agencies). In NYS, counties are given this responsibility. While the numbers of persons receiving TANF has leveled off since the …

25 Year Club: 34th Annual Gala, Western Michigan University

25 Year Club

25 Year Club: 34th Annual Gala

December 1, 2015

• New Inductees
• Members
• Retirees

Reconstruction Of Daily 30 M Data From Hj Ccd, Gf-1 Wfv, Landsat, And Modis Data For Crop Monitoring, Mingquan Wu, Xiaoyang Zhang, Wenjiang Huang, Zheng Niu, Changyao Wang, Wang Li, Pengyu Hao

GSCE Faculty Publications

With the recent launch of new satellites and the developments of spatiotemporal data fusion methods, we are entering an era of high spatiotemporal resolution remote-sensing analysis. This study proposed a method to reconstruct daily 30 m remote-sensing data for monitoring crop types and phenology in two study areas located in Xinjiang Province, China. First, the Spatial and Temporal Data Fusion Approach (STDFA) was used to reconstruct the time series high spatiotemporal resolution data from the Huanjing satellite charge coupled device (HJ CCD), Gaofen satellite no. 1 wide field-of-view camera (GF-1 WFV), Landsat, and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. Then, …

Nebraska Legislative District Quick Facts From The 2010-2014 American Community Survey, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Past Publications

The Nebraska Legislature's Planning Committee was created in 2009 with the passage of LB 653 in order to help establish a process of long-term state planning with the Nebraska Legislature. The committee was created to assist state government in identifying emerging trends, assets and challenges of the state and the long-term implications of the decisions made by the Nebraska Legislature.

Phylogenetic Systematics And Biogeography Of Lemurs From Madagascar, James Paul Herrera

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The evolutionary mechanisms influencing biodiversity include abiotic and biotic factors, such as climate change, vicariance, ecological adaptation, and competition. I investigated evolutionary mechanisms that may have influenced the diversity of lemurs from Madagascar by testing geographic and ecological hypotheses in a phylogenetic framework. I used total-evidence methods to infer the lemur phylogeny and divergence times of extant and extinct species. I then tested macroevolutionary hypotheses about lemur biogeography based on the phylogeny to shed new light on the causes of lemur diversification. I examined macroevolution and biogeography at four geographic scales: island-wide, regions, localities, and multiple transects within localities. I …

Carbonic Springs As Distal Manifestations Of The Jemez Geothermal System, San Ysidro, New Mexico, Highlighting The Importance Of Fault Pathways And Hydrochemical Mixing., Christopher Mcgibbon

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Input of deeply sourced (endogenic) waters can contribute significant quantities of salinity to groundwater, degrading water quality, with faults acting as conduits for subsurface fluid flow. Understanding the source, movement, and chemistry of groundwater is becoming ever more significant with changing climate and weather patterns. Systematic sampling was carried out on three groups of carbonic warm and hot springs in New Mexico, USA: 1) Tierra Amarilla springs (~ 20ºC), near San Ysidro south of Nacimiento Mountains, 2) Penasco springs (~ 20 ºC) along the Nacimiento fault west of the Nacimiento basement mountain block, and 3) Soda Dam, Jemez, and Indian …

Estimating The Water Quality Condition Of River And Lake Water In The Midwestern United States From Its Spectral Characteristics, Jing Tan

Open Access Dissertations

This study focuses on developing/calibrating remote sensing algorithms for water quality retrieval in Midwestern rivers and lakes. In the first part of this study, the spectral measurements collected using a hand-held spectrometer as well as water quality observations for the Wabash River and its tributary the Tippecanoe River in Indiana were used to develop empirical models for the retrieval of chlorophyll (chl) and total suspended solids (TSS). A method for removing sky and sun glint from field spectra for turbid inland waters was developed and tested. Empirical models were then developed using a subset of the field measurements with the …

Improved Bias Correction Techniques For Hydrological Simulations Of Climate Change, David W. Pierce, Daniel R. Cayan, Edwin P. Maurer, John T. Abatzoglou, Katherine C. Hegewisch

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering

Global climate model (GCM) output typically needs to be bias corrected before it can be used for climate change impact studies. Three existing bias correction methods, and a new one developed here, are applied to daily maximum temperature and precipitation from 21 GCMs to investigate how different methods alter the climate change signal of the GCM. The quantile mapping (QM) and cumulative distribution function transform (CDF-t) bias correction methods can significantly alter the GCM’s mean climate change signal, with differences of up to 2°C and 30% points for monthly mean temperature and precipitation, respectively. Equidistant quantile matching (EDCDFm) bias correction …

December Agenda, Wku Graduate Council

Graduate School

Meeting agenda.

Intercultural Communicative Competence: Literature Review, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) is a cluster of capabilities that will become even more essential, not only to negotiate borders of many dimensions as globalization proceeds, but also to enhance the ability to maneuver one’s way in a world that changes by the minute. The process of developing ICC prepares the learner to manage and appreciate border crossings on many levels. This brief review of the literature offers a summary of the components of ICC, how it is similar to and different from other competences, and recommendations on how to assess it. This overview may be helpful when considering the …

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Annual Report, 2015, Michael S. Nassaney

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

This year the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project (hereafter the “Project”) established new standards in research, teaching, and public outreach in the study of the fur trade and colonialism in southwest Michigan. The Project continues to collaborate in the generation and dissemination of knowledge under the auspices of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Advisory Committee (FSJAAC), Western Michigan University (WMU) faculty and students, interested stakeholders, supporters, members, and community volunteers. Highlights of 2015 include:

• Fort St. Joseph was featured in the exhibit “Evidence Found” at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in 2015, enjoyed by some 60,000 visitors.
• The Register of Professional …