Digital Commons Network^™

International Student Enrollment Trends From 2008-2014: Country Case Studies And Comparison To A Midwest Liberal Arts Institution, Emin Hajiyev

Dissertations

The international student recruitment and overall cross-border education have constantly been evolving. In the past two decades, higher education institutions were developing and implementing their plan of campus internationalization. Various universities and colleges have different approaches to the internationalization. However, through the implementation of the process, most of the institutions realized that the cornerstone of the internationalization is the international student recruitment. Despite providing the financial health to the institutions and overall to the process of internationalization, international student recruitment is the provider of the campus multiculturalism and diversity. This research is concentrated on the external factors of the cross-border …

“Lands Of The Future:” German-Speaking Identity, Networks, And Territoriality In The South Atlantic, 1820-1930, Isabelle Rispler

History Dissertations - Archive

The movement of German-speakers to the South Atlantic did not begin with Nazis seeking refuge in Argentina in the aftermath of World War II, nor did it start with the organization of the German protectorate of South-West Africa in 1884. Throughout the nineteenth century, the great majority of German-speakers leaving Europe travelled and migrated to North America, but some German-speakers had begun settling in both Argentina and Namibia well before the turn of the twentieth century. German-speaking merchants and missionaries started travelling to and settling in the South Atlantic in the 1820s. These South Atlantic German-speakers were influenced by the …

Advances In Developing Therapies To Combat Zika Virus: Current Knowledge And Future Perspectives, Ashok Munjal, Rekha Khandia, Kuldeep Dharma, Swati Sachan, Kumaragurubaran Karthik, Ruchi Tiwari, Yashpal S. Malik, Deepak Kumar, Raj K. Singh, Hafiz M. N. Iqbal, Sunil K. Joshi

Bioelectrics Publications

Zika virus (ZIKV) remained largely quiescent for nearly six decades after its first appearance in 1947. ZIKV reappeared after 2007, resulting in a declaration of an international “public health emergency” in 2016 by the World Health Organization (WHO). Until this time, ZIKV was considered to induce only mild illness, but it has now been established as the cause of severe clinical manifestations, including fetal anomalies, neurological problems, and autoimmune disorders. Infection during pregnancy can cause congenital brain abnormalities, including microcephaly and neurological degeneration, and in other cases, Guillain-Barré syndrome, making infections with ZIKV a substantial public health concern. Genomic and …

Merging Cultures: Organizational Behavior, Leadership, And Differentiation In A Health System Merger, Colin G. Chesley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Health system mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have increased exponentially in recent years as a result of the Affordable Care Act (Brown, Werling, Walker, Burgdorfer & Shields, 2012). M&As are consummated as a way to control for interdependencies within the market, control costs and leverage debt, and negotiate better rates among health insurers (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Cooper & Finkelstein, 2010; Mirc, 2013). Regardless of the impetus for a merger, the largest predictor of the success or failure of a M&A lies within the organizational culture (Brown, et al., 2012; Cooper & Finkelstein, 2010; Kastor, 2010; Ovseiko, Melham, Fowler & Buchan, …

Generating Cultural Personas From Social Data: A Perspective Of Middle Eastern Users, Salminen Joni, Sercan Sengün, Haewoon Kwak, Bernard Jansen, Jisun An, Soon-Gyo Jung, Sarah Vieweg, D. Fox Harrell

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We conduct a mixed-method study to better understand the content consumption patterns of Middle Eastern social media users and to explore new ways to present online data by using automatic persona generation. First, we analyze millions of content interactions on YouTube to dynamically generate personas describing behavioral patterns of different demographic groups. Second, we analyze interview data on social media users in the Middle Eastern region to generate additional insights into the dynamically generated personas. Our findings provide insights into social media users in the Middle East, as well as present a novel methodology of using computational analysis and qualitative …

Fit Or Fitting In: Deciding Against Normal When Reproducing The Future, Roxanne Mykitiuk, Isabel Karpin

Articles & Book Chapters

‘Normal’ is a contentious term. Descriptively, ‘normal’ represents ‘what is’ as a statistical average. However, the term also represents normative or prescriptive content about what is ‘right’ or ‘what should be’. Correspondingly, abnormality is a deviation from the norm. It is both a factual exception to the average and a value judgement about what is a ‘wrong’ state of being. Pursuing ‘normal’ or deciding against it can be a defining moment in the high technology environment of assisted reproduction. Here, we explore notions of normalcy articulated through legal and policy regimes around screening and testing of gamete and embryo donors. …

Center For The Study Of Race And Race Relations Fall 2017 Newsletter, Katheryn Russell-Brown

Center for the Study of Race & Race Relations: Lectures and Events

No abstract provided.

Typography And The Evolution Of Hebrew Alphabetic Script: Writing Method Of The Sofer, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

Typography is the study of language letterforms, phonographic alphabetic characters that, when combined with additional characters, form words and/or sentences to express an idea and communicate a message to an audience. The history of typographic design dates back to early civilization and the invention of alphabetic writing systems, formulated and processed through the literary skills of the Hebrew Scribe Ezra whose knowledge and practice offered a significant contribution within a predominantly oral society. By examining the history of Hebrew typography through the discourse of biblical writing systems and alphabetic design, the article addresses the development of Hebrew scripts evolving from …

Evaluating A Chinese Adult Attachment Questionnaire Using A Taiwanese Sample, Hsin-Yao Chiu

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have taken the adult attachment instruments established in the western countries into other cultural settings. Taiwan is one of the many countries to which cross-cultural adult attachment research has been extended to, and where translated attachment survey instruments were applied. The problem with these translated measurements in Taiwan, however, is that the commonly-used instruments were not peer-reviewed, and often no reliability tests were even done, and the cultural appropriateness of these translated measurements was not evaluated. The usage and results of these instruments may therefore be questionable. The purpose of this current study is to present a Mandarin Chinese …

The Effect Of Cocoa Flavanols On Β-Cell Mass And Function, Thomas John Rowley

Theses and Dissertations

A hallmark of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is β-cell dysfunction and the eventual loss of functional β-cell mass. Therefore, mechanisms that improve or preserve β-cell function could be used to improve the quality of life of individuals with T2D. Studies have shown that monomeric, oligomeric and polymeric cocoa flavanols have different effects on obesity, insulin resistance and glucose tolerance. We hypothesized that these cocoa flavanols may have beneficial effects on β-cell function. INS-1 832/13 derived β-cells and primary rat islets cultured with a monomeric catechin-rich cocoa flavanol fraction demonstrated enhanced glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, while cells cultured with total cocoa extract, …

Comparing Adult Attachment Styles Among Hispanic And Non-Hispanic Undergraduate College Students Using The Experiences In Close Relationships Revised Structures (Ecr-Rs), Guadalupe Flores Valdez

Dissertations

Research on attachment in adult relationships has included minimal studies to encompass a Hispanic population. Mexican Americans have specific characteristics grounded in historical, demographic, and family contexts which are different from other groups. Therefore, cross-cultural validation of instruments to assess family relationships increases the clinical usefulness of the instruments. The purpose of this study was to compare the equivalence of the factor structure of a widely used family attachment assessment, the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Structures Questionnaire (ECR-RS; Donbaek & Elklit, 2014; Parker et al., 2011). This study used principal components factor analysis with maximum likelihood extraction to compare the …

Service-Learning Times : Programme Booklet 2017/18 Semester 1, Office Of Service-Learning, Lingnan University

S-L Times

Service-Learning (S-L) integrates academic study with meaningful community service to create opportunities for students and staff to make positive impact locally, regionally, and globally. In line with Lingnan’s motto “Education for Service”, Service-Learning and Research Scheme (SLRS) aims to provide opportunities where students can apply subject-specific knowledge to the real world, while collaboration partners can benefit from the knowledge and innovation that faculty and students bring to these projects.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are central to SLRS as it is a priority for liberal arts students to understand and engage with the impact of technology on the humanities, and vice versa. …

The Saleing Subculture, Hayli M. Cox

All NMU Master's Theses

The Saleing Subculture is a collection of short and flash creative nonfiction essays with influences including travel writing, cultural studies, lyric essays, and memoir. Each essay attempts to contribute to a larger understanding of a unique subculture of yard salers as well as a single woman’s family dynamic within the culture. The collection also endeavors to interrogate relationships between people and the meanings they give to the objects they engage with or choose to cast away.

Forgot My Tribe: Meditations On Hip Hop And La Frontera, Arnulfo Daniel Segovia

Theses and Dissertations

This study of my life untangles threads of influence which have brought me to my present state of being. I utilize autohistoria-teoria to reflect on the processes of learning and schooling in my life, and weigh them against processes of unlearning and deschooling which I explore through hip hop ways of being – all of which are rooted in my life’s process of coming to love the Rio Grande Valley. This effort is to find solid ground to stand upon as I set off from an academic journey into civilian life with a central concern: At the individual level, how …

Empathy In The Multicultural Classroom, Selene Rasmussen

University Honors Theses

Observational data gathered and then analyzed eventually yielded three main themes that illustrate how empathetic behavior is practiced and supported in the classroom. Firstly, successful empathetic behavior in the classroom was largely enacted via a modeling and echoing effect that occurred between teachers and young students that is heavily language-based. Secondly, when young students do self-initiate empathetic behavior, it is often demonstrated through actions of sharing and/or helping, in contrast to language-based empathetic behavior. Finally, the practice of counter-empathetic behaviors such as exclusion are not necessarily completely anti-social, and can potentially serve a pro-social and empathetic purpose in a complex …

Mormons And Youtube, Ryan Reeder

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

As the internet’s second-most trafficked site, behind only Google in both the United States and globally, and with 600,000 hours of content uploaded and one billion hours viewed daily by more than one billion monthly users, YouTube’s reach and scope is vast. Growing out of a need to better facilitate the production and distribution of online video, YouTube was able to become dominant through a combination of factors including the implementation of innovative features, an ability to capitalize on popular videos hosted on its site, and good timing in managing to become a key component of the social media revolution. …

A Cross-Cultural Examination Of The Conformity Effect When Co-Witnesses Discuss A Crime, Sungil Bang

Student Theses

Prior research has shown that discussions with a co-witness can lead to the spread of false information, better known as the memory conformity effect. Specifically the effects of independence and interdependence on memory conformity have been examined. People who perceived their selves as a distinctive and unique were related to less memory conformity whereas those who identified themselves within their social relationships were not related to memory conformity. One of the limitations of the previous study is that they only focused on Western populations even though there is a cultural difference between Western European culture and Eastern Asian culture in …

August 2017 Commencement Program, Bowling Green State University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

The Living Inside: Listening To Madness With Félix Guattari, Briana Leigh Martino

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

This dissertation maps Félix Guattari’s concept and practice of transversality through its politico-therapeutic functions and across its institutional locations—from the movement, to the university, to the clinic—while tending to the mad materialities that haunt each. Transversality is a quality, or what Guattari would call a coefficient, he cultivated in his therapeutic relationships at the La Borde psychiatric clinic and then turned towards more strictly intellectual tasks in his own writing and collaborations with Gilles Deleuze. Scholars note, however, that Guattari’s work and the collaborative work of Guattari and Deleuze is so often taken up in the milieu of Deleuze’s philosophic …

Imagining The Orient: Representations Of The Chinese In Modern Spanish Culture, Mary Kate Donovan

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

This dissertation examines representations of the Chinese in twentieth and twenty-first century Spanish cultural production. I argue that many internationally circulating models for representing the Chinese in the West have been re-imagined in Spanish texts in ways that respond to cultural and economic anxieties particular to modern Spain. Adopting a cultural studies approach, this project reads a wide range of texts including film, literature, television, news media, magazines, and visual culture. This project is divided into three chapters, which address the imaginary Chinese, the Chinese migrant, and the Chinese Spaniard. The first chapter focuses on the cultural legacy of representations …

Imagining The North: Nordic Art In Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture And Criticism, Nicholas Kenton Parkinson

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

This dissertation studies the reception of Nordic painting in nineteenth-century France. I argue that the notion of so-called Scandinavian Art in nineteenth-century French literature, commonly referred to as l’art scandinave, l’école scandinave, or les écoles scandinaves , and encompassing artists coming from the countries that in the present day are known as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, during across the second half of the nineteenth century, and solidified in usage and meaning at the end of the 1880s. The followering study presents a chronological account of how French writings on Nordic painting changed during this period, beginning with an introductory …

Cruel Paris: Transnational Feminist Approaches To Banlieue Cinema, Joy Carolann Schaefer

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

This dissertation explores films that represent the Parisian banlieue (suburban ‘ghettos’) as a transnational space in two distinct periods: the early 1960s, when U.S. popular culture and French colonialism in North Africa acutely affected the banlieue; and the post-9/11 period, in which Islamophobic discourses and policies proliferated in the West, rendering the banlieue an increasingly stigmatized space. “Cruel Paris” investigates how films invoke intertexts and re-inscribe genres to narrate the banlieue as a site of transnational negotiation, telling local stories that impel the spectator to envision France as a (post)colonial, transcultural community. Far from a utopian representation, this depiction critiques …

Using Silkworms As A Host To Spin Spider Silk-Like Fibers, Xiaoli Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Using silkworms as the potential host to spin spider silk-like fibers is an area of intense research world-wide. The conventional methods used to create transgenic silkworms hosting spider silk-like gene limits the incorporation of spider silk-like protein and do not improve the mechanical performance of the composite silkworm/spider silk fibers. In this dissertation, synthetic spider ampullate genes were incorporated into the precise site of the fibroin heavy chain or light chain using the latest genome editing technology CRISPR/cas9 guided non-homologous end joining as opposed to conventional random integration using transposon-based piggyBac system. These protocols, with extensive applicability to other silkworm …

The Impact Of Supportive Parenting On Career Confidence Of Young Adults, Salma Ettefagh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Despite freedoms for women in modern economies, there remains a large disparity between female graduation rates and women achieving high-ranking positions in the business world. Confidence may be one factor why women are underrepresented in the executive class.This

exploratory research investigated if supportive parenting has an effect on self-reported career confidence among undergraduates. A quantitative ANOVA analysis found that instrumental support factors (for example, money and tuition) overall were significant in predicting performance-based confidence, particularly for males. However, qualitative results showed that supportive parenting and confidence are not always correlated.

Articulating The New Normal(S) : Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, And Rhetorical Action., Andrew Wesley Holladay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Articulating the New Normal(s): Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, and Rhetorical Action” studies the writing of people diagnosed with autism and post- traumatic stress disorder within online discussion boards related to mental health and outlines their unique rhetorical strategies for interacting with biomedical ideologies of psychiatry and activist discourses. The opening chapter situates this dissertation in relation to previous scholarship in Rhetoric, Disability Studies, and other fields. I also provide a summary of the set of mixed methods I use to gather and analyze my data, including rhetorical analysis, corpus analysis, and qualitative interviews. In Chapter 2, “Medical Terminology and Discourse …

Spiritual Transcendence As A Sixth Personality Factor In Russia : Cross-Cultural Generalizability And Influence On Psychosocial Outcomes., Ksenia Kopeikin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has suggested that Spiritual Transcendence (ST), which is the ability to stand outside one’s own immediate experience, to see unity in nature and to feel connection with the rest of humanity and the spirits, is a universal human experience. Research also suggests that ST may form a sixth personality factor, operating in a manner similar to, but separately from the Big Five personality traits. That is, ST may be a source of intrinsic motivation and influence human behavior and psychosocial outcomes similar to the Big Five. Previous research has established the incremental validity of ST over and above …

The Hounds Of Empire: Forensic Dog Tracking In Britain And Its Colonies, 1888-1953, Binyamin Blum

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Understanding Discourse Transition, Taylor Weeks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work is intended to explore and analyze the process of transition from one discourse to another different discourse.

Utilizing Researchgate Social Network By Iranian Engineering, Amir Reza Asnafi, Maryam Rahmani Ma In Knowledge And Information Scienc

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study aimed to assess the role of Researchgate in the development of scientific- scholarly activities among Faculty Members of University of Tehran's Engineering College. This study is Survey and descriptive research and data collection tools, including profiles of researchers at the Researchgate and questionnaire. The study population included faculty members of University of Tehran's Engineering College in 2016 was 242 researcher were earned RG score. The sample 144 subjects who were selected via stratified random sampling method and the questionnaire distributed 144 questionnaires were collected and then Results were analyzed using SPSS software From the perspective of engineering researchers, …

Functionalization Of Indium-Based Quantum Dots For Use As A Non-Viral Gene Therapy Vector, Nicholas A. Mundt

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This work aims to develop functionalized, water-soluble indium-based quantum dots (QDs) as a non-viral gene therapy vector. The QDs were solubilized in water by exchanging native hydrophobic surface ligands with 11-mercaptoundecanioc acid (MUA); an amphiphilic ligand providing terminal carboxylate groups that impart water solubility to the QDs. The aqueous QDs were then functionalized with a terminal tertiary amine to impart a positive surface charge, allowing negatively-charged DNA to complex with the nanoparticles. The QDs were characterized via electrophoresis to determine their ability to bind DNA. Results show that further work is needed to optimize DNA binding. In addition, this work …