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A Solidarity Economy On The Border: Examining Historical And Contemporary Case Studies In El Paso, Texas As De Facto Contributors To A U.S.-Based Movement, Michelle E. Carreon

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines a contemporary U.S.-based solidarity economy movement, which emphasizes economic practice and ideology that prioritize people and planet over profit. In a neoliberal era that is characterized by economic injustice and continued cutting of social services and programming, a solidarity economy framework offers an alternative. Situated within a growing scholarship, this study examines historical and contemporary examples of solidarity economy-related efforts and praxis in the border city of El Paso, Texas.

The historical case of the Houchen settlement house and the contemporary case of the women-led grassroots community organization, La Mujer Obrera (LMO), illustrate significant ways in which …

Soundscape Ecology: Rich Contexts For Investigating Conservation Biology & The Effect Of Informal Environmental Experiences On Youth’S Conceptual Understanding, Interest And Identity Development, Maryam Ghadiri Khanaposhtani

Open Access Dissertations

Recent educational studies have shown increasing lack of interest and participation of youth (ages 10-14 years old) in various STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields in the U.S. The decline in the number of youth choosing to study STEM fields in higher education and the resulting lack of STEM professionals in the society has drastic economic impacts. Therefore, it is critical to introduce youth to quality STEM education that engages them with science practices and triggers their interest and curiosity in order to increase their participation in those fields. To address this issue, the aim of this study is …

“Muthologos Has Lost Such Ground”: Myth, History And Orality In The Poetics Of Charles Olson, Matthew L. Kroll

Open Access Dissertations

American poet Charles Olson (1910-1970) spent the last two decades of his life composing his magnum opus, the three-volume modern verse epic The Maximus Poems (Maximus). He began composing Maximus in 1950, the same year he published his poetics manifesto “Projective Verse.” Taken together, these two moments in Olson’s career can be read as marking the beginning of his mature poetics and poetry. However, the concepts he develops and the projective verse style he proclaims in the first half of the 1950s can already be seen emerging in his earlier publications.

Beginning with two of his most significant publications of …

The Efficacy And Secondary Effects Of Pharmaceutical Legislation, Justine A. Mallatt

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effects of pharmaceutical policies on various behavioral, health, and economic outcomes. The first chapter is The Effect of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs on Opioid Prescriptions and Heroin Crime Rates. In response to growing abuse of prescription opioid painkillers, 50 U.S. states have implemented electronic prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) that record patients into a state-wide registry when a prescription opioid is received. This paper uses a difference-in-differences regression framework and interactive fixed effects factor models to identify the effect of PDMPs and two related programs on the types and strengths of opioid painkiller prescriptions filled and …

Impact Of Changing Climate On Water Resources In The Western Lake Erie Basin Using Swat, Sushant Mehan

Open Access Dissertations

Water quality impairment in the Great Lakes Region has become a major concern for the scientific community. With increasing high intensity short duration precipitation events and rise in temperatures, there is the need to determine the impacts of a changing climate on water resources in the Great Lakes region. This is especially so in the Western Lake Erie Basin (WLEB); Lake Erie is prone to toxic harmful algal blooms due to climate variations and large nutrient and sediment inflows from the surrounding, primarily agricultural lands. The aim of this study was to determine the implications of future climate conditions on …

Contested “Chineseness” In Transnational Narratives: Works By Post-1979 Chinese/American Immigrant Writers Ha Jin And Geling Yan, Ping Qiu

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation aims to claim immigrant literature as an essential part of Chinese American studies. It responds to the challenge by considering how “Chineseness” is negotiated, challenged, and transformed in the literary texts produced by both writers. I argue that “Chineseness” as presented by post-1979 immigrant writers Ha Jin and Geling Yan is a transnational process of defamiliarization, radicalization, and transformation. In their work, new immigrant writers are self-consciously and strategically positioning themselves as both insider and outsider. They engage in, negotiate, and challenge the troubling term “Chineseness” as defined in either U.S-centric/Eurocentric or Sinocentric points of view. For writers, …

Molecular Ecology And Management Of Nuisance And Invasive Marine Species : Chrysaora Chesapeakei, Moerisia Sp., And Gonionemus Vertens, Dena J. Restaino

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Ecological communities are under constant pressure from anthropogenic disturbances. Marine and estuarine systems are affected by human use and development of both coastal land and the surrounding water. One consequence of this use is the deterioration of water quality, which can lead to changes in community structure and a loss of species richness. Another effect of increased usage of marine water ways in the introduction of invasive species. These non-natives also have the ability to change community structure and reduce ecosystem services. In particular cnidarians are able to thrive in degraded systems in part owing to their ability to tolerate …

Influencia Angloamericana En La Enseñanza De Las Ciencias Naturales En Las Escuelas Primarias De Brasil En El Siglo Xix, Karl M. Lorenz, Ariclê Vechia

Education Faculty Publications

En el siglo XIX, hubo un movimiento transnacional de ideas educativas desde Europa y los Estados Unidos hasta Brasil. Esta ponencia discute la perspectiva angloamericana sobre la enseñanza de las ciencias naturales y su efecto en la educación científica en la escuela primaria brasileña. Comienza examinando las ideas sobre la enseñanza de la ciencia de distinguidos científicos británicos y estadounidenses y el currículo de ciencias de las escuelas en Europa y las Américas. El documento luego se centra en el último cuarto de siglo y la reforma de 1878 de la educación primaria del Ministro del Imperio Leôncio da Carvalho …

Families And Employment Of People With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities: Results From A Scoping Study, John Kramer, Jennifer Bose, Jean Winsor, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

ThinkWork! Publications

Purpose: Recent policy changes expanding community employment for people with intellectual/developmental disabilities (IDD) and awareness of the important role of family members as facilitators of these opportunities motivated this scoping review of the literature on family engagement with the IDD service system.

Methods: Researchers used Arksey and O’Malley’s six-stage scoping review methodology (2005) to map a wide range of literature to discover the resources and strategies available to families supporting people with IDD to find employment; the resources and strategies to support people with IDD and families to develop a vision of employment; and the resources and strategies to support …

Assessment Of University Support Services For Regional And Remote Students On Transition To University: Final Report, Darren Matthews, Gina Milgate, Leyna Clarke

Higher education research

This report details the development and piloting of an Assessment of university support services for regional and remote students on transition to university. The project forms part of the Australian Government’s response to the Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education led by Emeritus Professor John Halsey. In its recommendations, the Review highlighted how critical it is to “Support RRR [regional, rural and remote] students to make successful transitions from school to university, training, employment and combinations of them”. In relation to this recommendation, this project is designed to support the Australian Government’s response to the Halsey Review by …

The Oral Microbiome Of Site-Specific Dental Plaque In Health And Disease, Abdullah Abood

All Theses

According to the National Institutes of Health, dental caries is the leading chronic disease of children in the United States. Dental caries is biofilm-mediated, multifactorial and dynamic. Research using culturing techniques and high throughput 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing unraveled the taxonomic complexity of mixed microbial communities (microbiome) in dental biofilms (plaque) and their abundance differences. However, 16S rRNA sequencing fails to resolve taxonomic assignment beyond genus level for certain taxa, which is problematic in identifying potential antagonistic species within the same genus. The presented work addressed current shortcomings in dental microbiome research. First, dental plaque samples used in this study …

Black Scoter (Melanitta Americana) Winter Habitat Use And Movement Patterns Along The Atlantic Coast Of The United States, Hannah Plumpton

All Theses

While the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada is a major wintering area for sea ducks, habitat use and movement patterns of sea ducks, such as the black scoter (Melanitta americana), are vastly unknown and understudied. The lack of information in conjunction with a rise in human activity in and near the Atlantic Ocean has led to an increased effort for the conservation and management of sea ducks, while minimizing human conflicts. The objectives of my study were to 1) identify variables that had the most influence on black scoter distribution in the Atlantic Ocean along …

The Impacts, Implementation, And Sustainability Of Service Learning In The Classroom, Amber Gerrits

Honors Projects

This honors senior project focuses on service-learning in the classroom. Specifically, it uncovers the benefits, harms, and common potential challenges that service learning educators face when implementing community engagement activities in their schools and classrooms. The three areas surrounding this pedagogy research were: (1) impacts of the practice, (2) logistical implementation in the classroom of such projects, and (3) a look into how to suitably sustain this type of involvement for students in a post K-12 education setting.

To ascertain the answers about the impacts of service-learning, literature was compiled into a review, which unpacked terminology and answered the big …

The Geotraces Intermediate Data Product 2017, Conwaygeotraces, Tim M. Conway

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2017 (IDP2017) is the second publicly available data product of the international GEOTRACES programme, and contains data measured and quality controlled before the end of 2016. The IDP2017 includes data from the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Southern and Indian oceans, with about twice the data volume of the previous IDP2014. For the first time, the IDP2017 contains data for a large suite of biogeochemical parameters as well as aerosol and rain data characterising atmospheric trace element and isotope (TEI) sources. The TEI data in the IDP2017 are quality controlled by careful assessment of intercalibration results …

Cultural Conundrums In African Land Governance: Agribusiness In Sierra Leone, Fenda A. Akiwumi

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper deals with the disjuncture between recognition of the important role of culture in sustainable development discourse embedded in African regional and state policies and legal instruments and the reality of externally driven neoliberal land-based development agendas in African nations. Using postcolonial theoretical notions of identity, subalterns and representation, and the centuries-old African landlord-stranger institution as an important customary land management system operating at the local level, I explore some inherent conflicts between the landlord-stranger institution and state land governance. I interrogate this dilemma in the context of agribusiness development projects and land grabbing claims in Sierra Leone, West …

Zona Libre: Conservatism, Urban Growth, And The Rise Of The New Economy In The San Diego Borderlands, Daniel Elkin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Both the rise of conservatism as well as the neoliberal turn of the twentieth century have received much scholarly attention in recent decades. Often, these two subjects are examined separately, with the former focusing on questions of party realignment in the United States and the latter on global economic shifts toward privatization, finance, and the segregation of labor types across international boundaries. As a result, efforts to trace the dual movement between questions of domestic politics and international economy are left underdeveloped. “Zona Libre: Conservatism, Urban Growth, and the Rise of the New Economy” remedies this gap by exploring the …

The Cruel Consequences Of War: Life In Fauquier County, Virginia, 1861-1863, Madeleine Forrest Ramsey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“The Cruel Consequences of War” describes how the American Civil War came to Fauquier County, Virginia, a border area in northern Virginia, and examines the effects of the conflict on the county’s black and white residents from 1861 – 1863. Scholars have been writing community studies since the 1960s, but few have examined the region of northern Virginia. While the “traditional” war in Virginia has been studied extensively, the home front has not received as much focus. “The Cruel Consequences of War” helps to fill this void by detailing the wartime experiences of civilians, and the soldiers who occupied the …

Impacts Of Sediment Dredging On Phosphorus Dynamics In A Restored Riparian Wetland, Kimberly Oldenborg

Masters Theses

Global reductions in biodiversity and water quality are having major consequences for ecosystem health and societal well-being. The restoration of riverine floodplains and wetlands provides an ideal opportunity to increase biodiversity and water quality because their hydrologic connectivity to adjacent streams and rivers promotes the formation of heterogeneous habitat while also facilitating their functioning as a nutrient sink, in general. However, many historic floodplains and riverine wetlands have been drained for the creation of agricultural land, resulting in an accumulation of nutrients in the soils. Therefore, restoration practices that hydrologically reconnect former agricultural land to an adjacent stream or river …

Social Determinants Of Health And A Grounded Mixed-Methods Approach To Explain Declining Life Expectancy In Eastern Kentucky : 1980 – 2014., William Renda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trends in life expectancy for the United States from 1980-2014 suggest general improvement overall. However, eastern Kentucky stands out with a cluster of counties experiencing declining life expectancy. Given that life expectancy is an excepted indicator of overall population health, this anomaly in eastern Kentucky warrants investigation. This thesis uses a grounded mixed methods approach to explore this trend across the greater Appalachian region. Content and discourse analysis of interviews with public health and medical professionals in the study area revealed key themes perceived as being related to declining life expectancy, which informed variable selection for regression analysis. Regression models …

The Influence Of High-Performance Work Systems And Intangible Strategic Resources On The Entrepreneurial Orientation-Firm Performance Relationship., Shankar Naskar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The entrepreneurship literature indicates that entrepreneurially oriented firms perform better and grow faster than firms that are conservatively oriented. Firms with an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) jointly exhibit risk-taking, innovative and proactive behaviors. The EO-firm performance relationship is a well-established one. However, scholars have bemoaned the lack of focus on internal organizational factors that may influence or affect the nature of the relationship. My dissertation uses the framework of the resource-based theory of the firm to argue that the influence of EO on performance is contingent on the resources and the internal organizing context (organizing capability) of a firm. The resource-based …

An Investigation Of Sub-Meter Skill In Stem And Non-Stem Undergraduate Students, Laura A. Tingin

Masters Theses

This study designed a nationally-relevant, valid, and reliable survey that measures STEM and Non-STEM undergraduate student familiarity with sub-meter metric scale and common sub-meter sized science objects. The instrument assesses scalar relationship and scalar magnitude, as explained by Cheek, LaDue, and Shipley (2017). The instrument development was based on an existing Scale of Objects Questionnaire (SOQ) instrument created by Tretter, Jones, Andre, Negishi, & Minogue (2006a) which was modified to be nationally relevant and in an electronic format in two phases: online survey development and undergraduate pilot testing. Online survey development was framed in the tailored design method described by …

What If Hillary Clinton Had Gone To Wisconsin? Presidential Campaign Visits And Vote Choice In The 2016 Election, Christopher J. Devine

Political Science Faculty Publications

Hillary Clinton’s failure to visit the key battleground state of Wisconsin in 2016 has become a popular metaphor for the alleged strategic inadequacies of her presidential campaign. Critics who cite this fact, however, make two important assumptions: that campaign visits are effective, in general, and that they were effective for Clinton in 2016. I test these assumptions using an original database of presidential and vice presidential campaign visits in 2016. Specifically, I regress party vote share on each candidate’s number of campaign visits, at the county level, first for all counties located within battleground states, and then for counties located …

Spatial And Temporal Trends Of Mining-Related Lead-Zinc Sediment Contamination, Galena River Watershed, Sw Wisconsin-Nw Illinois, Dylan Alexander King

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Alluvial sediments within the Galena River Watershed were severely contaminated with heavy metals by historical zinc (Zn) and lead (Pb) mining operations during the early 1800s until 1979. Since the mines closed, there have been efforts to remediate on-site mine waste. However, the effectiveness of these efforts to reduce metal concentrations in stream sediments is unknown. This study compares present-day (2017) contamination trends in the Galena River Watershed to trends reported 25 years ago. A total of 415 sediment/soil samples were collected and analyzed using X-ray florescence spectrometry to determine sediment metal concentrations. The highest concentrations of zinc measured were …

Nutrient Transport And Storage In A Karst Spring-Reservoir System During Baseflow, Missouri Ozarks, Heather A. Moule

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Urban and agricultural land uses are important sources of nitrogen and phosphorus which, if in excess, can cause eutrophication in lakes and rivers. There have been few studies of nutrient transport and storage in karst spring and reservoir connected stream systems draining the Missouri Ozarks. This study aims to link the baseflow nutrient contributions of Sanders Spring to downstream reservoir outflow and the Headwaters South Dry Sac River Watershed in Springfield, Missouri. Water samples were collected seasonally and analyzed for total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and several other water quality parameters. Discharge was also monitored to calculate water and …

Estimation Of The Relationship Between Satellite-Derived Vegetation Indices And Live Fuel Moisture Towards Wildfire Risk In Southern California, Kristen Whitney, Seung Hee Kim, Shenyue Jia, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Southern California possesses a Mediterranean climate having semi-arid to arid characteristics and contains shrubland areas at high risk to wildfire. To assess wildfire danger, fire agencies have been monitoring the moisture of vegetation, called live fuel moisture (LFM), using field-based sampling. Unfortunately, spatial and temporal resolution of live fuel moisture data are significantly limited because sampling is labor intensive. Remote sensing satellite data has been used to monitor vegetation moisture content and health of shrublands. Therefore, a potential approach to overcome the limitations of manual measurements of live fuel moisture is to use vegetation indices (VIs) derived from satellite data. …

Restoration Of An Ancestral Temple In Guangzhou, China: Re-Imagining History And Traditions Through Devotion To Art And Creation, Ling Ma, Orlando Woods, Zhu Hong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Rapid modernization has brought about massive changes in the urban and rural landscapes of China.While many old places and ancient buildings have been pulled down and replaced with more modernalternatives, others have been protected and restored. These include ancient ancestral temples, animportant cultural space in China. Previous research has shown how different level governmentsand rural communities work together to restore ancient temples, but didn’t bring to light artisticand non-government financed and patronized cases of restoration projects. This article adoptsa bottom-up perspective to examine a case in Guangzhou how an individual artist transforms anancient ancestral temple into a new cultural space. …

Resilience And The U.S. Labor Market: A Cross-Scale Analysis On The Role Of Industrial Diversity And Specialization, Christian D. Sprague

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the effects of industrial diversity and specialization vary across geographical scales and classification levels. The notion of a robust institutional design, in conjunction with a regional resilience framework, is used to model how diversity and modularity affect unemployment through-out economic cycles. We use fixed effects models on employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau in all available U.S. counties from 1998-2015. Key results suggest the optimal structure of industrial composition varies across scale, namely, that fine levels of industrial diversity are beneficial at higher levels of geographical scale (regions), whereas a broad …

Species Delimitation Predictions Using Mitochondrial And Nuclear Dna Sequences From The Heteromys Pictus-Spectabilis Species Complex, Joanna Rosa Bateman

Theses and Dissertations

Heteromys pictus-spectabilis is a species complex within the subfamily Heteromyinae (Family: Heteromyidae) that is distributed along the western and southern Mexican coast and surrounding environments. Currently, the species complex is accepted as being 2 separate species (H. pictus and H. spectabilis), but this also renders H. pictus paraphyletic. Therefore, the species complex requires re-evaluation in order to resolve the paraphyly. Mitochondrial DNA sequences from a previously existing ~720 specimen database compiled by Victoria Vance were used in conjunction with new nuclear DNA sequences sequenced for the purpose of this study to generate multiple phylogenetic trees via the software programs RAxML, …

Developing An Implementation Plan For Program Success: Sjsu Campus Community Emergency Response Team (C-Cert), Waynette Fernandez Santos

Master's Projects

San Jose State University would benefit from the implementation of the Campus Community Emergency Response Team (C-CERT), a program that many higher education institutions use to train community members in disaster preparedness. With a C-CERT program, trained people are empowered to know how to conduct themselves during an emergency, and learn how to keep themselves, their friends and colleagues safe. This research surveyed and interviewed emergency management professionals in other higher education institutions to determine best practices for C-CERT implementation. The goal of this research was to analyze other higher education institutions’ C-CERT success, identify what characteristics make their C-CERT …

Pengaruh Embung Dan Kombinasinya Dengan Teknik Konservasi Tanah Dan Air Lainnya Terhadap Koefisien Regim Aliran Dan Koefisien Aliran Tahunan, Latief M. Rahman, Evi Nursari, Dwi Putro Tejo Baskoro

Jurnal Geografi Lingkungan Tropik (Journal of Geography of Tropical Environments)

Government of Indonesia planned to build 30.000 embung in 2017. Embung or mini reservoir is one of soil and water conservation methods to decrease surface runoff, enhance water surface retention, and increase water entering to the soil by infiltration, that finally influence the values of Discharge Ratio and Runoff Coefficient of a watershed. This research that was done in 2017 is about the effect of embung and it’s combination with other soil and water conservation technics (strip cropping and agroforestry) on Discharge Ratio (DR) and Runoff Coefficient (RC) in Cilemer Watershed by using SWAT method. The result shows that the …