Digital Commons Network^™

"Unblackboxing" Technology Through The Rhetoric Of Technical Communication: Biometric Technology And Ghana's 2012 Election, Isidore Dorpenyo

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this project, I seek to “unblackbox” technology; by which I mean, I seek to, in the words of Latour, “open up” or “debug” the biometric technology used by Ghana for its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Through the process of “unblackboxing,” I demonstrate the value of technical communicators to technology studies by analyzing technical documents that accompanied the biometric verification device which was adopted and used by Ghana to conduct its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. I argue in this dissertation that technical documentation does not merely accommodate users to technologies, but also it provides avenues to articulate broader …

East-West Cultural Differences In Visual Attention Tasks: Identifying Multiple Mechanisms And Developing A Predictive Model, Yin Yin Tan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Past research has identified East-West differences in visual attention associated with holistic versus analytic perception and reasoning strategies (Nisbett et al., 2001; Boduroglu et al., 2009). These cross-cultural differences might stem from several different mechanisms, which may include: interference suppression, response inhibition, attention to detail vs. object configuration, stimulus centrality vs. eccentricity, number of visual distractors (e.g., display set size or clutter), and others.

Although research has shown East-West differences, the results sometimes appear inconsistent with each other, or they lack clear predictions from underlying theories. For example, evidence of a preference for cluttered displays (Wang et al., 2012), evidence …

Early Mimbres Households: Exploring The Late Pithouse Period (550–1000 Ad) At The Florida Mountain Site, Michael T. Searcy, Bernard Schriever, Matthew Taliaferro

Faculty Publications

Many studies have explored the household to understand social organization, production, and other dynamics of societies throughout the world. In this work, the approach outlined by Richard Wilk and colleagues is used to investigate households at the Florida Mountain Site, an intermittently occupied Late Pithouse period (550–1000 AD) residential site in the Mimbres Mogollon area of Southwestern New Mexico. Drawing on the similarities of this intermittent residential site to contemporaneous pitstructure sites in the Mimbres area, we suggest that one or more household units occupied the site. Our analysis also supports previous inferences that Mimbres households were integrated into more …

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

The Lds Church In Taiwan: The First Three Years, John Hilton Iii

Faculty Publications

Located approximately one hundred miles east of continental Asia, the island of Taiwan has a rich and complicated history. The history of Taiwan intersected with the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) when LDS military personnel were stationed there in 1955. This led to the celebrated date of June 4, 1956, when the ship SS Szechuen carried among its passengers four LDS missionaries. While this would be the first time LDS missionaries would begin proselyting efforts in Taiwan, Christian missionaries had sailed into Taiwan’s harbor centuries previously. The purpose of the present study is to …

The Windsor-Detroit Borderland: The Making Of A Key North American Environment Of Mobility, Tor H. Oiamo, Don Lafreniere, Joy Parr

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

No abstract provided.

Stories Of Smartness And Whiteness In School Pictures And Yearbooks, Eric Ruiz Bybee

Faculty Publications

This article explores the way that discourses of smartness and whiteness are produced and reproduced in schooling. Using an approach grounded in narra- tive research, I explore the convergences and contradictions between my own educational autobiography and the representations of schooling found in my school pictures and yearbooks. In my analysis, I argue that white supremacy played an important role in the construction of my own story of smartness throughout my primary and secondary schooling experiences. I also argue that yearbooks form powerful “artifacts of smartness” (Hatt, 2011, p. 448) that can be used to interpret and interrogate personal experiences …

Belief States In Criminal Law, James A. Macleod

Oklahoma Law Review

Belief-state ascription—determining what someone “knew,” “believed,” was “aware of,” etc.—is central to many areas of law. In criminal law, the distinction between knowledge and recklessness, and the use of broad jury instructions concerning other belief states, presupposes a common and stable understanding of what those belief-state terms mean. But a wealth of empirical work at the intersection of philosophy and psychology—falling under the banner of “Experimental Epistemology”—reveals how laypeople’s understandings of mens rea concepts differ systematically from what scholars, courts, and perhaps legislators, have assumed.

As implemented, mens rea concepts are much more context-dependent and normatively evaluative than the conventional …

Love’S Claim On Grief, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Animal Sentience

Our very words for grief are borrowed, in the first place, from animals: a howling, a wailing, a keening. We could wallow with these words that we borrow, but we can also put them to work for others.

No More Mind Games: Content Analysis Of In-Game Commentary Of The National Football League’S Concussion Problem, Jeffrey Parker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

American (gridiron) football played at the professional level in the National Football League (NFL) is an inherently physical spectator sport, in which players frequently engage in significant contact to the head and upper body. Until recently, the long-term health consequences associated with on the field head trauma were not fully disclosed to players or the public, potentially misrepresenting the dangers involved in gameplay. Crucial to the dissemination of this information to the public are in-game televised commentators of NFL games, regarded as the primary conduits for mediating in-game narratives to the viewing audience. Using a social constructionist theoretical lens, this …

Moral Identity From Cross- And Bi-Cultural Perspectives, Fanli Jia

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Researchers in moral psychology have initiated projects to investigate moral identity; however, they agreed that a precise definition and methodology of moral identity has been lacking in establishing the value of this new area. One of the challenges is that cultural explorations of moral identity are absent. Moral identity may take different forms in different cultures, or play an important role in morality in some cultures but not in others (Hardy & Carlo, 2005). The present dissertation was aimed at investigating how Western Canadian and Eastern Chinese cultural orientations relate to moral identities. Three studies were conducted.

In the first …

You Will Be Punished: Media Depictions Of Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women, Caitlin Elliott

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The following thesis focuses on media depictions of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women, a list that carries upwards of 1,200 names. The news coverage of these stories is reminiscent of television crime dramas in their depictions of minority victims of crime, specifically in regard to victim blaming. In order to examine this relationship, the present study compares coverage of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canadian news articles to depictions of victims, particularly minority female victims, within crime procedural television shows. An ethnographic content analysis (ECA) was conducted in order to parse out common themes between news articles featuring …

Experiences Of Victimization And Health Care Access Among Non-Metropolitan Lgbtq+ Individuals, Ashley-Ann Marcotte

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals report substantial rates of violence, discrimination, and negative life events due to homophobia and transphobia and these experiences impact access to health care services and programs (Bauer et al, 2009; Grant, Mottet, Tanis, Harrison, & Keisling, 2010) These experiences result in LGBTQ+ communities needing services, programs, and social supports to provide safer spaces. Although it is well recognized that health care services are not a major determinant of health outcomes and yet use more than 60% of health spending (Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2014; Muzyka, Hodgson, & Prada, 2012). As such, …

Photography's Power To Shape Our Realities, Anna Catherine Molinaro

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

And Second Comes The Son, Matthew Phillips

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

'And Second Comes the Son' is a post-war noir novel.

Global Homesickness In William Gibson’S Blue Ant Trilogy, Sean Scanlan

Publications and Research

This article explores theories of home, homesickness, and identity instability as they occur in William Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy, which consists of three novels: Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). In order to clarify this collision and underscore the importance of cultural and aesthetic codes of uneven globalization, this article offers a character study focused through the place-based intensities of global homesickness. Each character has a strained relationship with home: Cayce Pollard only feels at home while reading and writing in an online film forum; Hollis Henry wonders if she might be considered homeless, even though …

Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading Of The Blues, Rufus Burnett Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues demonstrates that the cultural phenomenon of the blues is an indigenous way of knowing that offsets the hidden logic of racialized dominance within modern Christian understandings of revelation. In distinction from the Christian, Religious, and racialized understandings of the blues, this dissertation focuses on the space in which the blues emerges, the Delta Region of the United States. By attending to space, this dissertation shows how critical consideration of geography and region can reveal nuances that are often veiled behind racialized and theologized ways of understanding the people of the Delta Region. …

[Introduction To] Sahasram Ati Srajas. Indo-Iranian And Indo-European Studies In Honor Of Stephanie W. Jamison, Dieter C. Gunkel, Joshua T. Katz, Brent Vine, Michael Weiss

Bookshelf

The renowned Indologist and Indo-Europeanist Stephanie W. Jamison has now been honored with this extensive collection of essays by colleagues and students from around the world. The contributors represent a virtual who’s-who of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European scholarship and have produced contributions on everything from Vedic (e.g., Joel Brereton, George Cardona, Paul Kiparsky, Thomas Oberlies) to later Sanskrit (e.g. James Fitzgerald, Hans Henrich Hock, Ted Proferes) to Iranian (e.g. Mark Hale, P. Oktor Skjærvø) to other Indo-European languages (e.g. Dieter Gunkel, Martin Joachim Kümmel, Alan Nussbaum, Don Ringe, Michael Weiss). The volume also includes posthumously published articles by Lisi Oliver and …

Beyond Work-Life “Integration”, Joan C. Williams, Jennifer L. Berdahl, Joseph A. Vandello

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Reculturalization In Adaptation: A Comparison Of Humor Styles In The Uk And U.S. Versions Of "The Office", Rachael A. Mckinney

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Purpose -- The purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of humor styles used in an original British television show and its adapted U.S. version.;Methodology -- A total of 28 episodes from the UK and U.S. version of the television sitcom The Office were classified under the four humor styles described by Martin et al. (2003).;Findings -- Humor styles used in television sitcoms significantly differ between the two countries. The UK uses more aggressive and self-defeating humor than the U.S., while affiliative humor is the predominant humor style found in the U.S. and is used more frequently …

A Communion Of Churches: Indian Christians, English Ministers, And Congregations In New England, 1600-1775, Gregory Alan Michna

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation advances the study of New England's religious history by exploring the complex and contested religious discourse surrounding puritan ecclesiology and the conceptual place of Native Americans within physical and imagined communities. While relations between puritan missionaries such as John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew and early "Praying Indians," or Indian Christians, have been closely studied, this work draws attention to the importance of theology and religious discourse in realms like hermeneutics, ecclesiology, and eschatology in shaping the nature of these exchanges. Despite communal and cultural differences, religious culture frequently served as a means of bridging these gaps to foster …

Cerebrovascular Dysfunction In Metabolic Syndrome And Depression: Mechanisms And Implications For Neurovascular Disease, Steven David Brooks

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Cerebrovascular diseases are any pathological conditions that are caused by disruptions or alterations in the blood supply to the brain. The brain, which is only 2% of body mass, constantly requires a minimum of 20% of cardiac output to meet its unique metabolic demands. Cerebral tissue relies on aerobic respiration and therefore requires a constant, steady supply of blood to provide oxygen and glucose to make ATP. Insufficient perfusion of the brain, which occurs as a result of reduced or obstructed blood flow, results in cerebral ischemia; ischemic neurons quickly deplete their available ATP and die if blood flow is …

The Role Of Algal Species On Phosphorus Bioavailability In Secondary Wastewater Effluents, Mitchell Thomas Swanson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Phosphorus (P) is a limiting nutrient responsible for the eutrophication of surface waters and marine coasts. Wastewater treatment technologies are being stressed to achieve low P effluents and national effluent P limits are expected in the coming years. This research investigates how different algae, as individual species and a mixed culture, utilize bioavailable phosphorus (BAP) when examined by the standard algal species Raphidocelis subcapitata along with Chlorella vulgaris and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as additional test species. It also investigates how different P-species contribute to BAP using the standard algal species. Results show there is no significant difference in %(BAP/total dissolved P) …

Bone Marrow Microenvironment Regulation Of Bcl6 In Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, William Lee Slone

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a hematological malignancy with approximately 6000 newly diagnosed cases every year. Although ALL is the most common malignancy in children, it can occur in patients of all ages. Great strides have been made in the treatment of ALL and remission rates are at all-time highs. However, relapse rates have remained relatively consistent, and relapse continues to be correlated with a poor prognosis in patients with ALL. As the site of origin and progression of ALL, the bone marrow microenvironment (BMM) is important in regulating tumor cell quiescence and proliferation. Of clinical relevance is the frequency …

Sites Of Education: Race, Memory, And The Conflicting Discourses Of Learning In America, 1827-1914, Douglas Terry

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation is a cultural study that challenges the handling of race in the history of American education by exploring how educational discourse shapes race. It argues that education itself is a manifestation of race, inseparable from the iterative processes of racial formation. While we take it as a prevailing truism that race is learned, this dissertation shows how the educational system itself is central to this learning.;It explores race in the educational landscape in a similar way to how scholars explore tension between history and cultural memory. In this manner, the dissertation focuses on what it terms "sites of …

The Impact Of Cultural Encounters On The Cultural Competence Of Baccalaureate Nursing Students, Amy J. Witt

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: By the year 2050 it is expected more than fifty percent of the American population will be of non-European descent (United States Census Bureau, 2011). Racial and ethnic minorities in the United States (U.S.) have more limited access to health care and a poorer quality of health care received, regardless of insurance coverage. Nursing education must provide a means for acquiring cultural competence by nursing students to help combat the growing health disparities. While many different methodologies can be found in nursing curricula, the cultural encounter during the nursing program may prove to be a promising means of acquiring …

Ecocomposition As Writing Curriculum: An Ecological Approach For Writing Program Administrators And Composition Instructors, Erin Renee Lord Kunz

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation forwards an argument for an ecologically-based composition and rhetoric curriculum that also emphasizes the best practices established by the Council of Writing Program Administration, particularly the writing process. I concentrate on how a writing program administrator can utilize ecological literacy to navigate her own experience in a new place and also how themes of ecological literacy can be applied to the writing program itself. Based on personal experiences as well as literature that establishes the need for best practices in composition and rhetoric curriculum, I argue that ecological composition, or ecocomposition, can assist in implementing an ecological writing …

Friendship Is Manly: The Brony Fandom And The Challenge Of Masculinity, Samuel Miller

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the cultural phenomenon of Bronies, adult, mostly male, fans of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. When large numbers of grown men like a show designed for little girls, how do they contend with the challenges presented by the culturally accepted norms of masculinity? Do these fans disclose their love of ponies to others, if at all? An online mixed methods survey conducted in 2014 looks at how Bronies interact with the show, other fans, and non fans. While some Bronies are cautious about disclosing their fondness for ponies due to potential harassment, there is …