Digital Commons Network^™

Eular Textbook On Rheumatic Diseases, Marwan H. Adwan

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Who Calls On Countries To Protect Health From Climate Change

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Measles Vaccination Has Saved An Estimated 17.1 Million Lives Since 2000

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Good Enough To Be Getting On With? The State Of Federal Sentencing Legislation, December 2015, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This article traces the evolution of the sentencing reform debate in Congress in 2015. It summarizes and compares the six major pieces of sentencing legislation introduced in 2015. It describes the progression from con­ceptually simple, broadly applicable reforms of mandatory minimum sentences to the regime of complex and highly restrictive rules relaxing mandatory minimum sentences for a modest subset of federal defendants found in the bills that passed the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. The article summarizes some of the concerns voiced about he sentencing provisions of the various bills. Finally, it discusses the three pending bills relating to back-end …

Borderplex Economic Outlook To 2017, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Tiers 1, 2 & 3 Intervention: Sleep And School, Katherine M. Kidwell, Maren Hankey, Donna M. Flores, Tori R. Van Dyk, Alyssa Lundahl, Timothy D. Nelson

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Conclusion

Educators need to take a more active role in identifying and addressing sleep related issues in students in order to maximize their learning potential and to minimize the numerous negative outcomes of sub-optimal sleep and sleep disorders. Specifically, school personnel can educate parents on the importance of sleep and advocate for later school start times for middle and high school students. In addition, when symptoms persist, educators can make recommendations to parents as a part of the SAT and MDT. See Figure 4 for recommendations for schools.

Essays On Managing Intuition For Strategic Option Generation, Tejpavan Singh Gandhok

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation comprises of two essays. The first essay seeks to examine the issue of 'slow' (i.e. gestation periods over hours, weeks and months) forms of intuition and their complex interactions with analytic thinking, especially in the context of breakthrough ideation/ complex problem solving. This exploratory study with qualitative observations with a small set of experienced practitioners supports the sparse academic literature in this area that managers do rely on long gestation forms of sub-conscious processing and that these forms of thinking manifest themselves in different forms with varying degrees of confidence and positive emotion/ affect (popularly referred to as …

Human Capital In The Human Resource Function: The Positioning And Impact Of The Chief Human Resource Officer, Richard Raymond Smith

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years, interest in human capital as a strategic resource of the firm has created new streams of research oriented on the value of strategic human resource management, high performance work systems, and human capital as resource of the firm for competitive advantage. The Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) serves as the steward of human capital of the firm, yet little is known about the nature and impact of this critical role that is charged with building strategic advantage with the human capital resources of the firm. Over the past decade the CHRO has risen to take a prominent …

The Vascular Flora Of Wayne County, Mississippi, Daniel M. Mcnair

Master's Theses

The vascular flora of Wayne County, Mississippi, was surveyed from 2013–2015, and the species of native and naturalized plants are listed. In total, 1,135 species were identified from field collections, previously collected herbarium specimens, and field observations. These belong to 556 genera and 165 families. Four of these species represent first recorded occurrences in the state of Mississippi: Blyxa aubertii Rich., Gomphrena serrata Pav. ex Moq., Isoetes valida (Engelm.) Clute, and Polypogon interruptus Kunth. GPS coordinates are given for important collection sites representing the diversity of plant communities in the county. All voucher specimens from the survey are deposited in …

A Cultural Consideration: Eliminating The Barriers In Order To Effectively Communicate Crises, Morgan H. Dunaway

Master's Theses

This study aimed at gaining a better understanding of the Hispanic American culture in an effort to evaluate how they view and receive messages sent from the government. The purpose of this study was to further the conversation that messages should be designed with careful thought in order to resonate with the target audience involved in the communication process. A previous study found that the majority of the Hispanic American population felt as if they are overlooked and would not be warned properly in a time of crisis (Heath, Lee, & Ni, 2009). Therefore, the present study focused on variables …

Management Strategy Evaluation For The Atlantic Surfclam, Spisula Solidissima, Using A Fisheries Economics Model, Kelsey M. Kuykendall

Master's Theses

The Atlantic surfclam, Spisula solidissima, is an economically valuable bivalve harvested along the northeastern United States. The surfclam’s range has contracted and the center of the stock’s distribution has shifted north driven by warmer bottom water temperatures. Declining landings per unit effort (LPUE) in the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB) is one result. Declining stock abundance and LPUE suggest that overfishing may be occurring off New Jersey. The objective of this project is to perform a management strategy evaluation (MSE) for Spisula solidissima. The terminal goal is to identify a preferred management option that promotes enhanced surfclam productivity in the …

Examining The Association Between Psychotropic Medication And Suicidal Desire And Risk, Brittney L. Assavedo

Master's Theses

The primary aim of this study was to examine the relationship between components of suicidal desire and psychotropic medication. Specifically, the usage of psychotropic medication, the usage of specific classes of psychotropic medications and the amount of psychotropic medication utilized and differences in feelings of perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness and overall suicide risk were examined. The present study utilized pre-collected data consisting of 225 patients with substance use disorder undergoing residential treatment for substance dependence. It was posited that individuals utilizing psychotropic medications would exhibit higher mean levels of thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, and suicide risk relative to individuals not …

A Statistical Model For The Prediction Of Dissolved Oxygen Dynamics And The Potential For Hypoxia In The Mississippi Sound And Bight, Andreas Moshogianis

Master's Theses

Hypoxia events occur when dissolved oxygen concentrations fall below the minimum threshold (dissolved oxygen concentrations < 2 mg O₂ L^-1) necessary to avoid respiratory distress among aquatic organisms. In the Mississippi Sound and Bight, hypoxia is most prevalent from late-spring through late summer. Since hypoxia events can have dramatic effects on coastal fisheries, the spatial and temporal magnitude of hypoxia presents a clear threat to the productive fisheries in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Long-term hydrographic data were collected from eight sampling stations on a monthly basis from January 2009 to December 2011 along a cross-shelf transect from the mouth of …

Dual-Interval Spaces: Interrelations Between Interval Classes 1 And 5, Local Pitch Centers And Form In Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 12, Tae Young Hong

Master's Theses

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Sonata No. 1, written in 1926, is one of his most complex and lengthy works for piano. In contrast to the conservative style used in his critically-acclaimed Symphony No. 1, Op. 10, composed a year earlier, the sonata employs a highly modernistic idiom which predominated the composer’s output in the late 1920’s. The musical surface of the sonata was crafted by an extensive use of interval classes 1 and 5 which serve as the primary means of structuring pitch material.

This paper examines the surface combinations of two interval classes as well as their interaction with …

Encouraging Insurers To Regulate: The Role (If Any) For Tort Law, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Insurance companies are financially responsible for a substantial portion of the losses associated with risky activities in the economy. The more insurers can lower the risks posed by their insureds, the more competitively they can price their policies, and the more customers they can attract. Thus, competition forces insurers to be private regulators of risk. To that end, insurers deploy a range of techniques to encourage their insureds to reduce the risks of their insured activities, from charging experience-rated premiums to discounting premium rates for insureds who make specific behavioral changes designed to reduce risk. Somewhat paradoxically, however, tort law …

Design Of A New Digital Relay For Transmission Line Fault Detection, Classification And Localization Based On A New Composite Relay And Artificial Neural Network Approach, Ahmed Sabri Altaie

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on new approach to detect, classify, and localize the fault in transmission line. Firstly, fault detection was carried out using the New Composite Relay (CR) which, has different characteristics and the ability to detect any type of fault including series faults. Secondly, fault classification was conducted using the Feed Forward Artificial Neural Network (FFANN). In addition, the fault classification led to the investigation of the best use of the FFANN. The data used come from MATLAB/SIMULINK three phase series compensated network. The results obtained using FFANN, were compared with the type of the fault that have been …

Physiological Response To Dissonance In Musicians And Nonmusicians, Angela Beth Biehl

Masters Theses

Knowing the human response to musical dissonance could have important therapeutic implications in the music therapy setting. The listener’s musical experience could significantly impact their response and subsequently its effect in a therapeutic setting. Thus, this study aimed to examine both the psychophysiological and subjective responses to dissonance and the difference in these responses between those with high experience and those with low experience. Participating groups, categorized as high experience (HE) and low experience (LE) in terms of musical knowledge, listened to consonant and dissonant musical excerpts, and rated each excerpt on its pleasantness; their physiologic responses were measured to …

Control Of Cation Ordering In Zinc Tin Nitride And In-Situ Monitoring Of Growth, Brian Christopher Durant

Masters Theses

Semiconducting materials with a band gap around 1.5 eV are very much sought after due to their close match to the solar spectrum. However, some compounds that have shown promise for highly efficient solar cells contain rare, expensive, and sometimes toxic elements, such as indium and gallium. As such, a search for earth abundant materials has become more prominent recently. One such earth abundant semiconducting material that has garnered interest is ZnSnN₂. It has been shown through previous studies that there is the possibility of continuously tuning the band gap between 1.0 and 2.0 eV by controlling the …

Patterns In Faunal Remains At Fort St. Joseph, A French Fur Trade Post In The Western Great Lakes, Joseph Hearns

Masters Theses

Faunal studies have the potential to detect a variety of patterns in animal processing activities at an archaeological site. The spatial relationships of taphonomic mechanisms observed within the animal bone assemblage illuminate the use of space on a site as well as the patterns of waste discard. Patterns within the formation processes influencing the distribution of faunal remains serve as the basis for interpretation of animal processing behaviors. This study analyzes a sample of animal bones from Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), an eighteenth-century French fur trade post in the western Great Lakes region. This post was a hub of exchange …

The Neurochemistry Of Group Singing: Bonding And Oxytocin, Jason Keeler

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the neurochemical correlates of group vocal improvisation and to determine the feasibility of the research methods. One group of four participants sang together in two conditions: pre-composed and improvised. Concentrations of plasma oxytocin and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) were measured before and after each singing condition to assess levels of hormones associated with social affiliation, engagement and arousal. Successful implementation of the methodology, including recruitment, data collection, and sample analysis, served as the primary outcome of this study. ACTH concentrations decreased in both conditions, and significantly so in the pre-composed singing condition. Mean …

Implementing A Linear Quadratic Spacecraft Attitude Control System, Daniel Kolosa

Masters Theses

This thesis implements a linear quadratic attitude control system for a low-thrust spacecraft. The goal is to maintain spacecraft alignment with a time-varying thrust vector needed for trajectory change maneuvers. A linear quadratic attitude control approach is used to maintain spacecraft pointing throughout flight. This attitude control strategy uses the thrust-acceleration input obtained from a linear quadratic optimal trajectory control model that simulates the trajectory of a spacecraft in orbit maneuvers. This attitude model simulates a CubeSat, a small satellite that is equipped with a low-thrust propulsion and attitude control system. An orbit raising and a plane change scenario is …

Petrological And Geochemical Evaluation Of The Sturgeon Falls Intrusive Body, Jonathan Michael Haynes

Masters Theses

The Sturgeon Falls Intrusive Body (SFIB) is a gabbroic intrusion located along the Michigan-Wisconsin border just south of the town of Norway, MI. The SFIB is bounded to the north by the Niagara Shear Zone and the Michigamme Formation (Schulz and Cannon, 2006) and to the south by an unnamed thrust fault zone and the Quinnesec Formation (Sims and Schulz, 1993). Field mapping has shown that the SFIB is composed almost entirely of metagabbro metamorphosed to greenschist facies, with isolated outcrops of clinopyroxenite, which are thought to be xenoliths.

The origin of the SFIB is controversial. Schulz and LeBerge (2003) …

The Taphonomic Factors On Human Remains Inside Chullpas: Marcajirca, Peru, Samantha Lauren Lininger

Masters Theses

This study explored the taphonomic factors that contributed to the preservation of human skeletal remains inside ancient above-ground tomb in Marcajirca, Peru. This study incorporated one hundred and eighteen bones from three chullpas. Five taphonomic factors were examined: bone type, plant activity, root presence, weathering, and cultural factors. Surface layers inside each chullpa were analyzed using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Chi-square tests were employed to investigate preservation and taphonomic factors. The results from the statistical tests indicated that there was a significant difference in the taphonomic factors on different bone types. Chullpa 6 was significant because it was unique …

Design Of Digital Down Converter Chain For Software Defined Radio Systems On Fpga, Nagarjun Marappa

Masters Theses

Modern communication systems have increasingly attempted to trade off the digital signal processing for analog circuitry. In performing this tradeoff, advanced algorithms have been implemented in both custom programmable hardware and in software; such systems are commonly called Software Defined Radios (SDR). Advanced software defined radios consist of highly configurable hardware and computers used as digital signal processing (DSP) platforms that provide the technology for realizing current and future generations of digital wireless communication infrastructure. Many sophisticated signal processing tasks are performed in SDR, including compression algorithms, channel estimation, equalization, forward error correction and protocol management. This research has focused …

An Integrated Framework For Cardiac Sounds Diagnosis, Zichun Tong

Masters Theses

The Phonocardiogram (PCG) signal contains valuable information about the cardiac condition and is a useful tool in recognizing dysfunction and heart failure. By analyzing the PCG, early detection and diagnosis of heart diseases can be accomplished since many pathological conditions of the cardiovascular system cause murmurs or abnormal heart sounds. This thesis presents an algorithm to classify normal and abnormal heart sound signals using PCG. The proposed analysis is based on a framework composed of several statistical signal analysis techniques such as wavelet based de-noising, energy-based segmentation, Hilbert-Huang transform based feature extraction, and Support Vector Machine based classification. The MATLAB …

Depositional Facies And Sequence Stratigraphy Of Niagaran-Lower Salina Reef Complex Reservoirs Of The Guelph Formation, Michigan Basin, Matthew J. Rine

Masters Theses

Hydrocarbon reservoirs in the Niagara-Lower Salina Reef Complex in the Michigan Basin have been extensively studied since the early 1960’s. These reservoirs host an immense hydrocarbon resource, existing as closely-spaced, highly-compartmentalized reservoirs that have produced >500 million barrels of oil and 2.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Previous studies depict these “pinnacle reefs” as tall, symmetrical towers with a random distribution of facies. This study utilizes abundant core data (32 cores, 20-acre spacing), thin-section petrography, and petrophysical wire-line logs to reconstruct the geometry, facies distributions, depositional history, and sequence stratigraphy of the Columbus III Reef Complex within the Southern …

String Quartet, Brut, Bernie Walasavage

Masters Theses

l’Art Brut , also commonly referred to as “outsider art,” is comprised of a variety of visual media by untrained or mentally ill artists. The string quartet is subtitled this because it takes inspiration from the work of these artists; with its jagged edges, vibrant colors, and horrid scenes, there is an organic beauty inherent in such eclectic and divergent art. Another factor which drew me to the artwork of the mentally ill was the commonality of Kenophobia: an abnormal fear of empty spaces. Schizophrenic, Swiss artists, Adolf Wölfli (18641930) and Aloïse Corbaz (18861964) were noted for suffering this phobia …

A Comparison Of Two Function-Based Interventions: Ncr Vs. Dro In A Preschool Classroom, Zachary C. Labrot

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative efficacy of non-contingent reinforcement (NCR) and differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) after behavioral functions have been identified through indirect, descriptive, and experimental assessment. Participants included three preschool-age children in center-based classrooms (Head Start) in a southeastern school district. Functional assessment data were used to inform treatment procedures, which were examined with an alternating treatments design. This study examined (1) relative differences in the efficacy of NCR and DRO in decreasing problem behaviors in preschool children, (2) relative differences in the efficacy of NCR and DRO in increasing appropriate behavior, …

Are Large Dogs Smarter Than Small Dogs? Investigating Within Species Differences In Large And Small Dogs: Spatial Memory, Megan S. Broadway

Master's Theses

The study of canine cognition can be useful in understanding the ontology and selective pressures that affect the development of cognitive abilities. Dogs have undergone intensive artificial selection yielding distinctive breeds which differ both phenotypically and behaviorally. Breed based cognitive differences have not been found but some studies suggest there may be differences in broader categories such as working disposition and sex. The influence of size on canine cognition has not been thoroughly addressed despite the fact that large dogs are often perceived to be ‘smarter’ than small dogs. This preconception has only recently been addressed and supported in one …

A Platform For Fast Detection Of Let-7 Micro Rna Using Polyaniline Fluorescence And Image Analysis Techniques, Partha P. Sengupta

Master's Theses

The project describes a new strategy for transducing hybridization events through modulating intrinsic properties of the electroconductive polymer polyaniline (PANI). When DNA based probes electrostatically interact with PANI, its fluorescence properties are increased, a phenomenon that can be enhanced by UV irradiation. Hybridization of target nucleic acids results in dissociation of probes causing PANI fluorescence to return to basal levels. By monitoring restoration of base PANI fluorescence as little as 10^-11 M (10 pM) of target oligonucleotides could be detected within 15 minutes of hybridization. Detection of complementary oligos was specific, with introduction of a single mismatch failing to …