Digital Commons Network^™

Use Of The Modified Emotional Stroop Task To Detect Suicide Risk In College Students, Yeunjoo Chung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is a challenge to detect those who are at potential risk for suicide because the base rate of suicidal behaviors in non-clinical samples is low. The aim of the present study was to investigate the concurrent and predictive validity of the emotional Stroop task (EST) as a behavioral marker for suicidal behaviors in a college population. Eight hundred and twenty students were asked to perform the EST and to respond to suicide-related self-report measures and were followed up with18 months later. The results indicated that participants with past suicide attempts had longer response latencies to the word "suicide" as …

Gender & Diversity In Contracting And Grants Management, Gichd, Gender In Mine Action

Global CWD Repository

This toolkit has been developed to assist mine action stakeholders to mainstream gender and diversity in contracting and grants management documentation and practices. The guide is designed for use by a broad range of actors, including:

• Donor agencies
• National Mine Action Authorities
• UN agencies
• Other mine action partners that subcontract components of their work to other organisations

The toolkit is composed of a checklist that seeks to ensure that gender and diversity considerations are mainstreamed into the core documentation in contracting and grants management, such as: requests for proposals (RFP); invitations to bid; call for expression of interest; grant application …

The Quinceañera Event: Pre-Service Teachers Implementing A Culturally Relevant Math Activity In A Hispanic Community, Olga M. Ramirez, Cherie Mccollough, Zulmaris Diaz

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) to work with culturally relevant mathematics and family math learning events (FMLEs) in mutual settings are important goals. This paper promotes these important teacher preparation goals as implemented in an after school program by a university math content faculty along with other FMLE support faculty. To illustrate, this paper focuses on a culturally relevant mathematics activity based on the popular social event known as the Quinceañera (the 15th birthday party for a young lady) presented at FMLEs by PSTs and which explores the customs of the Hispanic culture coupled with linkages to mathematical connections.

Use Of A High-Value Social Audience Index For Target Audience Identification On Twitter, Siaw Ling Lo, David Cornforth, Raymond. Chiong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the large and growing user base of social media, it is not an easy feat to identify potential customers for business. This is mainly due to the challenge of extracting commercially viable contents from the vast amount of free-form conversations. In this paper, we analyse the Twitter content of an account owner and its list of followers through various text mining methods and segment the list of followers via an index. We have termed this index as the High-Value Social Audience (HVSA) index. This HVSA index enables a company or organisation to devise their marketing and engagement plan according …

Special-Education Law In Mexico And The United States, Charles J. Russo, Ricardo Lozano

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The challenges of meeting the requirements of students with special needs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other laws are a particularly timely topic, as large numbers of native Spanish-speaking students move into the United States.

Against that backdrop, this article reviews the laws for special education in Mexico and the United States. The focus on the laws in Mexico stems from the fact that many students cross the border daily to attend public schools in the United States, and because Mexico has many laws in place dealing with special education. We offer school district leaders a comparative …

Constructive Ambiguity: Ip Licenses As A Case Study, Michal Shur-Ofry, Ofer Tur-Sinai

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Ambiguity in contracts is often perceived as undesirable. A certain level of ambiguity, however, can have significant virtues: reducing transaction costs associated with foreseeing and negotiating remote contingencies; facilitating the closing of efficient transactions that would not otherwise close; increasing the adaptability and “anti-fragility” of contracts in the face of unforeseen developments; and preserving trust between the parties. Some contracts are more likely to benefit from a certain degree of ambiguity. Relying on multi-disciplinary literature, this Article systematically analyzes ambiguity’s merits and identifies three principal features of transactions that are positively correlated to the virtues of ambiguity: (1) long duration, …

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Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

At Brunning: People And Technology: At The Only Edge That Means Anything/How We Understand What We Do, Dennis Brunning

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Robust Multiple Regimes In Growth Volatility, Andros Kourtellos, Ioanna Stylianou, Chih Ming Tan

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

In this paper, we uncover growth volatility regimes and identify their robust determinants using a large international panel of countries. In doing so, we propose a novel empirical methodology that allows us to simultaneously deal with two key elements of model uncertainty, namely theory uncertainty and parameter heterogeneity, by unifying two recent econometric techniques: Bayesian model averaging and threshold regression. We find ample evidence of parameter heterogeneity and model uncertainty. Our results highlight the role of ethnic fractionalization, institutions, financial development, health, and geography.

Bridging The Vocabulary Gap Between Health Seekers And Healthcare Knowledge, Liqiang Nie, Yiliang Zhao, Akbari Mohammad, Jialie Shen, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The vocabulary gap between health seekers and providers has hindered the cross-system operability and the interuser reusability. To bridge this gap, this paper presents a novel scheme to code the medical records by jointly utilizing local mining and global learning approaches, which are tightly linked and mutually reinforced. Local mining attempts to code the individual medical record by independently extracting the medical concepts from the medical record itself and then mapping them to authenticated terminologies. A corpus-aware terminology vocabulary is naturally constructed as a byproduct, which is used as the terminology space for global learning. Local mining approach, however, may …

The Persistence Of The Caliphate Debate In Egyptian Legal Thought: Historical Analysis From 1925 To 2014, Assil Salem

Theses and Dissertations

In the early centuries of Islam, the term caliph was referred to the highest leader of the Muslim community. He had two roles; firstly as a ruler practicing the roles of the Prophet and secondly as a religious leader leading the communal prayers. The Caliphate has appeared for fourteen centuries and was abolished by Mustafa Kemal Atātūrk in 1924. Although Muslims have been without caliph for ninety years, heated controversy on the restoration of the Caliphate has been debated among Egyptians since 1920s until 2015. This thesis aims to answer the caliphate question,” is the Caliphate obligatory in Shari’a?” by …

The Effects Of A Small-Group Direct Instruction Intervention On The Reading Achievement Of English Language Learners, Laurie Ottehenning

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the effects of a Tier 2, small group intervention developed by the Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI) that employs direct instruction strategies (including scripted sequenced lessons, teacher modeling, and repeated practice). The reading achievement of 15 English language learners (ELLs) in the ECRI intervention was compared to the reading achievement of 12 ELLs in a computer-based reading intervention. The reading achievement of 27 ELLs was also compared to the reading achievement of 48 non-ELLs in the interventions. Repeated measures ANOVAs and independent t-tests analyzed the results of the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-II Brief, pre- and …

Introducing Public Service Media Principles To The State-Owned Newspapers: The Case Study Of Al-Ahram, Salma Adel Hussein

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt has a large number of state-owned newspapers that are considered as the mouthpieces of the political power. In order to remove the state control over the content provided by these newspapers it is recommended that these newspapers undertake bold reforms. The thesis suggests their transformation to public service newspapers. It explores if Al-Ahram can be transformed into one that is practicing editorial and financial independence in addition to good governance. In order to respond to this question it compares the current situation of Al-Ahram to a suggested ideal set up, by undertaking a gap analysis. Then a SWOT analysis …

Book Review: San Miguel, Chicana/O Struggles For Education: Activism In The Community, Maritza De La Trinidad

Mexican American Studies Faculty Publications

Guadalupe San Miguel’s Chicana/o Struggles for Education: Activism in the Community is the seventh book in the University of Houston Series in Mexican American Studies. The author provides a historical overview of the multiple strategies and methods that Mexican American activists, organizations, and like-minded individuals employed in order to obtain not only quality education but also culturally relevant and religious education for Mexican-origin students from the 1960s to 2010. San Miguel focuses on this period in order to show how Mexican American education evolved in the post–Civil Rights era and how different groups pushed for educational reforms to achieve their …

Comprehensive Individualized Curriculum And Instructional Design, Samuel Sennott, Sheldon Loman, Kristy Lee Park, Luis F. Pérez, Michael J. Kennedy, John Romig, Wendy J. Rodgers

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

This online textbook addresses the population of individuals with disabilities that experience complex lifelong needs across multiple areas in their lives. Drs. Sennott and Loman drafted this book (along with the help from some friends) with the hope of providing pertinent, practical, and current resources to future special educators who plan to serve individuals with complex disabilities.

Chapter 1: Guiding Principles for Developing Comprehensive and Meaningful Instruction for Individuals with Complex Needs by Sheldon L. Loman, provides readers with practical resources to develop their repertoire of tools for designing supports for individuals with significant needs.

Chapter 2: Naturalistic …

An Overview Of Steganography For The Computer Forensics Examiner (Updated Version, February 2015), Gary C. Kessler

Publications

"Steganography is the art of covered or hidden writing. The purpose of steganography is covert communication-to hide the existence of a message from a third party. This paper is intended as a high-level technical introduction to steganography for those unfamiliar with the field. It is directed at forensic computer examiners who need a practical understanding of steganography without delving into the mathematics, although references are provided to some of the ongoing research for the person who needs or wants additional detail. Although this paper provides a historical context for steganography, the emphasis is on digital applications, focusing on hiding information …

Creating Customer Love: How Organizations Can Engender Positive Affect, In Online Product-Centered Communities, William J. Paolillo

Student Scholarship

The Internet has disrupted a company's traditional control over the communication they use to create positive affect. The compilation of reviewer posts plays a leading role in constructing a company's overall brand sentiment. What is less well understood is how companies can affect a positive post. The objective in this study was to develop a framework that demonstrates how customers and organizations interact online; as well as investigate the on-line interaction and the positive affect it generates. Using a structured equation model, we formulated hypothesis then tested that two distinct mechanisms work together to underpin the creation of a company's …

Poetry And The Arab Spring, George A. Simon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Abstract: In 2010-11 the world saw the rise of the Arab Spring, a series of uprisings across the Arab world. These uprisings were attempts by the Arab peoples to over throw their governments and bring freedom and change to their societies in order to live in dignity and grace. These populist uprisings produced powerful poetry focusing on the corruption of Arab governments and the rampant economic and social problems faced by the youth of the Arab world. In the following work I have chosen a number of Arabic poems which I translated and analyzed in order to see the relation …

Ecological Aspects Of The Music Of John Luther Adams, David Arie Shimoni

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The composer John Luther Adams envisions his role as one who re-imagines and re-creates relationships with other human and non-human beings through music. This dissertation consists of an examination of songbirdsongs, Earth and the Great Weather, In the White Silence, Strange and Sacred Noise, The Place Where You Go to Listen, and Inuksuit to determine whether, and how, Adams succeeds in re-creating these relationships.

In the Introduction various means of connecting music and the natural world are reviewed, a semiotic and ecomusicological framework for analysis is established, and a listening typology is suggested. In the following chapters, analysis of …

Physiological And Subjective Aspects Of Positive Mood In Relation To Executive Functioning: The Potential Moderating Role Of Personality, Luz Helena Ospina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Positive affect has been demonstrated to improve aspects of cognition. However, recent studies reveal that positive affect may hinder the same cognitive processes, such as executive functioning, memory and creativity. These discrepant findings may be due to differing levels of physiological arousal, a component of the circumplex model of affect, which has been largely ignored in affective research. For example, one recent study suggests that positive valence coupled with varying levels of physiological arousal (i.e., low, moderate, and high) may differentially affect performance on tasks of verbal fluency and memory. Furthermore, one other explanation for these inconsistent findings may relate …

The Challenge Of Co-Religionist Commerce, Michael A. Helfand, Barak D. Richman

Duke Law Journal

This Article addresses the rise of "co-religionist commerce" in the United States—that is, the explosion of commercial dealings that take place between co-religionists who intend their transactions to achieve both commercial and religious objectives. To remain viable, coreligionist commerce requires all the legal support necessary to sustain all other commercial relationships. Contracts must be enforced, parties must be protected against torts, and disputes must be reliably adjudicated.

Under current constitutional doctrine, co-religionist commercial agreements must be translated into secular terminology if they are to be judicially enforced. But many religious goods and services cannot be accurately translated without religious terms …

Forcing Patent Claims, Tun-Jen Chiang

Michigan Law Review

An enormous literature has criticized patent claims for being ambiguous. In this Article, I explain that this literature misunderstands the real problem: the fundamental concern is not that patent claims are ambiguous but that they are drafted by patentees with self-serving incentives to write claims in an overbroad manner. No one has asked why the patent system gives self-interested patentees the leading role in delineating the scope of their own patents. This Article makes two contributions to the literature. First, it explicitly frames the problem with patent claims as one of patentee self-interest rather than the intrinsic ambiguity of claim …

Regulating Electricity-Market Manipulation: A Proposal For A New Regulatory Regime To Proscribe All Forms Of Manipulation, Matthew Evans

Michigan Law Review

Congress broadly authorized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) to protect consumers of electricity from all forms of manipulation in the electricity markets, but the regulations that FERC passed are not nearly so expansive. As written, FERC’s Anti-Manipulation Rule covers only instances of manipulation involving fraud. This narrow scope is problematic, however, because electricity markets can also be manipulated by nonfraudulent activity. Thus, in order to reach all forms of manipulation, FERC is forced to interpret and apply its Anti-Manipulation Rule in ways that strain the plain language and accepted understanding of the rule and therefore constitute an improper extension …

An Examination Of The Effect Of Vision-Related Factors And Availability Of Health Care Resources On Depression, Functional Status, And Falls Among New York City Senior Center Attendees, Lauren Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is substantial variability across different geographic regions and demographic groups in health outcomes and health resource availability. This dissertation examines the relationship between self-reported ocular disease and depression, functional status, and falls in a diverse sample of senior center attendees in New York City. Further, these analyses explored whether the availability of health care resources at the area level affects the observed relationship between ocular disease and these other adverse outcomes.

This dissertation project addresses two main gaps in the current research, specifically, the need to better understand elders' experiences with these conditions in different geographic regions and demographic …

Civilizing Settlers: Catholic Missionaries And The Colonial State In French Algeria, 1830-1914, Kyle Francis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that between 1830 and 1914, with increasing intensity over time, French Catholic missionaries sowed divisions among the European population of French Algeria. The French government initially welcomed missionaries to cater to religiously devout Spanish, Italian, and Maltese settlers in Algeria and to foster their loyalty to the colonial state. Missionaries, however, incited the professional jealousy and personal animosity of the territory's generally less devout French population, who saw Catholicism and missionaries as little different from Islam and the "fanatical" Muslim population. Throughout this period, missionaries thus occupied a liminal space in the racialized hierarchy of colonial rule. …

Vocabulary Through Affixes And Word Families - A Computer-Assisted Language Learning Program For Adult Ell Students, Magdalena Kieliszek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vocabulary plays an important role in language learning of ELL (English Language Learner) students. This work discusses the importance of metalinguistic awareness in teaching vocabulary to adult English Language Learners at an intermediate- or advanced-level of English language proficiency with an emphasis on learning vocabulary through word families and increased morphological awareness. The main contribution is a computer-based program that guides users through a series of interactive reading and vocabulary practice exercises which allow them to explore and learn how certain words are connected through word families and how some of the most common affixes in English can affect the …

The Encoding Of Temporality In Second Language Acquisition: A Study Of Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Esl Learners, Li Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the influences of pragmatic factors, lexical devices, as well as the lexical aspectual properties of verbs on second language learners' encoding of temporality in their target language. The pragmatic factors being investigated include a recency effect and the number of occurrences of a tense in the previous context, and the lexical devices include past-time temporal adverbials and frequency adverbs. The role of the lexical aspectual properties of verbs is checked against the Aspect Hypothesis, which states that learners will initially restrict past or perfective marking to achievement and accomplishment verbs and later gradually extend this usage to …

Performing Blackness In A Mulatto Society: Negotiating Racial Identity Through Music In The Dominican Republic, Angelina Maria Tallaj-García

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation analyzes Dominican racial and ethnic identity through an examination of music and music cultures. Previous studies of Dominican identity have focused primarily on the racialized invention of the Dominican nation as white, or non-black, often centering on the building of Dominican identity in (sometimes violent) opposition to the Haitian nation and to Haitian racial identity. I argue that although Dominicans have not developed an explicit verbal discourse of black affirmation, blackness (albeit a contextually contingent articulation) is embedded in popular conceptions of dominicanidad ("Dominicanness") and is enacted through music. My dissertation explores ways in which popular notions of …

Hyperlink-Extended Pseudo Relevance Feedback For Improved Microblog Retrieval, Tarek Elganainy

Theses and Dissertations

Microblog retrieval has received much attention in recent years due to the wide spread of social microblogging platforms such as Twitter. The main motive behind microblog retrieval is to serve users searching a big collection of microblogs a list of relevant documents (microblogs) matching their search needs. What makes microblog retrieval different from normal web retrieval is the short length of the user queries and the documents that you search in, which leads to a big vocabulary mismatch problem. Many research studies investigated different approaches for microblog retrieval. Query expansion is one of the approaches that showed stable performance for …

Language Attitudes Towards Dialects Of Arabic In Egypt, Ibrahim Eltouhamy

Theses and Dissertations

It has been widely believed that a negative attitude is consistently to be found with the rural dialects of Egyptian Arabic, and that their speakers, especially those who emigrate to urban areas, ultimately tend to change their dialects to adapt, at least partially, to the prestige variety of vernacular Arabic, in this case the urban Cairene dialect (Bassiouney, 2009; Haeri, 1991; Miller, 2005; Woidich, 1994). In this regard, language attitudes towards rural dialects of Arabic in Egypt have been only slightly investigated sociolinguistically, as the majority of studies of Arabic language attitudes have been limited to investigating speakers’ attitudes toward …