Digital Commons Network^™

Do Violent Video Games Stimulate Aggressive Tendencies?, Megan Hamilton

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

This study looked at the relationship between violent video game (VVG) play and aggressive tendencies. Participants were required to be at least 18 years of age or older and were recruited through flyers in the Library and Academic Resource Center and Young Hall on the Lindenwood University campus, as well as through the Lindenwood Participant Pool. Participants took a pretest on Qualtrics measuring aggressive tendencies and after the pretest, participants were systematically chosen to either play Grand Theft Auto V (GTAV); (Rockstar Games, 2014) or Stardew Valley (Barone & Sickhead Games, 2016). Following gameplay, participants then took a posttest on …

Emulsion Characterization Study For Improved Bilgewater Treatment And Management, Daniela Diaz Hernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The need for proper management of bilgewater to meet discharge regulations (e.g., 15 ppm oil) has revealed the necessity to expand the current understanding of bilgewater emulsions. This study proposed to evaluate emulsion stability under various environmental conditions and to identify governing parameters for emulsion formation. The stabilizing properties of eight-commercial cleaners and two-neat surfactants were evaluated. In situ characterization techniques were used for monitoring emulsion stability. Additionally, a needle-type pH microsensor and fluorescence spectroscopy were used for analyzing mass transfer at the oil-water interface. Water quality of extracted bilgewater showed to highly vary between vessels (e.g., conductivity: 1.74 -- …

Interactions Between Humans, Virtual Agent Characters And Virtual Avatars, Tamara Griffith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Simulations allow people to experience events as if they were happening in the real world in a way that is safer and less expensive than live training. Despite improvements in realism in simulated environments, one area that still presents a challenge is interpersonal interactions. The subtleties of what makes an interaction rich are difficult to define. We may never fully understand the complexity of human interchanges, however there is value in building on existing research into how individuals react to virtual characters to inform future investments. Virtual characters can either be automated through computational processes, referred to as agents, or …

Paleoethnobotanical Analysis Of Starch Grains And Phytoliths From Pre-Columbian Ceramic Residues In The Bolivian Amazon, Danielle Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The Llanos de Mojos of the southwestern Amazon region of Bolivia once supported large Pre-Columbian indigenous populations who were regarded as skilled farmers, and whose agricultural pursuits are still documented on the landscape through tens of thousands of raised fields. Nevertheless, the plants that were cultivated on these fields that contributed to a large part of the local cuisine are not well understood. Microbotanical analyses using starch grains and phytoliths of food residues were conducted on 55 archaeological ceramic fragments from four forest islands in Mojos where people resided recurrently from cal BCE 1200 to cal CE ~1430. The results …

Improving Foreign Militaries -- The Effects Of U.S. Military Aid In The Form Of International Military Education And Training Programs, Sandor Fabian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Great powers have often sought to achieve their strategic goals through the allocation of military aid. The United States is no exception, as it has frequently used military aid to influence the policies and military capacity of its allies and partners. However, our understanding of the effects of US military aid on the conflict behavior of recipient states - and especially the mechanisms underlying these effects - remains poorly understood. The results of previous studies of U.S. military aid are often contradictory, and are mostly based on over-aggregated, country-level data. In this dissertation, I argue that examining the individual-level effects …

Jesus’ Eschatological Legacy: The Tension Between The Nearness Of The Second Coming And The Mission Of The Church, Wilson Paroschi

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society

Jesus announced His return as imminent (Matt 10:23; 16:28; Mark 1:15; 9:1; Luke 21:31-32; cf. Matt 24:42-44; 25:1-13; Mark 13:33- 37; Luke 12:35-38; 21:34-36), and so it was expected by the early believers (Acts 3:19-21; Rom 13:11; 1 Cor 7:29-30; 15:51-58; 16:22; 1 Thess 4:15-18; Heb 10:25, 37; Jas 5:8; 1 Pet 4:17). On the other hand, He also left the disciples a worldwide mission (Matt 24:14; 26:13; Mark 13:10; Acts 1:8; cf. Rev 14:6), which requires time, and two thousand years later it seems that the church is still quite far from finishing it. This apparent contradiction has intrigued …

Illiberalism And Islam, Aziz Z. Huq

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

This chapter analyzes the role of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim discourse in North American and European ‘illiberal’ parties, movements, and ideologies. Its first aim is to situate those deployments in a longer history. Occidental engagements with Islam and Muslims, including anti-Islamic tropes, long predate the emergence of liberalism, let along illiberalism. It should not be a surprise that liberalism as it emerged in the nineteenth century partook of such ideas. Contra some theorists, however, I argue that there is no strong evidence that anti-Islam was constitutive of liberal theory or early practice. Rather, it was in the second half of the …

A Relentless War: America, Israel, And The Fight Against Terrorism, Elyse Keener

Senior Honors Theses

For Israel, terrorism has plagued the nation since its beginning. Terrorism rears its ugly head in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons; however, in both the United States and Israel, Islamic extremism has presented itself as the largest threat. Since its birth as a nation, the United States has been involved in numerous conflicts, from the Revolutionary War to World War II and beyond. These wars were fought between nation-states and traditional powers, but since the attacks on 9/11, the United States finds itself in a new kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy. …

Mystical Yet Political: A Liberative Encounter With God Through Popular Piety, Wilson Angelo G. Espiritu

Theology Department Faculty Publications

Today, an increasing number of Catholics can be found in the countries of the Global South. This coincides with the pontificate of the first pope who comes from that region of the world where the prevalent expression of the Catholic faith is popular piety. Popular piety may be considered as an indispensable phenomenon in Global Catholicism. In his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis refers to popular piety as ‘the people’s mysticism’ and calls it a ‘locus theologicus’ which demands attention especially in the contemporary Church’s mission of evangelization. This paper examines popular piety as a probable point of encounter …

Resource Ecologies, Political Economies And The Ethics Of Audio Technologies In The Anthropocene, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Understanding how recorded and amplified stage musics contribute towards producing the Anthropocene necessitates attending to complex transnational flows of material, capital and labor, and how they coalesce into technological objects. This is complicated by the wide array of sites, practices and knowledges involved during various stages of the production process, from initial resource extraction, to smelting, component manufacturing, technology assembly, and distribution. To develop a suitable technological ethics, and to understand what happens to environments and to human, animal and plant lifeworlds, requires one to resist abstraction and undertake a global accounting of resource ecologies with recourse to planetary-scale political …

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Information Warfare, International Law, And The Changing Battlefield, Dr. Waseem Ahmad Qureshi

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

“Judicial Role” And Judicial Duty In Foreign Affairs, Ryan C. Williams

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

'We Were Hoping': The Emmaus Road Encounter As A Novel Approach To Faith-Science Dialogue, Harold A. Laurence V

Seattle Pacific Seminary Theses

This thesis proposes a novel paradigm for faith-science dialogue, drawing a Biblical analogy between two disciples’ Emmaus Road encounter with the risen Jesus (Luke 24:13-35) and contemporary faithful scientists wrestling with narrative conflict between the findings of science and the confession of faith. For science’s reading public, science serves as an alternative mythmaking discourse, whose narratives may indeed conflict with faith. This thesis proposes that theology ought to deploy Biblical preaching to resolve such narrative conflicts. To guide this process, this thesis proposes that Jesus’ two responses to the troubles of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) …

The Function Of Military Language In The Feeding Of The Five Thousand Narrative (Mark 6:30-44): A Narrative-Cognitive Study, Oleg Kostyuk

Dissertations

Abstract Pending

Public Policy Response To Violence: Case Study Of Boko Haram Insurgency In Nigeria, Emmanuel Baba Mamman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The violence of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria has generated an increased need for public policy responses. Nigerian authorities and community stakeholders have attempted myriad responses to the challenges created by Boko Haram. However, there is a poor understanding of policy frameworks for handling the Boko Haram violence on the immediate, medium-term, and long-term dimensions. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to improve the understanding of the public policy measures that may help to address the Boko Haram challenge. John Burton's theory of human needs provided a theoretical foundation for the study. Purposive sampling technique was used, …

Special Operations Forces Culture And Implications For Interagency Collaboration, Bradley Rhinelander

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Horn of Africa exemplifies maritime instability due to regional climate, environmental, economic, food, and security issues. Future global challenges require collaborative approaches between U.S. government and military organizations to span organizational boundaries and leverage the strengths and insights of diverse organizations. The purpose of this research was to examine organizational culture and identity, as manifested in organizational literature, to identify opportunities and challenges to interagency networks and collaboration in the realm of confronting wicked problems around the globe. The research questions focus on the cultural and normative elements of organizational identity as manifest in the context of organizational literature. …

“Because Of His Wild Blood”: Race, The Frontier, And The American Imagination In The Bluff War And The Trial Of Tse-Ne-Gat, Reilly Ben Hatch

New Mexico Historical Review

No abstract provided.

Creative Innovative Programming For Nontraditional Audiences, Michael Barera, Norie Guthrie, Andrew Hinton, Sheon Montgomery, Marc Levitt, Brittany Newberry, Marta Crilly

UTA Libraries Staff Publications - Archive

Whether you're trying to connect devotees of Harry Potter to naval aviation, indulging folk music aficionados, or training the next generation of archives users, reaching nontraditional audiences with innovative programming can be challenging. Seven archivists share tips and lessons learned on outreach and engagement: Michael Barera of the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), Marta Crilly of Boston City Archives (BCA), Norie Guthrie of Rice University, Andrew Hinton and Sheon Montgomery of the Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University (VNCA), Marc Levitt of the National Naval Aviation Museum (NAM), and Brittany Newberry of the Atlanta University Center (AUC).

Spyware Vs. Spyware: Software Conflicts And User Autonomy, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

No Ordinary Times: Reason For And Reactions During The First Red Scare., Timothy Setter

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

With American involvement in World War I a drastic change in United States domestic policy occurred. Through the use of wartime Espionage and Sedition Acts came the tool to begin a campaign of suppression of political radicals. This came as the compounding of earlier events like the Los Angeles Times bombing in 1910 occurred with a campaign of anarchist bombings, a growing number of strikes, and wartime propaganda created a setting allowing for government officials to carry out raids, arrests, and both a censoring and punishment of speech. Between the actions of groups and government officials this caused an escalation …

Game Of Survival: External Actors' Support For Separatists, Joshua C. Underwood

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This research develops a novel model for external actors’ support for separatists.Three variables measuring external actors’ support are identified through two case studies, Kosovo Liberation Army and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, with an emphasis on Military Aid’s impact. The variables are then applied to a quantitative analysis of external actors’ support in a dataset of 75 observations during the years 1991-2020, utilizing the Uppsala Conflict Data Program External Support Dataset. The findings for this research show that Military Aid and Moral Support improve the probability of survival for a separatist group. A deeper analysis reveals that military aid among …

Administrative Investigations, Aram A. Gavoor, Steven Platt

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article establishes the subject of federal administrative investigations as a new area of study in administrative law. While the literature has addressed investigations by specific agencies and congressional investigations, there is no general account for the trans-substantive constitutional value of administrative investigations. This Article provides such an account by exploring the positive law, agency behaviors, and constraints pertaining to this unresearched field. It concludes with some urgency that the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946—the statute that stands as a bill of rights for the Administrative State—does not serve to regulate administrative investigations and that the Article III courts have …

Conflicts Of Law And Transnational Data Flows, Paul S. Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Phillip Jessup correctly observed sixty years ago that multinational corporate activity created new challenges for nation-states and their territorially based rules for jurisdiction, choice of law, and judgment recognition. Those challenges are exponentially more difficult in the 21st century because electronic data—everything from e-mails and text messages to Facebook and Instagram posts to Twitter pronouncements to drone warfare data to search algorithms to financial transactions to cloud data storage—travel around the globe with little relationship to physical territory. In addition, all of this data is often in the custody and control of data intermediaries.

Three important consequences flow from this …

Piecing Together Coalition War: Threat, Politics, And Coalition Structure, Stephen Joiner

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

Military coalitions are both a common feature of interstate warfare and an example of the highest level of cooperation between states. Despite their tremendous importance in international relations, military coalitions remain poorly understood. This project investigates critical questions related to coalition structures, and uses quantitative and qualitative methods to show that both the threat and political opportunity facing coalitions helps to determine the shape of their structures. This project utilizes a dataset of all coalition wars since 1816, as well as case studies of six coalitions to investigate these relationships. Key contributions include novel theoretical arguments and the findings that …

An Exploration Of Gender And National Security Through The Integration Of Women Into Military Roles, Alexine D. Carr

Pepperdine Policy Review

This paper stems from curiosity as to whether there are differences in the outcomes or abilities of militaries to function effectively when females are included. Notions of high-stakes warfare, the physiology of both genders, tradition, and a culture built upon hypermasculine ideals deserve consideration within the context of both 21 st -century feminist thought and overall fighting aptitude. In the pages that follow, the militaries of the United States, Israel, and Sweden are examined to 1) determine what women specifically contribute within a military setting, and 2) argue that integration aligns with priorities of both feminism and national security. Specifically, …

Negotiations With A Rogue, Brigitta Sanchez-O’Brien

Pepperdine Policy Review

The end of World War II marked a decades-long race towards the modernization of superpowers, culminating in the threat of nuclear warfare at the height of the Cold War. Tensions between global powers sped the world into a new era of negotiating a stop to nuclear proliferation, and in many instances, attempting to remove the possibility of nuclear weapons altogether. Mounting extremism and the threat of terrorism in recent decades has fueled this effort further, catalyzing U.S. nonproliferation negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran concurrently. While attempted talks aggravated existing animosity, they also spurred harsher sanctions internationally. The latter …

Ethnographic Narrative Project, Ry Finerty

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This ethnography seeks to describe my evolution as a teacher. It begins with my background, past experiences (both in the classroom and outside of it), and initial personal motivation for becoming a teacher. As I began teaching in my classroom this year, I detail my experiences with three Focus Students (all names in this ethnography have been changed to protect their identities) with whom I forged relationships. I include portions of interviews I have conducted with them and their families, as well as demographic analyses of the communities in which they live. I describe my school community, incorporating information gleaned …

Digitizing The Corporeal: The Affect Of Mediatized Elements In Theatrical Performance, Kurtis Layne Hassinger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores the affect of digital media in live performance. The research is generated from work with integrated digital media in Carol Ann Duffy's 2015 adaptation of Everyman as well as Samuel Beckett's radio play Cascando. Through experimentation and implementation of motion tracking digital elements and actor-manipulated sonic and visual digital media achieved with MIDI and OSC mapping, I explore the embodiment of performances by actors when their various characters are represented on the physical as well as the digital stage simultaneously.

The research interrogates digital media in storytelling when actors can manipulate imagery and language in real time …