Digital Commons Network^™

Educational Experiences That Influence The Upward Mobility Of Maya Women In Belize, Jennine Pettit

Dissertations

This qualitative, multicase study explored the relationship between the educative experiences that allowed some Maya women in Belize to overcome economic and cultural barriers and change the trajectory of their lives. Many Maya girls face indigeneity, rurality, and gender discrimination (Vásquez, 2017), and obtaining a meaningful education was very difficult. The overall question for this study asked how exceptional Maya women perceived the relationship between their educational experiences and their ability to achieve advancement in society? This study also addressed the following sub-questions: How do Maya women describe their journey toward success? What institutional, cultural, or economic obstacles confront Maya …

Spatiotemporal Change Detection Of The Alpine Meadows At Holcomb Valley, San Bernardino Mountain National Forest, Using Gis And Remote Sensing Techniques, Rama Ewing

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Holcomb Valley, with a general elevation between 2200-2257m, is in the Northeast of Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. Holcomb Valley is covered by Alpine meadows, unlike most mountain landscapes, which are rarely found in Mediterranean climates such as California. The cultural-environmental history of the San Bernardino Mountains in the past century speaks of intense anthropogenic activities such as timbering, grazing, gold mining, and extreme climate changes (i.e., drought, fires, floods). A study is conducted to identify and calculate the changes in the Alpine meadows at Holcomb Valley. The climatical data has been acquired to compute and visualize …

An Acute Sense Of Place: The Songs Of Norman Blake, Thomas Jutz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

American flat-picking guitarist, singer and songwriter Norman Blake holds legendary status among guitar players, bluegrass, and folk musicians.

The aim of this research is to analyze the interaction of sense of place in Norman Blake’s songwriting. This research will explore the techniques Blake uses to create that acute sense of place. Elements of literary criticism, cultural geography, ethnomusicology, and sense of place studies, as well as historical background information on Northern Alabama and North Georgia will be employed to show how this particular region of Southeastern Appalachia has informed Blake’s songwriting.

The research questions that I aim to answer are …

The Folk Festival Of The Smokies And The Role Of Music Festivals In Preserving Old-Time Music In Appalachia, Keegan Luckey-Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the history of the Folk Festival of the Smokies, which sought to preserve old-time music as an expression of southern Appalachian regional culture. The study uses qualitative methods, including personal interviews with one of the founders and significant festival participants, supplemented with archival and historical research into photographs, festival performances and literature regarding the festival. Since the festival operated for thirty-three years as a small festival in a relatively isolated location in eastern Tennessee, this case study serves as an example of the role of festivals in intangible cultural heritage preservation in relatively rural settings. The legacy …

The Greek Merchant Marine: A Unique Combination Of Nautical Skill And Commercial Savvy, Alexander Billinis

All Theses

The Greek-owned merchant fleet remains the world’s largest, and while plenty of histories have been written about this fleet, there is a definite absence in the historiography about why the Greeks’ relation to the sea is unique, and how this fleet came into existence. The author argues that the Greek merchant fleet is a successful hybridization of a commercial middleman minority ethos born out of conditions in the Ottoman Empire and post-independence Greece, combined with the shipping skills of a littoral people who invested in this expertise.

To understand the how and why of the Greek merchant fleet, it is …

Late Quaternary Biotic Homogenization Of North American Mammalian Faunas, Danielle Fraser, Amelia Villaseñor, Anikó B. Tóth, Meghan A. Balk, Jussi T. Eronen, W. Andrew Barr, A. K. Behrensmeyer, Matt Davis, Andrew Du, J. Tyler Faith, Gary R. Graves, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Advait M. Jukar, Cindy V. Looy, Brian J. Mcgill, Joshua H. Miller, Silvia Pineda-Munoz, Richard Potts, Alex B. Shupinski, Laura C. Soul, S. Kathleen Lyons

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Biotic homogenization—increasing similarity of species composition among ecological communities—has been linked to anthropogenic processes operating over the last century. Fossil evidence, however, suggests that humans have had impacts on ecosystems for millennia. We quantify biotic homogenization of North American mammalian assemblages during the late Pleistocene through Holocene (~30,000 ybp to recent), a timespan encompassing increased evidence of humans on the landscape (~20,000–14,000 ybp). From ~10,000 ybp to recent, assemblages became significantly more homogenous (>100% increase in Jaccard similarity), a pattern that cannot be explained by changes in fossil record sampling. Homogenization was most pronounced among mammals larger than 1 …

Assessing The Impact Of Ferry Transit On Urban Crime, Bryan S. Weber, Paolo Cappellari

Publications and Research

In 2017, over a dozen ferry stations were introduced across the NYC region on multiple dates, serving roughly 10,000 customers per day. We measure a negative association between these stations and crime reduction, a significant decline of 11 crimes per week (11%) at a one-mile radius around the stations, and about 1 crime per week (32%) over the extremely narrow base of crime at the station itself. We also find no evidence of crime displacement. This study first utilized a traditional difference-in-differences methodology, but we also used a new tool, the causal random forest. Both methodologies are compared and contrasted …

Insectdisease: Programmatic Access To The Ecological Database Of The World’S Insect Pathogens, Tad Dallas, Colin J. Carlson, Patrick R. Stephens, Sadie J. Ryan, David W. Onstad

Faculty Publications

Curated databases of species interactions are instrumental to exploring and understanding the spatial distribution of species and their biotic interactions. In the process of conducting such projects, data development and curation efforts may give rise to a data product with utility beyond the scope of the original work, but which becomes inaccessible over time. Data describing insect host–pathogen interactions are fairly rare, and should thus be preserved and curated with appropriate metadata. Here, we introduce the insectDisease R package, a mechanism for curating, updating and distributing data from the Ecological Database of the World's Insect Pathogens, a database of insect …

Closing The Door On Permanent Incorrigibility: Juvenile Life Without Parole After Jones V. Mississippi, Juliet Liu

Fordham Law Review

In April 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Jones v. Mississippi, its latest opinion in a line of cases addressing when, if ever, a child should be sentenced to life in prison with no hope of parole or release. Although Jones purported to resolve division among lower courts over the findings that a sentencing court must make about a child defendant’s character and prospects for reform and rehabilitation, the decision will likely lead to further disagreement among courts.

This Note argues that although the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence has protected children from harsh sentences, it has also opened a Pandora’s …

Raising Native Plant Awareness As A Method For Re-Naturalization, Meredith L. Haaker

Social Sciences

Humans are inseparable from the natural environment. We are one and the same, interconnected within the ecology of creation and care, not only destruction. By grounding ourselves in Indigenous wisdom and the principles of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, we are more able to recognize the important relational facets between humans and three native Californian plants (California black walnut, California blue elderberry, California bay laurel). In introducing Kimmerer’s concept of re-naturalization of humans, we can draw a connection to the same process a naturalized plant undergoes; immigration from a foreign place, dependence on the surrounding resources, and settlement of an area …

Prehistoric Subsistence Strategies On The Pecho Coast: An Experimental Collection Of California Mussels And Turban Snails, Kate S. Knox

Social Sciences

Shellfish exploitation by ancient Indigenous people can be observed in archaeological assemblages from shellfish middens throughout California (Erlandson 1988; Glassow 1992; Kennett 2005; Kennedy 2005; Whitaker 2008). Indigenous Californians relied upon the resources from open rocky coast ecosystems as early as 9,000 years BP, yet archaeological researchers continue to debate the actual dietary value of and energy required for procurement of such shellfish (Erlandson 1988; Jones 2003; Jones and Richman 1995). In order to discern the costs and benefits associated with shellfish exploitation, researchers have conducted archaeological experiments to try to replicate prehistoric shellfish foraging. The empirical data produced from …

Medical Education And Population Health—A Framework In The Design Of A New Undergraduate Program, Robert Armstrong, Michaela Mantel, Gijs Walraven, Lukoye Atwoli, Anthony Ngugi

Internal Medicine, East Africa

Health sciences curricular planners are challenged to add new content to established education programs. There is increasing pressure for content in public health, health systems, global health, and planetary health. These important areas often compete for curricular time. What is needed is a convergence model that builds a common framework within which students can integrate areas and better align this knowledge to the individual client or patient who they have responsibility to support. A population health framework is proposed for health sciences education programs that supports a common conceptual understanding of population health. The framework links five thematic areas that …

Molecular Characterization Of Some Pathogenic Bacterial Strains And Hematobiochemical Profile In Barki Sheep With Diarrhea In Siwa Oasis, Amani A. Hafez, Mohamed T. Ragab, Marwa A. Fawzy, Adel M. El-Kattan, Ahmed A. Elsayed

Mansoura Veterinary Medical Journal

Objective: To explore the incidence of several bacterial enteropathogens in Barki sheep with diarrhea and their antimicrobial resistance (AMR) trends and their hematobiochemical alteration in Siwa Oasis.Design: Descriptive study.Animals: A total of 500 adult Barki sheep were allocated into two equal-sized groups: 250 Barki ewes with diarrhea and 250 normal sheep taken as the control group. 250 faecal samples were taken from sheep with diarrhea. The bacterial enteropathogens were extracted, identified biochemically and determined using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The Kirby-Bauer Disk-Diffusion Method was used to determine the sensitivity of positive samples from each organism to ten antimicrobials. Blood samples …

The Relationships Between College And Career Readiness Assessments, Charlotte M. Bruner

All Dissertations

This study explored the effects of taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses on college and career readiness in a rural school district in the southeastern United States. I examined student performance data using American College Test (ACT) scores, Ready to Work (R2W) examination scores, and AP examination scores. The results of the study show that taking a single AP course leads to significant improvement on the ACT exam over a student who has not taken an AP courses and the optimal number of courses a student should take. The results of the study also show that taking an AP course leads …

The Speculative Artifact 2022, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

The Speculative Artifact was a student publication created for the Graphic Design seminar/studio Critical Issues Studio, taught by Anther Kiley in Fall 2022. The publication features designs and concepts for artifacts of the future created by students. Artifacts include language aids, a sex worker kit, food packaging, a garden pack, style-transferred furniture, a post-taste apartment, a maze sculpture, a personality magazine, animal-human cohabitation, signage, a friend-dating system, coding tech, a transhuman sticker book, and television programming with animal languages

Household Size And Household Wealth In Indonesia With The Influence Of Spatial Aspects, Thomas Soseco

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

Investigating household wealth should also include spatial analysis to capture the influence of location on the households’ net wealth and to avoid underestimation of the effect of the change of variables due to estimation that ignores spatial aspects. This paper examines factors influencing household net wealth in Indonesia with the influence of spatial lag using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) for 1993–2014. The article relies on the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to analyze the data. Results show that household net wealth in Indonesia is spatially related to each other, and the spillover effect makes the change of …

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Smart Classroom User Manual, Claire Nickerson Mlis

Library Faculty Publications

In 2018, Fort Hays State University began building a prototype for a low-cost, portable smart classroom. This project was a collaboration between the library and the Institute for New Media Studies and was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This manual assumes that you are working with a smart classroom kit with components that have already been collected and set up, either by you or by an organization or consortium. If you are trying to create a smart classroom kit or set up the smart classroom screens, please consult the Smart Classroom Designs document. If you are …

Species Data And Vector Modeling: Evaluating Datasets For Improved Models Of Ixodes Ricinus Tick Distribution In Europe Under A Changing Climate, Steven Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To increase capacity for monitoring and surveillance of tick-borne diseases, publicly available tick distribution and climate change datasets are required to create accurate predictive distribution models. It is difficult, however, to assess model accuracy and utility when using incomplete datasets.  The more recent development of comprehensive tick databases for Europe and availability of climate change scenarios from multiple IPCC Assessment Reports allows for improved modeling efforts. Multiple tick datasets were combined and three climate change projections were compared by predicting current and future distributions of Ixodes ricinus ticks in Europe using the MaxEnt species distribution model. Overall, much of Europe …

A Comparison Of The Mental Health Of Police Officers And Correctional Officers In Rural Appalachia, Sierra Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of mental health among police officers and correctional officers within rural Appalachia. The main goal of this research was to better understand how the occupational demands of working in the criminal justice field can impact one’s mental health over time. Several research questions were explored, including the prevalence of various mental health problems, associated stressors, the structure of support among officers, and the perceptions of mental health treatment services. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 21 police and correctional officers located in rural Appalachia. Results provided a better understanding of …

Examining The Politicization And Framing Of Hea 117 In The Us Between 2019 And 2021, Elise S. Ahn

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

In 2019, the U.S. Department of Education (DED) began increasing its enforcement of the Higher Education Act, Section 117 statute, which provides instructions for institutional reporting regarding foreign and contracts. The three questions guiding this article include: What were DED’s stated premises for the investigations? How was international engagement characterized in the notices? And finally, what traits, characteristics, and/or qualities were attributed to different actors? After providing an overview of Section 117, this article examines the notices of investigation issued by DED between 2019 and 2021 to better understand how the Agency discursively characterized malign and/or undue foreign influence utilizing …

A Cross-Sectional Exploratory Study On Voluntary Reporting Of Professional Groups In U.S. Commercial Aviation, James Norman

Theses and Dissertations

Aviation safety culture research does not exist regarding the specific factors that either promote or discourage voluntary safety reporting among different frontline groups in U.S. Part 121 operations. Moreover, while safety culture has been shown to vary across workgroups, cross-sectional research across multiple aviation organizations regarding voluntary reporting is lacking. To address this gap in the literature, an exploratory study was conducted utilizing a sequential, confirmatory mixed methods approach. A 28-item survey was distributed to air traffic controllers, dispatchers, maintenance technicians, and pilots. The instrument quantitatively assessed organizational safety values, reporting friction, previous reporting experience, just culture, and voluntary reporting …

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 23: The Jersey Devil, And Friends, Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

For nearly three hundred years reports have surfaced of a purported cryptid form known as the ‘Jersey devil.’ In this work an interpretation of the goals of biogeography is given, and how this field can be related to such alleged phenomena, as well as to some of the ideas of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) that seem to find their origin in the writings of Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677).

Territoriality In American Criminal Law, Emma Kaufman

Michigan Law Review

It is a bedrock principle of American criminal law that the authority to try and punish someone for a crime arises from the crime’s connection to a particular place. Thus, we assume that a person who commits a crime in some location— say, Philadelphia—can be arrested by Philadelphia police for conduct deemed criminal by the Pennsylvania legislature, prosecuted in a Philadelphia court, and punished in a Pennsylvania prison. The idea that criminal law is tied to geography in this way is called the territoriality principle. This idea is so familiar that it usually goes unstated.

This Article foregrounds and questions …

From Mesoamerica To Aleppo And Transylvania: The Global Migration Of The Chile Pepper, Arianne M. Peterson, Arianne Peterson

Master's Theses

This thesis explores the migration of the chile pepper, or capsicum anuum, from Mesoamerica into the Old World after 1500, focusing on two case studies of the Aleppo pepper in Syria and paprika in what was once Hungarian Nagyvarad, and which is now Romanian Oradea. Using foodways as a historical lens, and considering the movement of food as historical, it can be seen that the chile pepper, despite its low profit value, illustrates a globalization that existed well before modern times, and it came to cement itself within many different cultures as a symbol of identity. Despite its far-away …

Big Data For Comprehensive Analysis Of Real Estate Market, Yonglin Xiao

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This Culminating Experience Project explored the application of big data in the real estate industry in order to address the problem of analyzing the accurate property estimates value. The research questions were: (Q1): What are the benefits and advantages of utilizing big data in the real estate market? (Q2): What are the trends in the application of big data in the real estate market? (Q3): What are the challenges in applying big data in the real estate market? (Q4): What are the methods and processes of applying big data in appraisal of assets in the real estate market? To answer …

Susannah And Cold Mountain: Examining The Portrayal Of Appalachian Culture In Opera, Savannah Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis applies qualitative literary analysis and ethnographic methods to examine the portrayal of Appalachia in the operas Susannah and Cold Mountain. The operas were premiered almost 60 years apart, yet they share many themes that epitomize roles, patterns, and stereotypes within the Appalachian region. One theme observed is the role and expectations of Appalachian women and how they have developed over time, as the plots are placed roughly a century apart. The depictions of Appalachian religious traditions and representations of violence are also explored as these themes play a considerable role in Susannah and Cold Mountain. By analyzing …

Green On The Map - The Influence Of Conservation Easements On The Naturalness Of Landscapes In The United States, Nakisha Fouch

All Dissertations

Large protected areas have long been the cornerstone of conservation biology, however, in an era branded by the human dominance of ecosystems, regional landscape structure and function are often a consequence of accumulated land-use decisions that may or may not include a nod to conservation planning. With underrepresentation of habitats in publicly protected areas, attention has focused on the function of alternative land conservation mechanisms. Private conservation easements (CEs) have proliferated in the United States, yet assessing landscape-level function is confounded by holder and donor intent, national and regional policy, regional landscape contexts, varying extents, resolution, and temporal scale. Over …

Urban/Rural Disparities Of Thyroid Cancer Using The Integrated Cancer Repository For Cancer Research (Icare2), Sunita Regmi

Capstone Experience: Master of Public Health

Abstract:

Background and objective: Multiple studies have shown that the place of residence and the distance to travel from one's residence to nearby health care providers impact cancer diagnosis and treatment. The stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis is paramount for cancer treatment and affects survival. Disparities in cancer treatment exist which affect the outcome disproportionately to certain segments of the population. To date, much of the focus has been on the racial and socioeconomic disparities in the management of thyroid cancer. The effect of geography and location (urban-rural status) on thyroid cancer stage diagnosis has …

Evaluating How The Impacts Of Climate Change On Arizona's Water Supply Will Influence Public Health, Patricia Wrona

Capstone Experience: Master of Public Health

Over the last century, Arizona’s climate has increased more than 1.1 to 1.4 degrees Celsius or 2 to 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature in Arizona is expected to increase an additional 2.2°C to 2.8°C in the next 40 years. Climate change poses various health and environmental hazards for the residents of Arizona. One of the most significant impacts is on water supply. As temperatures continue to rise in the desert, the demand for water will increase while the water supply will reduce. A literature review and program evaluation were conducted to evaluate how the impacts of climate change on Arizona’s …