Digital Commons Network^™

Measuring Friendship Maintenance In Gay Men, Eliah Reding

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the existing friendship maintenance literature to develop a psychometrically sound scale for the measurement of friendship maintenance among gay men. Existing friendship maintenance research does not adequately capture the uniqueness of gay male friendship. Utilizing DeVellis’s (2016) steps of scale development, this dissertation constructs a new scale, the GayFABS, to assess the unique aspects of friendship maintenance in gay men. Unique in this dissertation is the use of a focus group to establish content validity rather than the traditional approach of expert review. An exploratory factor analysis is conducted to structure the scale and its component subscales. …

Exploring K-12 Superintendent Turnover: Career Advancement Or Dissatisfaction Realized?, Francis Arthur Schill

Theses and Dissertations

Leading educational reform is one of a superintendent’s many roles, which involves working with elected school board members with varying beliefs of what constitutes educational reform. Superintendents accept this responsibility despite the considerable challenge that meaningful educational reform efforts take at least five years (Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991). The average stay of a superintendent in a school district is six and a half years, further complicating reform efforts (Glass & Franceschini, 2007). The purpose of the study was to better understand the factors that lead to the turnover of superintendents of K-12 schools in North Dakota.

The conceptual framework for …

A Presidential Leadership Process For Higher Education In Small, Rural Institutions And Settings, Teresa Caplinger Spaeth

Theses and Dissertations

A qualitative research study was conducted to explore leadership competencies of presidents of public universities with enrollments of less than 7,000, located in small rural communities and distant locations in the Upper Midwest. The context of higher education is constantly evolving. Internal pressures from faculty and students, as well as external factors such as finances, new technologies, and stakeholder demands play a role in determining the future of academic institutions and the success of their leadership.

Much literature has been written regarding higher education leadership, best practices for success, and future changes that should be made to maintain sustainable institutions, …

Hunting And Fishing Attitudes, Behaviors And Ethics Related To Gender And Aggression, Victoria Williams

Theses and Dissertations

To date, no empirical studies have investigated the relationship between psychopathology (or other constructs) pertaining to hunting and fishing attitudes, behaviors and ethics relating to gender and aggression. Although experienced outdoorspeople assumedly adhere to, or are at least aware of, general hunting and fishing codes of ethics, many disregard them. This study investigates the differences between men and women on these variables by utilizing a newly developed measure of hunting and fishing attitudes and beliefs, the Sportsperson Attitude Scale (SAS) (McDonald, Williams, Sargent & McDonald 2017). This measure was created in order to better understand the potential motivators and reinforcers …

Evolution Of Object-Oriented Methods From The Reverse Engineering Of Programming Code, Pann Ajjimaporn

Theses and Dissertations

Many software development projects fail because of their inability to deliver the product in a timely and cost-effective manner, i.e. the software crisis. In a commercial airline company, a safety-critical system for preventing a “single-point of failure” needs to be developed and certified. To meet the project deadline an Agile approach was used in developing the first portion of the system. An appropriate software development methodology, i.e. reverse-engineering was then applied to the software system to develop method that would be used in system maintenance and evaluation.

The goals of this research study were to develop a segment of one …

English 3302 -- The History And Structure Of The English Language, Sp 2019, Eric Shane Bryan

Resources

I summarize the outcomes of my Spring of 2019 implementation of the zero-cost textbook option for English 3302 course as very successful while also noting certain areas in which improvement may be made in future iterations of the course. This report will proceed in three parts: I) an overview of the process by which I developed the materials for this course, II) discussion of outcomes for the methods of assessments (per my A&OER grant proposal), and III) a discussion of challenges that occurred during the semester and plans for improving course materials in the future.

Nothing Is Revealed: An Intimate Look Back At 1968, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

This started as a blog project, 99 entries on days in 1968 posted on the corresponding days of 2018. It is a cultural study of sixties America and a personal memoir.

Where You Come From Is Gone: Reinhabiting The Ruins Of The Native South, Catherine Wilkins

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Full Transparency: A Case Against The Collection Of Internet Information In Trump-Era American Immigration, Thomas P. Campbell

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Facial Re-Enactment, Speech Synthesis And The Rise Of The Deepfake, Nicholas Gardiner

Theses : Honours

Emergent technologies in the fields of audio speech synthesis and video facial manipulation have the potential to drastically impact our societal patterns of multimedia consumption. At a time when social media and internet culture is plagued by misinformation, propaganda and “fake news”, their latent misuse represents a possible looming threat to fragile systems of information sharing and social democratic discourse. It has thus become increasingly recognised in both academic and mainstream journalism that the ramifications of these tools must be examined to determine what they are and how their widespread availability can be managed.

This research project seeks to examine …

Image-Based Sexual Abuse: A Qualitative Exploration Of The Lived Experience And Perceived Consequences For Women, Brienna L. Webb

Theses : Honours

Being a highly convoluted and contemporaneous issue, defining and conceptualising image based sexual abuse has proved difficult for scholars. Although research on image-based sexual abuse is limited, previous inquiries have identified serious consequences and accumulative harms for affected individuals. I aimed to explore the lived experience and consequences of image-based sexual abuse as identified by women, in an attempt to taper the research dearth on this phenomenon. An in-depth qualitative phenomenological exploration of seven women’s experiences of image-based sexual abuse saw five overarching themes emerge from participants’ discourse. The themes comprised mental health impacts; perceptions of self; loss of control; …

Spheroid-3d And Monolayer-2d Intestinal Electrochemical Biosensor For Toxicity/Viability Testing: Applications In Drug Screening, Food Safety, And Environmental Pollutant Analysis, Evangelia Flampouri, Shahzad Imar, Kieran O'Connell, Baljit Singh

Articles

The rise of three-dimensional cell culture systems that provide in vivo-like environments for pharmaco-toxicological models has prompted the need for simple and robust viability assays suitable for complex cell architectural structures. This study addresses that challenge with the development of an in vitro enzyme based electrochemical sensor for viability/cytotoxicity assessment of two-dimensional (2D) monolayer and three-dimensional (3D) spheroid culture formats. The biosensor measures the cell viability/toxicity via electrochemical monitoring of the enzymatic activity of nonspecific esterases of viable cells, through the hydrolysis of 1-naphthyl acetate to 1-naphthol. The proposed sensor demonstrated strong correlation (r = 0.979) with viable …

Levering, Matthew. Engaging The Doctrine Of The Holy Spirit: Love And Gift In The Trinity And The Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016. V + 440 Pp. Hardcover. Usd 45.00., Gerardo Oudri

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

No abstract provided.

Law And Order In Ancient Athens [Review] / Lanni, Adriaan., Kenneth Bergland

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

Book Review

Worldviews: Concepts Or Narratives? An Integrative Definition To Assess Their Controlling Effect In The Biblical And Atheistic Evolutionary Models, Flavio Prestes Iii

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

What are worldviews? What are their characteristics? How do they work? This article offers tentative responses to these questions through the integration of concepts and narratives. Using the biblical and the atheistic evolutionary narratives as case studies, it also seeks to show how worldviews have a significant, though not absolute, controlling effect on one’s perception of reality.

Being Biblical In A Pluralistic Age

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

One way to define a disciple is “a follower of someone’s words.” In a pluralistic age, there are many words beckoning would-be disciples to particular ways of life, all promising some kind of wellness. These word-ways are ingredients of worldviews, a program or map for orienting oneself in the world. Worldviews answer core questions about human existence, often in the form of a story. This essay argues that contemporary pluralism is the result of abandoning the Bible as our control story, a loss that is as much a failure of what Charles Taylor calls the social imaginary. If this diagnosis …

God’S Library: The Archaeology Of The Earliest Christian Manuscripts [Review] / Nongbri, Brent., Christopher R. Chadwick

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

Book Review

Brothers In Arms: Visual Commonalities Between Us And Is Recruitment Strategies, Lawrie Phillips Bue, Maha Ghalwash

Political Science

This article claims that the visual image contributes to, reflects and supports the dominant discourse of two powerful armed groups that have operated in Iraq and Syria: the US military and the Islamic State (IS). This research uses multimodal discourse analysis to explore two crucial insights into the ideological power of the visual image: the power of the image as spectatorship or spectacle and the sublime or transcendental nature of the visual image. The authors conclude that US and IS recruitment and propaganda videos share these two crucial ideological elements: pride in the spectacle of their military power, discipline and …

The Role Of Regional Media In Shaping Political Awareness Of Youth: Evidence From Egypt, Amany Khodair, Mostafa Aboelsoud, Mahmoud Khalifa

Political Science

This is an exploratory study that aims to answer the question of whether and to what extent regional media are influential in shaping political awareness and its role in influencing public opinion, especially that of young people. We examined regional media in Egypt, more precisely in the Suez Canal Region. To ensure the validity of our results, we deployed a number of different data collection methods: the collection, analysis, and integration of quantitative and qualitative research. The results reveal that regional media have the potential to contribute effectively in raising youths’ political awareness of the public policy-making process. The recommendations …

Modern Military Justice: Cases And Materials, Lisa M. Schenck

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This textbook is about the modern military justice system of the United States. It covers court-martial procedures, substantive criminal law, and nonjudicial punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in addition to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which gives federal courts jurisdiction over certain acts committed abroad. The Third Edition includes several recent cases and updates that address the significant changes made in the 2019 Manual for Courts-Martial, the Military Justice Act of 2016, and other recent legislation.

Blockchain-Based Insurance, Michael B. Abramowicz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

To date, the insurance industry's interest in the blockchain has focused largely on the possibility of recording insurance entitlements in a transparent way. While the blockchain may produce significant efficiencies of this sort, it has considerably greater transformative potential. Smart contracts could serve as a substitute for insurance companies, conventionally conceived. Such contracts could perform the function of deciding whether claims should paid, without the need for or possibility of judicial intervention. The blockchain and smart contracts are difficult to regulate, because ownership and decisionmaking can be decentralized. Blockchain-based insurance may successfully provide a means of avoiding expensive regulation and …

Originalism And Structural Argument, Thomas Colby

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The "new originalism" is all about the text of the Constitution. Originalists insist that the whole point of originalism is to respect and follow the original meaning of the text, and that originalism derives its legitimacy from its unwavering focus on the text alone as the sole basis of higher law. And yet, many leading Supreme Court decisions in matters of great importance to conservatives—in opinions authored and joined by originalist judges, and often praised by originalist scholars—are seemingly not grounded in the constitutional text at all. They rest instead on abstract structural argument: on freestanding principles of federalism and …

The Marketplace Of Ideas Online, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

One hundred years ago, in the 1919 case of Abrams v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ushered into existence modern First Amendment jurisprudence by introducing the free trade in ideas model of free speech. According to this model, the ultimate good is reached by allowing speakers to engage in the free trade in ideas—free of government intervention in the way of regulation, censorship, or punishment. Ideas must be allowed to compete freely in an unregulated market, and the best ideas will ultimately get accepted by competing with others in this marketplace. As such, government intervention is unnecessary …

Why Is Mississippi The Best State In Which To Be Exonerated? An Empirical Evaluation Of State Statutory And Civil Compensation For The Wrongfully Convicted, Jeffrey Gutman, Lingxiao Sun

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Wrongful conviction has for decades been a subject of academic study, litigation, and policy reform, but its more recent reach into popular culture is reflected in an array of books, documentaries, podcasts, movies, and TV shows. In both non-fiction and fiction, the theme of wrongful conviction marries a traditionally American revulsion of profound injustice with the captivation of the police procedural, dirty cops, forensic evidence, and the relentless fortitude of incarcerated innocents and their heroic lawyers.

The innocence movement lies at this intersection between law and popular imagination. As the attendance at the 2018 Innocence Network Conference attests, the energy …

Suspension And Debarment In The U.S. Government: Comparative Lessons For The Eu’S Next Steps In Procurement, Christopher R. Yukins, Michal Kania

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Governments may exclude vendors from procurement awards for many reasons, including poor performance and corruption. Excluding a vendor, whether from a particular procurement (deciding that the vendor is not qualified for award) or from an entire procurement system (suspending or debarring the vendor), calls for a complex assessment of the performance and reputational risks posed by that vendor, and of the costs of exclusion. As the EU’s Member States shape their exclusion systems consistent with the EU’s procurement directives, the Member States may wish to draw on U.S. strategies for managing risks in contractor qualification: requiring that contractors establish strong …

Forging A New Consensus: Numsa And Anc Hegemony In Flux In South Africa, Benjamin Alexander Hale

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines the extent to which the ANC is hegemonic within South Africa, the degree to which this hegemonic project is neoliberal, and how resistance to this project is articulated within civil society. Drawing on the work of authors such as Patrick Bond, Ashwin Desai, and Sagie Narsiah this thesis applies a Gramscian theoretical framework to examine ways in which neoliberalism is manifested through ANC economic policies and the ANC’s bid for hegemony within South Africa. It also explores the role of unions and social movements as sites of counter-hegemonic resistance, with an emphasis on the activities of the …

Disability Access And Local Government: Co-Researching The City Of Bunbury’S Aim To Become The Most Accessible Regional City In Australia, Adam Johnson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study used Participatory Action Research (PAR) to investigate the facilitators of disability access in local government, with a focus on the City of Bunbury in Western Australia. In 2014, the City of Bunbury adopted a long-term aspirational goal to become the Most Accessible Regional City in Australia (MARCIA), and the findings and recommendations from this study are intended to inform strategic priorities for achieving that goal, including a potential change of corporate approach required to attain MARCIA status. The thesis critically evaluates the historical, cultural and systemic factors that have influenced accessibility and inclusion in the development of Bunbury’s …

No Human Ever Made A Cathedral Such As This: Scoping The Ecology Of The Carols By Candlelight Effect In Australia’S Open-Air Environments, Robin Ryan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

During Australia’s dry December, traditional and popular forms of caroling shape the sight and sound of the key Christian festival of Christmas. Creative connections between belief, place, and music are characteristically manifest in focused open-air environments of beach, bushland or park. Reasoning from gospel belief that the very first “Christmas carol” emanated from a heavenly host of angels singing to an audience of shepherds in a field, caroling alfresco is an appropriate activity. How, then, do Australian caroling venues become conducive to environmental spheres of sound and influence? While the annual mass Carols by Candlelight concerts televised from Melbourne and …

Energy And Exergy Analysis Of A Thermosiphon And Forced-Circulation Flat-Plate Solar Collector Using Mwcnt/Water Nanofluid, Mahmoud Eltaweel, Ahmed A. Abdel-Rehim

Mechanical Engineering

The scientific community has focused on the use of nanofluids to enhance solar collectors' thermal efficiency. Solar energy is considered an extensively available energy resource with a weak effect on the environment. The flat-plate solar collector is considered to be the most common collector used, but the efficiency of the collector has limitations, such as the low effectiveness of the absorber in terms of energy absorption and the transmission of that energy to the working fluid. The flat-plate solar collector can be enhanced by replacing the working fluid with a nanofluid. Nanofluids are considered new media that exhibit thermophysical properties …

Climate Change Refugees In The Time Of Sinking Islands, Jane Steffens

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

While environmental migration is not a new phenomenon, the international community has been slow to react to a wildly increasing number of people displaced by climate-related factors. With the current scenario of sinking islands, rapid urbanization, and drought, the international community seems to be on the precipice of a massive humanitarian catastrophe. Even so, lawmakers appear hesitant to fill in the gaps of existing international law, leaving an entire category of people vulnerable and unprotected against the effects of climate change. Private climate-governance initiatives can achieve large-scale, prompt, and efficient solutions to climate-induced migration. While private governance initiatives lack the …