Digital Commons Network^™

Johann Strauss Ii's Die Fledermaus: Historical Background And Conductor's Guide, Jennifer Bruton

Dissertations

Students pursuing graduate degrees in conducting often have aspirations of being high school or college choir or band directors. Others want to lead orchestra programs in educational or professional settings. Sadly, many colleges and universities do not have systems in place that provide avenues for those choosing this career path. The curriculum should go beyond teaching the rudiments of baton technique. Students should receive instruction and practical experience, applying what they have learned. Lab bands and choirs are a helpful tool, but I believe opera programs provide an ideal and essential venue where conductors can not only improve and hone …

The Usage And Impact Of Outpatient Commitment Orders On Suicide And Suicide Attempt Rates In Mississippi, Sam Mauldin

Dissertations

Rates of self-harm and suicide in the United States have not decreased since 1980 and remained relatively constant through the start of the 21^st Century. The most recent data indicate that suicide rates in the United States have risen by about 2% a year from 2006 through 2016, although suicide rates have decreased in other countries during the same timeframe. Finding a viable intervention to slow rates of self-harm and suicide is needed in the United States. The need for closer patient observation has been cited as an underutilized intervention for the reduction of attempts of self-harm and suicide. …

Narcan Can Save Your Loved One: Designing Messages For The Opioid Crisis Using The Extended Parallel Process Model, Braden Bagley

Dissertations

In 2017, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency. The opioid epidemic has become widespread because of over prescription and extreme addiction. In recent years, the crisis has become dire because of the staggering annual death toll from overdoses. Although the number of opioid-related deaths has risen, so too have the innovations designed to combat opioid abuse and overdoses. The use of naloxone is a safe and reliable option for treating overdose victims. In fact, many first responders are primarily relying on the medication in such emergencies. This study …

Change Effort Organizational Communication Effectiveness And Work Locus Of Control Influence On Change Fatigue In The Workplace, Kady B. Pietz

Dissertations

Approximately 70% of change management initiatives fail (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Kotter, 2007; Pasmore, 2011; Warner, 2018), and employee reactions to change are critical in forecasting successful change efforts (Connell & Waring, 2002). Predicting and implementing successful change serves as a critical component in addressing failed change. Change fatigue as an employee experience, among other factors, results in adverse outcomes for organizations through change. Addressing contributing factors of change fatigue to avoid the onset of and potentially harmful implications of change fatigue could also improve change management initiatives (Perel, 2015). To better understand how to successfully implement change in organizational …

Winning Public Hearts And Minds: Security And Development Aid In The 21st Century, Mohammad Ashraf

Dissertations

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, foreign aid has focused on winning public hearts and minds in the aid recipient states as a hedge against insecurity and means to achieve progress in the “war on terror.” Western donors, especially the United States, argue foreign aid is an effective tool to expand government capacity and control over territory, win public hearts and minds, and ultimately mitigate the need and significant military costs of deployment to counter insecurity, extremism, and terrorism in weak, fragile and failing states.

This dissertation uses case studies to explore the …

An Analysis Of Western Art Music Arrangements For Steel Pan Chamber Ensemble, Ian Meiman

Dissertations

This dissertation is an analysis of western art music arrangements for steel pan chamber ensembles. Specifically, this dissertation will analyze how certain arrangers have adapted western art music for steel pan chamber ensemble while discussing the possible methods the arranger used to create this adaptation. The analysis will observe the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and other significant alterations made in the steel pan chamber arrangement, and discuss any changes made, whether due to the adaptation of the instruments or otherwise, from the original works. The dissertation will also include a brief historical discussion on western art music’s influence of early steel …

Selected Performance Indicators Of University-Model Schools, David Herndon

Dissertations

University-Model® schools seek to blend attributes of homeschooling with traditional schooling by transferring a significant portion of classroom time to a satellite classroom, typically the student’s home. Proponents suggest the model lends itself to better prepared and well-balanced graduates due to the forced ownership required of students in terms of time management, the development of independent study habits, increased balance of family life, and subsequent parental guidance; however, very little research exists to validate these claims. These tenants of the model are in line with recent research and theories suggesting a more holistic approach, beyond academic metrics, to ensure college …

Developing A Computational Framework For A Construction Scheduling Decision Support Web Based Expert System, Feroz Ahmed

Dissertations

Decision-making is one of the basic cognitive processes of human behaviors by which a preferred option or a course of action is chosen from among a set of alternatives based on certain criteria. Decision-making is the thought process of selecting a logical choice from the available options. When trying to make a good decision, all the positives and negatives of each option should be evaluated. This decision-making process is particularly challenging during the preparation of a construction schedule, where it is difficult for a human to analyze all possible outcomes of each and every situation because, construction of a project …

Unveiling Identities: A Cultural Study Of The Portrayal Of Leading Women In Zhang Yimou Films, Patrick Mcguire

Dissertations

It is imperative to recognize the ongoing collaborations of filmmakers from different countries. Film director Zhang Yimou, cited in this work, has reached out beyond his Chinese borders in recruiting both cast and crew on many of his latest features. But the field of film studies appears to have limited their investigations of such cross-cultural analyses, in particular the subjective analysis of the female lead character in film. Subjective and culturally wired as such, researchers bring forth conscious observations from their socialized unconscious minds.

This textual analysis begins with a comparison of two Chinese films, particularly observing their similar female …

Solo Trombone With Electronic Accompaniment: An Analysis And Performance Guide For Three Recent Compositions, Joshua Mize

Dissertations

This dissertation examines three solo trombone works, each with a different electronic accompaniment–fixed media, live electronics with a computer, and live electronics with a loop station. A historical and cultural background establishes a context for each accompaniment type, followed by a brief introduction of the selected composition and its composer. Then, an analysis of the piece explores how the electronic accompaniment functions within the context of the solo. Finally, a performance guide addresses rehearsal techniques and important aspects of performing with the different electronic accompaniments. The final product is a pedagogical resource representing current literature for the trombone and electronics …

The Changing News Paradigm Of South Mississippi’S Sun Herald As Seen Through The Eyes Of Its Journalists: 1968-2018, Judy Day Isbell

Dissertations

From the earliest days of the American democracy, one of the key tenets of the new government was rule by an informed electorate. This notion of rule of the people, by the people, for the people was established in the first article of the United States Constitution when the houses of Congress were carefully designed, and the idea of a knowledgeable constituency was emphasized in the first amendment when among such basic freedoms as speech, religion and assembly was freedom of the press.

Newspapers in America have changed significantly since the writing of that constitution, but most particularly in the …

Female Student Perceptions Of Factors That Influence Persistence In Male-Dominated Community College Career And Technical Education Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math Programs, Valeria Williams

Dissertations

The number of males enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs outnumber female counterparts (Wang & Degol, 2017). The disparity is even greater in persistence rates for STEM related fields (Glass, Sassler, Levitte & Michelmore, 2013). The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of females enrolled in traditionally male-dominated programs of study, specifically in the areas of STEM in community and junior colleges, to determine factors that influence persistence.

Although previous research exists focusing on women in STEM, most studies explore the barriers women face (Ong, Wright, Espinosa, & Orfield, 2011). The findings from previous …

Variation In Genome Content And Predatory Phenotypes Between Bdellovibrio Sp. Nc01 Isolated From Soil And B. Bacteriovorus Type Strain Hd100, Laura E. Williams, Nicole Cullen, Joseph A. Degiorgis, Karla J. Martinez, Justina Mellone, Molly Oser, Jing Wang, Ying Zhang

Cell and Molecular Biology Faculty Publications

Defining phenotypic and associated genotypic variation among Bdellovibrio may further our understanding of how this genus attacks and kills different Gram-negative bacteria. We isolated Bdellovibrio sp. NC01 from soil. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences and average amino acid identity showed that NC01 belongs to a different species than the type species bacteriovorus. By clustering amino acid sequences from completely sequenced Bdellovibrio and comparing the resulting orthologue groups to a previously published analysis, we defined a ‘core genome’ of 778 protein-coding genes and identified four protein-coding genes that appeared to be missing only in NC01. To determine how horizontal gene …

Why Spiking Neural Networks Are Efficient: A Theorem, Michael Beer, Julio Urenda, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Current artificial neural networks are very successful in many machine learning applications, but in some cases they still lag behind human abilities. To improve their performance, a natural idea is to simulate features of biological neurons which are not yet implemented in machine learning. One of such features is the fact that in biological neural networks, signals are represented by a train of spikes. Researchers have tried adding this spikiness to machine learning and indeed got very good results, especially when processing time series (and, more generally, spatio-temporal data). In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical …

Implementation Of A Program To Identify And Assess At-Risk Patients For Peripheral Arterial Disease, Brenna Brothers

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Lower extremity peripheral arterial disease is a condition that affects approximately 200 million people worldwide and 8 million women and men in the United States (McDermott, 2015). Although there are modifiable risk factors associated with peripheral arterial disease, it is believed to be under-diagnosed and under-treated in the general population (McDermott, 2015). The progression of asymptomatic peripheral arterial disease to symptomatic peripheral arterial disease can be reduced with the introduction of medications and therapeutic lifestyle modifications (Itoga et al., 2018). The purpose of the project was to identify and assess at-risk clinic patients with typical and atypical symptoms for lower …

Virtual Briefing At The Supreme Court, Jeffrey L. Fisher, Allison Orr Larsen

Cornell Law Review

The open secret of Supreme Court advocacy in a digital era is that there is a new way to argue to the Justices. Today's Supreme Court arguments are developed online: they are dissected and explored in blog posts, fleshed out in popular podcasts, and analyzed and re-analyzed by experts who do not represent the parties or have even filed a brief in the case at all. This "virtual briefing" (as we call it) is intended to influence the Justices and their law clerks but exists completely outside of traditional briefing rules. This article describes virtual briefing and makes a case …

Progressive Textualism In Administrative Law, Kathryn E. Kovacs

Michigan Law Review Online

Nicholas Bagley’s article The Procedure Fetish is destined to be a classic. In it, Bagley systematically dismantles administrative law’s obsession with procedure. He decimates the arguments that procedure is necessary to legit-imize the administrative state and avoid agency capture. He nullifies the con-tention that administrative law is neutral by showing how proceduralism inhibits regulation and “favors a libertarian agenda over a progressive one.” Bagley urges progressives to abandon “gauzy claims about legitimacy and accountability” and approach procedure with skepticism.

The Procedure Fetish addresses the normative question of what adminis-trative law ought to require. Bagley writes about how progressives should solve …

Regular Semiopen Sets On Intuitionistic Fuzzy Topological Spaces In Sostak’S Sense, G. Saravanakumar, S. Tamilselvan, A. Vadivel

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

We introduce the concepts of fuzzy (r; s)-regular semi (resp. (r; s)-α, (r; s)-pre, (r; s)-β open sets, their respective interior and closure operators on intuitionistic fuzzy topological spaces in ˆ Sostak’s sense and then we investigate some of their characteristic properties.

On The Weighted Pseudo Almost Periodic Solutions Of Nicholson’S Blowflies Equation, Ramazan Yazgan, Cemil Tunç

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

This study is concerned with the existence, uniqueness and global exponential stability of weighted pseudo almost periodic solutions of a generalized Nicholson’s blowflies equation with mixed delays. Using some differential inequalities and a fixed point theorem, sufficient conditions were obtained for the existence, uniqueness of at the least a weighted pseudo almost periodic solutions and global exponential stability of this solution. The results of this study are new and complementary to the previous ones can be found in the literature. At the end of the study an example is given to show the accuracy of our results.

A New Method To Solve Fractional Differential Equations: Inverse Fractional Shehu Transform Method, Ali Khalouta, Abdelouahab Kadem

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this paper, we propose a new method called the inverse fractional Shehu transform method to solve homogenous and non-homogenous linear fractional differential equations. Fractional derivatives are described in the sense of Riemann-Liouville and Caputo. Illustrative examples are given to demonstrate the validity, efficiency and applicability of the presented method. The solutions obtained by the proposed method are in complete agreement with the solutions available in the literature.

Adjoint Appell-Euler And First Kind Appell-Bernoulli Polynomials, Pierpaolo Natalini, Paolo E. Ricci

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

The adjunction property, recently introduced for Sheffer polynomial sets, is considered in the case of Appell polynomials. The particular case of adjoint Appell-Euler and Appell-Bernoulli polynomials of the first kind is analyzed.

An Efficient Computational Method For Solving A System Of Fdes Via Fractional Finite Difference Method, M. M. Khader, Sunil Kumar

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

This paper aims to provide a numerical method for solving systems of fractional (Caputo sense) differential equations (FDEs). This method is based on the fractional finite difference method (FDM), where we implemented the Grünwald-Letnikov’s approach. This method is computationally very efficient and gives very accurate solutions. In this study, the stability of the obtained numerical scheme is given. The numerical results show that the proposed approach is easy to be implemented and are accurate when applied to system of FDEs. The method introduces promising tool for solving many systems of FDEs. Two examples are given to demonstrate the applicability and …

On Nearly Kähler Finsler Spaces, Z. Didehkhani, B. Najafi, N. Heidari

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

Ichijy¯o introduced (a; b; J)-manifolds as a special class of generalized Randers manifolds. We introduce generalized (a; b; J)-manifolds. A partial negative answer to Ichijy¯o’s open problem on nearly Kähler Finsler manifolds is given. The condition under which generalized (a; b; J)- manifolds are Berwaldian is obtained. Finally, we prove that under a mild assumption a nearly Kähler Finsler manifold is Landsbergian.

Development Of Group Treatment Tasks For Adults With Neurological Disorders, Melody R. Groben

Senior Honors Projects

Gateway Café and Wellness Center is a support program offered at the University of Rhode Island for individuals with Acquired Brain Injuries (ABI), such as Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) and Stroke. Individuals affected by ABI’s most commonly have difficulties with their cognitive, linguistic, and independence skills. Services provided to people living with ABI’s are very scarce in our community today, so allowing people to interact during Gateway Café allows these adults to receive treatment. This is achieved as URI students plan, organize, and execute activities that require the utilization of cognitive linguistic skills by the Gateway Café members. Furthermore, Gateway …

Changes Are Not Enough: Problems Persist With Ncaa's Adjudicative Policy, Elizabeth Lombard

Notre Dame Law Review

Recently, the critical eye of the public has focused on the adjudicative and enforcement policy of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Social media sites serve as a testament to the rampant shock and confusion that the general population has harbored with regard to the enforcement and adjudication process on the heels of recent, high-profile cases. Witnessing verified sports reporters and outlets refer to the NCAA as powerless or questioning its purpose or existence altogether is evidence of the NCAA’s trying times in the court of public opinion. On the one hand, and rightfully so, one might think that this …

Missouri S&T Magazine Fall/Winter 2019, Missouri S&T Marketing And Communications Department, Miner Alumni Association

Missouri S&T Magazine

No abstract provided.

Safety & Risk Management News - December 2019, Otterbein University

Otterbein Police Department

No abstract provided.

Please Tweet Responsibly: The Social And Professional Ethics Of Public Defenders Using Client Information In Social Media Advocacy, Nicole Smith Futrell

Publications and Research

Every day the criminal legal system hauls poor and marginalized individuals through a process wrought with trauma, indignity, and abuse. Public defenders representing the criminally accused view their clients and the system from a unique vantage point: they bear witness to the human costs of a system that falls far short of its purported norms and ideals. For the public defender who works within this reality day in and day out, fighting for each individual client might feel limited in its wider impact. Some public defenders have found that using online and social media platforms, such as Twitter, to provide …

Load Flow Analysis Of 138/69kv Substation Using Electrical Transient & Analysis Program (Etap), Vanessa Abadia Gomez

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines the load flow analysis of a high-voltage substation using ETAP, and explores options for improving the voltage profile of the system. This study yields critical information about the system, such as the voltage drop at each feeder, the voltage at each bus, as well as real and reactive power losses at the different branches and feeders. In this power flow examination, the system’s performance is evaluated for different operating conditions, so that control measurements can be applied if necessary. The experimental results are used for proposing a plan of using fixed and switched shunt capacitor banks to …

Constructing History: A Student-Created Public History Exhibit Using Omeka, Colleen Hoelscher

Library Faculty Research

This case study examines the final project assigned to an upper-level history elective course, “Public History, Memory, and Interpretation.” Students used Omeka, an open-source web publishing platform, to create a digital exhibit using archival materials. Students were responsible for all aspects of curating the exhibit, including selecting materials, creating metadata for digital objects, writing the didactic text, and creating the final website.