Digital Commons Network^™

¿La Migración Causa Desigualdad De Ingresos?, Pia M. Orrenius, Madeline Zavodny

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

La desigualdad ha aumentado en décadas recientes a lo largo del mundo. Latinoamérica ha sido una excepción a lo que, por lo demás, parece ser la tendencia prevalente en los Estados Unidos, Europa y Asia. En los Estados Unidos, la acentuación de la desigualdad desde los años 1970 ha coincidido con el aumento de la migración mexicana. En México, la desigualdad ha disminuido desde mediados de la década 1990, periodo durante el que la emigración a los Estados Unidos se elevó, primero a niveles nunca antes visto, para luego declinar de manera abrupta.

Nuestra revisión bibliográfica sugiere que la inmigración …

Integrated Computer Science Unit For Early Exposure To A Diverse Population, Di Hoang

Master's Theses

Reports from major tech companies, such as Airbnb, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo, indicate that gender diversity and ethnic diversity are lacking in the tech industry [22]. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projected a 24% increase in the number of software development positions (roughly an increase of 300,000 jobs) between 2016 and 2026 [64]. The main motivation behind this thesis is to expose computer science to young children and encourage teachers to include computer science in their classrooms in the hope of contributing to the current effort of increasing diversity within tech fields in the next decade.

This …

Human Development, Economic Policy And Income Inequality In Cabo Verde, João Monteiro

Journal of Cape Verdean Studies

By most accounts, Cabo Verde is making tremendous achievements economically, politically, and socially. Forty years after becoming independent, it finds itself consistently among the highest performers on human development scales anywhere in Africa. This paper is a reflection on Cabo Verde’s development and economic growth as it relates to questions of income and resource distribution. Specifically, it considers the challenge of inequality in the distribution of income and the possibility that present inequality trends may be related to economic policy-making over that last twenty-five years. It draws on government reports and United Nations and World Bank documents to capture the …

Reading In Cape Verde: Instructional Practices And Teacher Attitudes, David Almeida

Journal of Cape Verdean Studies

Given that no extensive study on reading instruction and reading attitudes has been carried out country-wide in The Republic of Cabo Verde, (a ten island archipelago off the western coast of Africa), educational practitioners and policy makers in that nation are left with a dearth of accurate information when making decisions surrounding these constructs in the classroom, in the universities, or in the policy rooms of that nation. In a 2007 article, Commeyras & Inyega published research on reading instruction in Kenya and encouraged researchers to follow their example, i.e. to locate all pertinent literature and to conduct a review …

California Redevelopment 2.0: Implementation Of Community Revitalization And Investment Authorities, Christopher Hoem

Master's Projects

This research aims at revealing the challenges and opportunities in implementing Community Revitalization and Investment Authorities (CRIAs) in California.

This study will focus on the implementation of CRIAs, but it is worth examining alternative economic development tools to draw comprehensive comparisons and understand their advantages and disadvantages.

Understanding economic development tools may be valuable for the commercial and industrial growth and prosperity of cities and local governments. It may also be important to increase the number of affordable housing units in an area. Businesses and low-income families alike share the benefits of successful redevelopment. It may be possible to reveal …

Lead, Copper, And Iron In University Tap Water, Alison Mclendon

Honors Theses

This study observed concentrations of lead, copper, and iron in university tap water over an eight-week span during and between the summer and fall semesters. First draw and 30s flush samples were taken after overnight stagnation from the Honor House, College Hall, J. B. George Building, and International Center bathrooms and analyzed with an inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS). There was no obvious correlation between time in the semester and metal concentrations. Relative iron levels rose and fell at the same time in all buildings, but there was little correlation between buildings for lead and copper concentrations. The Honor House …

A Comparative Look Of Sentencing Outcomes Based On The Defendant's Country Of Citizenship, Whitney Ridley

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In the wake of negative stereotypes of immigrants from lower status countries, this study used federal sentencing data for 2015 to examine the effects of the defendant’s country of citizenship on sentence outcomes. Although the United States Sentencing Commission has long stipulated that national origin isn’t a relevant factor in determining sentence, a growing body of sentencing research has found evidence that a defendant’s country of citizenship continues to influence sentence outcome. Findings of the current study revealed partial support that national origins do matter. Specifically, after controlling for a number of legally relevant, case processing and extralegal factors, defendants …

A New Wave Of Marine Evidence-Based Management: Emerging Challenges And Solutions To Transform Monitoring, Evaluating, And Reporting, P. F.E. Addison, D. J. Collins, R. Trebilco, S. Howe, N. Bax, P. Hedge, G. Jones, P. Miloslavich, C. Roelfsema, M. Sams, R. D. Stuart-Smith, P. Scanes, Baumgarten P Von, A. Mcquatters-Gollop

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

Transforming Development And Disaster Risk, Frank Thomalla, Michael Boyland, Karlee Johnson, Jonathan Ensor, Heidi Tuhkanen, Asa Gerger Swartling, Guoyi Han, John Forrester, Darin Wahl

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Abstract:

This article focuses on the complex relationship between development and disaster risk. Development and disaster risk are closely linked as the people and assets exposed to risk, as well as their vulnerability and capacity, are largely determined by development processes. Transformation is key to moving from current development patterns that increase, create or unfairly distribute risks, to forms of development that are equitable, resilient and sustainable. Based on a review of existing literature, we present three opportunities that have the potential to lead to transformation in the development-disaster risk relationship: (i) exposing development-disaster risk trade-offs in development policy and …

Perception Is Everything: Repairing The Image Of American Drone Warfare, Luke Tubbs

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis will trace the United States’ development of unmanned warfare from its initial use in the World Wars through the Cold War to its final maturation in the War on Terror. The examination will provide a summary of unmanned warfare’s history, its gradual adoption, and concerns regarding the proliferation of drones use to understand the emphasis on unmanned weapons in the American Military. In each phase of development, a single program will be focused on to highlight special areas of interest in the modern day. Finally, the modern era of unmanned systems will focus on the growing integration of …

The Pen Must Calm The Sword: A Call To Promote South Sudanese History For Peace, John Robert Flores Jr.

Senior Honors Theses

The Republic of South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation and its birth has been marred by horrific acts of tribal and ethnic strife that have been characterized by brutal attacks on women and children by both rebels and government forces and the destruction of its ability to feed and provide basic services for its citizens. South Sudan’s first few years of statehood have been heartbreaking especially when considered against the promise that existed only a few years ago. Working towards a peaceful and successful future will inevitably be founded, in part, on understanding the history of the diverse peoples …

Academic Senate - Agenda, 5/1/2018, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Relics, Replication, And Reputation King Arthur, Edward I, And The Conquest Of Wales, Danielle Maurer

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Biblical Community : Moving From Multicultural Congregation To An Intimate Spiritual Family, Anand Varghese Abraham

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Working Equids: A Case Study Investigating If Locus Of Control Effects Welfare In Central America, Lauren Ann Brizgys

Open Access Theses

Developing countries lack the resources and technological advancements commonly used by developed countries for production and must rely on manual or animal labor to aide in the creation, collection, and distribution of products for income. In Haiti and Honduras, the leading role of a working equid is to provide transportation for families and products to and from marketplaces. It is not uncommon for one equid to carry loads three times its body weight and make up to six trips, accumulating up to fifty miles per day, to and from its home. With extreme environmental and physical constraints placed on these …

Iimpact Of Urbanization On Precipitation From Meta-Analysis And Causal Discovery, Jie Liu

Open Access Theses

Recent decades have witnessed rapid urbanization across the globe. The temperature impacts of urbanization, referred to as urban heat island, in which the cities are typically warmer than the surrounding nonurban region are well known. A growing number of studies have recently also reported an interesting dynamical feedback on the regional weather and climate asserting that cities can modify thunderstorms and affect the rainfall in and around urban areas. However, unlike the temperature effects, the impact on rainfall are still unclear. A typical feature emerging from different studies is that there is some notable modification downwind of the cities -yet …

The Impacts Of Providing And Receiving Formative Peer Feedback On Secondary Students Achievement On A Graphic Design Project, Emily Yoshikawa

Open Access Theses

Formative assessment is a widely accepted practice in education today aimed towards high student achievement (Gielen & De Weaver, 2015). Despite its’ acceptance, there remains some confusion, as well as contradictory ideas, around the best practices of formative assessment and, explicitly, feedback through formative assessment (Shute, 2008). There is specifically a lack of clarity on the impact of individual elements of providing and/or receiving formative feedback on student achievement. Further, the influence of this feedback, if provided to/from peers in formative settings, is not fully understood (Liu & Carless, 2006). These ideas are important to understand so as to help …

It's All Local: Civil Society And The Cdbg Program, Sara L. Wiest

Open Access Dissertations

This research seeks to explain contrasting patterns of population stability and decline at both the city and neighborhood levels. Existing research on urban decline identifies several factors that can facilitate or impede population stability, including: the amount of socioeconomic disadvantage, the physical and economic characteristics of a city, local government responsiveness, and the strength of civil society. Using a mixed methods approach combining multilevel modeling and spatial analysis techniques, I test the hypothesis that stronger civil society, characterized by greater collective capacity and a denser organizational resource base, is the key determinant in whether a city will stabilize, grow, or …

Understanding China's Soybean Boom From A Global Perspective, Guolin Yao

Open Access Dissertations

China’s soybean demand boom in the past two decades has been very dramatic. It involves socioeconomic and environmental interactions of multi-coupled systems. Over this period, China doubled its GDP, and the ensuing income growth generated strong growth in the demand for livestock products -- a major consumer of soybean meals. In addition, the goal of producing more meat and milk boosted protein content requirements in feed formulations and intensified China’s soybean meal demands. Brazil and Argentina stepped in to satisfy this increased demand. In the case of Brazil, rapid technical change, coupled with the expansion of cultivated area, played a …

Context-Preserving Visual Analytics Of Multi-Scale Spatial Aggregation., Jiawei Zhang

Open Access Dissertations

Spatial datasets (i.e., location-based social media, crime incident reports, and demographic data) often exhibit varied distribution patterns at multiple spatial scales. Examining these patterns across different scales enhances the understanding from global to local perspectives and offers new insights into the nature of various spatial phenomena. Conventional navigation techniques in such multi-scale data-rich spaces are often inefficient, require users to choose between an overview or detailed information, and do not support identifying spatial patterns at varying scales. In this work, we present a context-preserving visual analytics technique that aggregates spatial datasets into hierarchical clusters and visualizes the multi-scale aggregates in …

The English In The Levant: Commerce, Diplomacy, And The English Nation In The Ottoman Empire, 1672-1691, Zachary W. Schulz

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the English who went to the Levant. Specifically, it analyzes the merchants, factors, ambassadors, chaplains, and embassy staff members who traveled to the Near East for either bureaucratic, commercial, or scholastic motivations. During their time abroad, these men amassed a wealth of knowledge and pecuniary resources, simultaneously furthering the countless interests forced upon them by the Levant Company and/or the English government. Thus, this dissertation asserts that the Ottoman Empire acted as a training ground for English emissaries, providing those who were abroad with the means of returning home to better positions of political, commercial, and/or diplomatic …

Opto-Electro-Thermal Approach To Modeling Photovoltaic Performance And Reliability From Cell To Module, Xingshu Sun

Open Access Dissertations

Thanks to technology advancement in recent decades, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of solar photovoltaics (PV) has finally been driven down close to that of traditional fossil fuels. Still, PV only provides approximately 0.5% of the total electricity consumption in the United States. To make PV more competitive with other energy resources, we must continuously reduce the LCOE of PV through improving their performance and reliability. As PV efficiencies approach the theoretical limit, however, further improvements are difficult. Meanwhile, solar modules in the field regularly fail prematurely before the manufacturers 25-year warranty. Therefore, future PV research needs innovative approaches …

Predicting Graduation And College Gpa: A Multilevel Analysis Investigating The Contextual Effect Of College Major, John A. Gipson

Open Access Dissertations

Despite the overwhelming evidence that higher education data are nested at various levels, single-level techniques such as regression and analysis of variance are commonly used to investigate student outcomes. This is problematic as a mismatch in methodology and research questions can lead to biased parameter estimates. The purpose of this study was to predict cumulative grade point average (GPA) and the likelihood of four-year and six-year graduation while simultaneously accounting for select pre-college characteristics, during-college experiences, and the interrelationship between student-level and major-level predictors. To achieve the desired outcomes, the study applied multilevel modeling techniques to secondary data for new …

British Essentialism In Eighteenth-Century British Travel Literature Of The West Indies And North America, Stephanie Matos-Ayala

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores issues of representation and cultural negotiation by examining how the white colonial other was depicted in eighteenth-century travel literature, specifically Janet Schaw’s Journal of a Lady of Quality written during the years 1774 to 1776. Travel narratives and histories speak to many different topics, yet they reveal the most about eighteenth-century British ways of thinking about race and national identity, more so than about the various peoples and cultures they seek to describe. I argue that this literature reveals a hierarchy based on the absorption and consumption of British practices and goods by the colonial subject. Neither …

Revisiting Rustow: An Empirical Assessment Of The Relationship Between National Identity And Attitudes Towards Democracy In Post-Soviet Russia, John P. Schultz

Open Access Dissertations

Does national identity influence a country’s prospects for democratization? Brudny and Finkel (2011) contend that national identity explains variation in the political developments among former Soviet states. In considering this argument, this effort examines the empirical evidence to determine 1) whether a measurable model of national identity has developed within Russia, 2) how this national identity has developed over time, and 3) whether a relationship exists between this intersubjectively held conception of national identity and attitudes towards democracy. Findings suggest the development and ongoing contestation of two competing conceptions of national identity that covary with changing attitudes towards democracy over …

Discourse, Documents, And Counter-Discipline: Michel Foucault’S Ethics And The Practice Of Writing, Strand Sheldahl-Thomason

Open Access Dissertations

Michel Foucault spent the last years of his life in an investigation of ancient ethical practices. The practices can be summarized in one phrase: the care of the self. Although this investigation grows out of Foucault’s interest in biopolitics and sexuality, and is ostensibly a continuation of his History of Sexuality project, it nonetheless reconfigures that project and adds to it the dimension of subjectivity. It therefore presents a challenge to Foucault scholarship. Broadly speaking, critics have taken Foucault’s ethical turn to signify either a retreat from politics or a historical investigation of how ancient people internalized social possibilities. I …

Haremization Of Desdemona: A Comparative Study Of Shakespeare’S Othello In The Ottoman Context, Tulin Ece Tosun

Open Access Dissertations

My dissertation takes a comparative approach by setting Shakespeare’s Othello within the context of Ottoman history and the Ottoman harem to represent current Middle Eastern trends in the field of Comparative Literature. I argue that Othello paints a portrait of stereotypical Muslim characteristics drawn from the travel narratives of Richard Hakluyt, Richard Knolles, and Paul Rycaut. I use these travel narratives to identify cross-cultural relationships, comparisons, interactions, and psychology. In my final chapter, I argue that from a certain perspective, Othello is a Turk because Shakespeare turns the citadel in Cyprus into a harem. The word harem, stemming from the …

Using Tangible Interaction And Virtual Reality To Support Spatial Perspective Taking Ability, Shen-Kuen Chang

Open Access Dissertations

According to several large-scale and longitudinal studies, spatial ability, one of the primary mental abilities, has been shown as a significant predictor for STEM learning (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and career success. Frameworks in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and TEI (Tangible and Embodied Interaction) also indicated how the spatial-related aspects of interaction are a common design theme for interfaces using emerging technologies. However, currently only very few interactive systems (using TEI) are designed around a target spatial ability. TEI’s direct effects on spatial ability are also not well-investigated. Meanwhile, a growing body of research from cognitive sciences, such as embodied …

Protecting Cultural Rights In The South Pacific Islands: Using Unesco And Marine Protected Areas To Plan For Climate Change, Elizabeth Thomas

Fordham Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Study And Analysis Of Historic Allegheny Woodrat (Neotoma Magister) Sites, Elizabeth Grietzer

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Allegheny woodrats (Neotoma magister) once ranged throughout most of the eastern United States, however in recent years their populations have experienced dramatic declines. Several mutually inclusive hypotheses may explain the decline of the woodrat populations, including habitat fragmentation and disturbance, decreased food availability, and increased exposure to the deadly raccoon roundworm (Baylisascaris procyonis). Select historic locations were evaluated for habitat characteristics, the prevalence of raccoon roundworm and the presence of predators and competitors, in order to evaluate the impacts of each of the three hypotheses. The results indicated that raccoon roundworm and decreased hard mast availability are the main drivers …