Digital Commons Network^™

Egyptianization: Culture Hacking As A Method, Hadeer Omar

Theses and Dissertations

In a broad sense, cultures undergo a metamorphoses due to the external influences and systems impacting the evolution of internal identities. Conversely, Individuals within cultures react to those external influences and systems.The act of hacking a culture is an opportunity to challenge an existing or imported system in order to bring about change and improvement. An aspect of culture hacking is to create messages of satire or irony in order to criticize, or completely reject established systems within cultures.

Post Arab spring, Egyptians practiced culture hacking by applying their cultural tools to external systems and influences, producing a process of …

Twitter Analysis Of The Orthodontic Patient Experience With Braces Versus Invisalign, Daniel A. Noll

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the orthodontic patient experience with braces compared to Invisalign^® by means of a large-scale Twitter sentiment analysis. A custom data collection program was created to collect tweets containing the words “braces” or “Invisalign.” A hierarchal Naïve Bayes sentiment classifier was developed to sort the tweets into one of five categories: positive, negative, neutral, advertisement, or not applicable. Among the 419,363 tweets applicable to orthodontics collected, users posted significantly more positive tweets (61%) than negative tweets (39%) (p-value = ^® tweets (p-value=0.4189). In conclusion, Twitter users express more positive than negative sentiment …

Behavioral Phenotyping Of Vmat1 Knockout Mice: Relevance To Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Kevin A. Webster Ph.D.

Theses and Dissertations

Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental disorder that causes a large economic burden and is prevalent across all cultures and countries around the world. Although both environmental factors and genetics are known to play an important role in the etiology of schizophrenia, the exact role of genetics and its interaction with environmental factors in an individual’s predisposition to develop schizophrenia is poorly understood. Schizophrenia is characterized by symptoms that include positive symptoms (e.g. delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking and speech), negative symptoms (e.g. avolition, anhedonia, depressive-like behavior), and cognitive dysfunctions (e.g. executive functioning deficits in learning and memory, attention, and vigilance). Genomic …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Image, Text, And Social Commentary In Victor Ekpuk's Cartoons For The Daily Times Of Nigeria, 1989-1998, Kaleb W. Jewell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an analysis of the cartoons produced by Victor Ekpuk for The Daily Times newspaper of Nigeria from 1989 through 1998 and the artist’s use of ancient nsibidi script to “hide in plain sight” his social commentaries on sociopolitical and economic issues in Nigeria. Victor Ekpuk’s original cartoons within the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art are examined in the context of indigenous masking practices and other indirect methods employed by indigenous comedians to protect themselves. Moreover, the cartoons’ use of caricature and their nsibidi scripts within are argued to provide a connotative …

Narrative And The Reconfiguration Of The Humanist Subject In Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, And Ligotti, Zachary L. Acosta-Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the utility of the novels, short stories, critical writing, and generically indistinct work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Ligotti in developing a critique of the contemporary manifestations of liberal humanist social, economic, and political subjectivities. To this end, the concurrence of formal fragmentation and sublime aesthetics in early Gothic fiction models the manner in which narrative structures can appropriate structural tropes of dominant institutions, critically reflecting ideological fracture. Read according to the assemblative approach outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, these authors serve as a productive and incisive response to the hegemony of capitalist territorialization with …

The Entertainment Is Terrorism: The Subversive Politics Of Doing Anything At All, Joe Woods

Theses and Dissertations

When the body is observed through a certain combination of technologies, there can be subversive politics to doing anything at all. The nature of media and biopolitics has permitted for a set of systems aimed at total control of the human body; a power which can permeate all facets of life. This thesis is a collection of essays which argues that speculative fiction contains multitudes of approaches to biopolitical discourse, permitting the reader of the text to approach politics from their own set of experiences, but not allowing the political to be ignored. These chapters contain three separate but interrelated …

A (Dis)Assemblage Of The Gallery-Growlery, Levester R. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

A (dis)Assemblage of the Gallery-Growlery exhibition and writing presents itself as a site of a morphological exploration of language, sound, and objects in tandem with the irreducibly venting black expression. Venting, the black expression never seeks wholeness within objects or language itself for it is a thing-in-itself. Its presence affords critical reception to a residue of delimiting forms. All growls eschew verbal objects for the manifestation of pure phonetics. A growl in a gallery is the growl. The growl resounds through the physicality of the objects and gallery. Also, it unwinds the object-among-objects as the phono-present stretches the discursive …

The Water In Between: Where I Am And Where I Come From, Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez

Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis and project is comprised of a conceptual interwoven practice that addresses exploitation of land and labor, historically from the Spanish colonization and contemporarily through imperialism and global capital. It emphasizes oral storytelling and mythologies from the Andes. It explores socio-cultural events of gender, race, and socio economic issues, particularly in decolonial regions.

The Relationship Between Program Quality Indicators And Student Achievement In A Braided Prekindergarten Program, Susan L. Flemmons

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between prekindergarten classroom quality indicators and student achievement at the prekindergarten level. Pre-existing data on prekindergarten classroom quality measures and student achievement was utilized. Quality indicators were assessed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008) and student achievement was measured by the end of year results on the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) (Invernizzi, Meier, Swank, & Juel, 2004) and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment end of year results (Bracken, 2007).

A quantitative ex post facto correlational research design was employed to identify relationships …

“‘It’S A Cu’Ous Thing Ter Me, Suh’: The Distinctive Narrative Innovation Of Literary Dialect In Late-Nineteenth Century American Literature”, Kym M. Goering

Theses and Dissertations

American literature and verse advanced in dialectal writing during the late-nineteenth century. Charles Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887), “Po’ Sandy” (1888), and “Hot-Foot Hannibal” (1899); Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881); Thomas Nelson Page’s “Marse Chan” (1884); and Mark Twain’s “Sociable Jimmy” (1874) and “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” (1874) provided diverse dialect representations. Dialect expanded into poetry with

James Whitcomb Riley’s “She ‘Displains’ It” (1888), “When the Frost is on the Punkin” (1882), and “My Philosofy” (1882) and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “The Spellin’ Bee” (1895), “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” …

Beyond The Single Story: How Analog Hypertext Facilitates Representation Of Multiple Critical Perspectives In An Art Museum Object Study Gallery, Aimee D. Hunt

Theses and Dissertations

This project utilized a form of arts based educational research described as analog hypertext to develop interpretative material representing multiple critical, theoretical, and disciplinary perspectives on objects in a university art museum’s object study gallery. Drawing on scholars’ recommendations for postcolonial interpretation of non-Western art, the project created a web of information, which simultaneously revealed and critiqued the underlying ideologies and power structures shaping the museum’s display in an effort to change existing interpretive practice. The project developed five color-coded thematic self-guided tours—art as commodity, spiritual practice, technology and cultural evolutionism, mortuary rituals, and postcolonial perspectives—presented to the public as …

Manuel Altolaguirre: Between Exile And Spain, Will Derusha

The Coastal Review

The exile of Manuel Altolaguirre, poet of the Generation of ‘27, touches on Spanish and Latin American literature and culture. The article examines the attitudes and beliefs of the avant-garde from the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the Second Republic through the Spanish Civil War and into exile. Using Altolaguirre’s experiences in Cuba and Mexico, the article discusses exile literature and the dislocations of Spanish refugees struggling to make a living on the fly and feeling further isolated and forgotten in the upheavals of the Second World War.

"I Am From Epifania And Tomas": An Autoethnography And Bi-Literacy Narrative Of A Mexican American Orchard Workers' Daughter, Brenda Lorena Aguilar

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

"This is an autoethnography and bi-literacy narrative of a first-generation Mexican American woman whose parents work in the orchards around Mattawa, Washington. It is a collection of 44 written artifacts dating back to high school Spanish class and moving forward to the graduate papers written in the master's program at Eastern Washington University as well as concurrent and retrospective journal entries documenting her infancy years through her graduate studies. A close and interactive reading of works by Mexican Americans, Richard Rodriguez and Gloria Anzaldua, is offered by the author who connects her own experiences growing up bilingually and biculturally in …

Saltine Box Full Of Dreams: One Mexican Immigrant Woman's Journey To Academic Success, Adriana C. Sanchez

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

"This auto-ethnography/literacy narrative examines the journey of a first-generation Mexican immigrant woman from birth through completion of the master's degree at Eastern Washington University. The purpose of this single case study is to examine how one first-generation Mexican immigrant college student was able to succeed in higher education despite being part of the least academically successful minority group. It is also important for teachers from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds to tell their stories about overcoming hardships and barriers to academic success-such as discrimination, low socioeconomic levels (Reeves, 1997; 2012), low levels of education. The author includes photos and written …

A New Species Of Voles, Microtus Elbeyli Sp. Nov., From Turkey With Taxonomicoverview Of Social Voles Distributed In Southeastern Anatolia, Nuri̇ Yi̇ği̇t, Ercüment Çolak, Mustafa Sözen

Turkish Journal of Zoology

There are twelve Microtus species in Turkey and two of them are endemic to the steppic central Anatolian plateau. In this study, previously collected specimens that were recorded as Microtus irani from southeastern Turkey were reevaluated by karyologically comparing different species distributed throughout southeastern Turkey. The taxonomic status of this species was raised to a new species, Microtus elbeyli sp. Nov., which has dark ochreous dorsal color, agrestis morphotype in M2, and 2n = 46, NF = 50, Nfa = 46 karyotype. The new species described here raises the total number of Microtus species in Turkey to 13 and endemic …

Influence Of Different Proteinaceous Diets On Consumption, Brood Rearing,And Honey Bee Quality Parameters Under Isolation Conditions, Abdulraouf Amro, Mohamed Omar, Ahmed Al-Ghamdi

Turkish Journal of Veterinary & Animal Sciences

This study was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of 5 proteinaceous diets on honey bees under isolation conditions. The diets were soybean meal, mesquite pod powder, date paste, Feedbee®, and corn gluten, along with control colonies (bees fed naturally on pollens). These 5 diets were supplied to honey bee colonies under isolation conditions, except for the control group. Food consumption amount, brood rearing activity, and some physiological parameters of the honey bees were measured. The best consumption amount was for date paste, followed by Feedbee, mesquite, and corn gluten, respectively. Concerning brood rearing activity, the highest mean of sealed …

Advocating School-University Partnership For Responsive Teacher Education And Classroom-Based Curricula: Evidence From Teachers’ Cognitions About Principles Of Curriculum Design And Their Own Roles, Muhammad Rahimi, Lawrence Jun Zhang, Nasim Nasr Esfahani

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study investigated the differences between novice and experienced non-native English-speaking English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers’ cognitions about EFL curriculum design principles and their own roles in designing an EFL curriculum. The challenge these teachers faced in their roles and the support system they needed were also explored. Data were collected from 40 non-natives English-speaking EFL teachers using a questionnaire and open-ended questions. The results show that the observed differences between the two groups’ cognitions about EFL curriculum design principles were not statistically significant. Results also reveal that both groups believed they lacked the required theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and time and …

Obama And Kenya: Contested Histories And The Politics Of Belonging, Matthew Carotenuto, Katherine Luongo

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Barack Obama’s political ascendancy has focused considerable global attention on the history of Kenya generally and the history of the Luo community particularly. From politicos populating the blogosphere and bookshelves in the U.S and Kenya, to tourists traipsing through Obama’s ancestral home, a variety of groups have mobilized new readings of Kenya’s past in service of their own ends.

Through narratives placing Obama into a simplified, sweeping narrative of anticolonial barbarism and postcolonial “tribal” violence, the story of the United States president’s nuanced relationship to Kenya has been lost amid stereotypical portrayals of Africa. At the same time, Kenyan state …

Marriage By Force? Contestation Over Consent And Coercion In Africa, Annie Bunting, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Richard L. Roberts

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

With forced marriage, as with so many human rights issues, the sensationalized hides the mundane, and oversimplified popular discourses miss the range of experiences. In sub-Saharan Africa, the relationship between coercion and consent in marriage is a complex one that has changed over time and place, rendering impossible any single interpretation or explanation.

The legal experts, anthropologists, historians, and development workers contributing to Marriage by Force? focus on the role that marriage plays in the mobilization of labor, the accumulation of wealth, and domination versus dependency. They also address the crucial slippage between marriages and other forms of gendered violence, …

Drawing On The Victorians: The Palimpsest Of Victorian And Neo-Victorian Graphic Texts, Anna Maria Jones, Rebecca N. Mitchell

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Late nineteenth-century Britain experienced an unprecedented explosion of visual print culture and a simultaneous rise in literacy across social classes. New printing technologies facilitated quick and cheap dissemination of images—illustrated books, periodicals, cartoons, comics, and ephemera—to a mass readership. This Victorian visual turn prefigured the present-day impact of the Internet on how images are produced and shared, both driving and reflecting the visual culture of its time.

From this starting point, Drawing on the Victorians sets out to explore the relationship between Victorian graphic texts and today’s steampunk, manga, and other neo-Victorian genres that emulate and reinterpret their predecessors. Neo-Victorianism …

Using Semi-Supervised Learning For The Creation Of Medical Systematic Review: An Exploratory Analysis, Prem Timsina, Jun Liu, Omar F. El-Gayar, Yanyan Shang

Research & Publications

In this research, we explore semi-supervised learning based classifiers to identify articles that can be included when creating medical systematic reviews (SRs). Specifically, we perform comparative study of various semi-supervised learning algorithm, and identify the best technique that is suited for SRs creation. We also aim to identify whether semisupervised learning technique with few labeled samples produce meaningful work saving for SRs creation. Through an empirical study, we demonstrate that semi-supervised classifiers are viable for selecting articles for systematic reviews and situations when only a few numbers of training samples are available.

The Impact Of Cultural Identity And Social Capital On American Indian Elders' Subjective Health, Cole Lewis Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Data gathered from the National Resource Center on Native American Aging at the University of North Dakota was utilized (N = 8,396) to see if a relationship exists between cultural identity and social capital, the independent variables, and the dependent variable, subjective health. It is anticipated that there will be strong relationships between cultural identity, social capital, and subjective health because it is culturally expected that the younger generations of American Indians will take care of their elders by providing support when needed. This will provide a strong sense of well-being for American Indian elders. Additionally, cultural identity is expected …

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 …

Executive Functioning And Drinking: The Impact Taxing Working Memory Has On Alcohol Consumption, Mara Catherine Norton-Baker

Theses and Dissertations

The prevalence rates of binge drinking and heavy drinking among college-aged students have reached alarming levels. The negative consequences for these behaviors range from relatively minor annoyances (e.g., hangovers) to life-changing incidents (e.g., DUI) to accidental death. Deficits in executive cognitive function (ECF), especially deficits in working memory capabilities, have been linked repeatedly to problematic alcohol use. Given that it appears problematic drinkers with ECF deficits are more susceptible to the effects of alcohol and experience a greater loss of behavior control when experiencing cognitively taxing situations than problematic drinkers with greater ECF, further study of the impact of taxing …

A Morphological Approach To Identify Respiratory Phases Of Seismocardiogram, Nasim Taghizadeh Alamdari

Theses and Dissertations

Respiration affects the cardiovascular system significantly and the morphology of signals relevant to the heart changes with respiration. Such changes have been used to extract respiration signal from electrocardiogram (ECG). It is also shown that accelerometers placed on the body can be used to extract respiration signals. It has been demonstrated that the signal morphology for seismocardiogram, the lower frequency band of chest accelerations, is different between inhale and exhale. For instance, systolic time intervals (STI), which provide a quantitative estimation of left ventricular performance, vary between inhale and exhale phases. In other words, heart beats happening in exhale phase …

Policies And Clinical Practices Regarding Candidacy And Auditory Treatment For Hispanic Pediatric Patients In Cochlear Implant Centers In The United States, Matthew Ehrenburg

Senior Independent Study Theses

This research sought to investigate the policies and clinical practices regarding candidacy and auditory treatment for Hispanic pediatric cochlear implant patients at cochlear implant centers in the United States. More specifically, the study investigated treatment services provided to pediatric patients who are raised in monolingual Spanish, English as a second language (ESL), and bilingual English-Spanish speaking homes. The study made use of survey research to examine cochlear implant centers regarding their policies, clinical practices, and their referral processes for this specific group of cochlear implant recipients. The survey was distributed electronically through the online survey software Qualtrics via email to …

To Thine Own Self Be True: A Five-Study Meta-Analysis On The Accuracy Of Language-Learner Self-Assessment, Troy L. Cox

Faculty Publications

“To Thine Own Self Be True.” -Polonius

•As a busy body in Hamlet known for his platitudes that he himself did not follow, a close reading should really be:

• Beware of listening to men who give counsel

• You’ve been warned.

Gvsu Undergraduate And Graduate Catalog, 2016-2017, Grand Valley State University

Course Catalogs, 1963 - Current

Grand Valley State University 2016-2017 undergraduate and/or graduate course catalog published annually to provide students with information and guidance for enrollment.

Mormon Metaphors Of Restoration: Pathways To Identity And Understanding, Dallin D. Oaks

Faculty Publications

The important role of metaphors in interfaith understanding has received significant attention. The pervasiveness of certain metaphors in the lives of members of a religious community is especially significant when they are incorporated into sacred texts. This would seem to be the case not only for Judaism, Islam, and mainline Christianity, but also for Mormonism, a distinctive branch of Christianity. Officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), Mormonism shares some root metaphors with other Christians but differs in important ways in its development and use of these metaphors. In this paper we discuss the journey, …

Phonetic Shift /Ɔr/ Phonemic Change? American English Mergers Over 40 Years, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick

Faculty Publications

In this paper we analyze the vowel formants of a speaker over four decades to show phonemic change through time. Other real-time studies (Harrington, Palethorpe & Watson 2000; Harrington & Reubold 2015) have found that the vowel spaces of UK English speakers shift over the lifetime, likely as a consequence of interaction with speakers of other dialects or social classes. We focus on an understudied variety of English, spoken in the western United States, to investigate a pair of phonological mergers, the cord-card merger and the hoarse-horse merger.

The cord-card merger is a result of a historical three-way contrast of …