Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of The Battle Creek Jobs Fund, George A. Erickcek, Jim Robey, Claudette Robey, Brian Pittelko, Marie Holler, Don Edgerly

Reports

No abstract provided.

Lonely This Side Of Nowhere, Anne Okonowski

All NMU Master's Theses

In this creative work, the writer explores familial relationships as well as what is home. Combining nonfiction essays, fiction, poetry, and images in one narrative, this work is comprised of multiple stories to create a related narrative. This project is a celebration of storytelling through multiple genres, and draws from multiple sources of inspiration, including both creative and critical works.

Home-Range Dynamics And Resource Selection Of American Marten (Martes Americana) In Michigan’S Northern Lower Peninsula, Angela Kujawa

Masters Theses

American marten (Martes americana) are typically associated with mature coniferous forests. Marten were extirpated from Michigan’s Lower Peninsula due to human impacts, such as fire, logging, and over-harvest. Little is known about the resource selection and distribution of marten in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula since their reintroduction in 1985-86. Resource selection functions are valuable tools to estimate the relative probability an animal will utilize an area and predict where they may occur. When creating a resource selection function, potential sources of variation in data collection methods and wildlife populations should be considered to ensure accurate results. We sought …

Schuette And Antibalkanization, Samuel Weiss, Donald Kinder

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

In Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy’s controlling plurality revised the political process doctrine and ended the practice of affirmative action in Michigan. In this opinion, Kennedy followed in the Court’s tradition of invoking antibalkanization values in equal protection cases, making the empirical claims both that antibalkanization motivated the campaign to end affirmative action in Michigan and that the campaign itself would, absent judicial intervention, have antibalkanizing effects.

Using sophisticated empirical methods, this Article is the first to examine whether the Court’s claims on antibalkanization are correct. We find they are not. Support for the Michigan …

Remote Screening And Self-Monitoring For Vision Loss Diseases Based On Smartphone Applications, Hussein M. H. Khairallah

Wayne State University Dissertations

Remote Healthcare Monitoring System (RHMS) represents remote observing of patient’s well-being and providing therapeutic services. Sensors play an essential part in RHMs. They measure the physical parameters and give continuous information to health organizations, doctors. The presence of Smartphones and other portable devices have allowed us to utilize remote healthcare monitoring system for an assortment of structures. Also, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) advances considered as one of the critical research factor healthcare application for enhancing the standard of living.

In this dissertation, I have presented three tiers operating in the remote healthcare monitoring system; the Body Area Network (BAN), the …

Impact Of Highway Work Zones On Traffic Crashes: A Case Study In Michigan, Qadri Hafez Shaheen

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Infrastructure in the US is severely aged and outdated. This presents a seemingly paradoxical problem in the field of construction management: In order to fix and make roads and highways more safe, construction zones must become inherently less safe in the process. There is a high cost to taxpayers and drivers, as work zones experience a significant amount of crashes and fatalities each year. To mitigate some of the factors that contribute to these crashes, this paper attempts to deliver guidelines on how to update relevant crash data, identify relevant factors, and create recommendations accordingly. The research focused particularly on …

Assessing Access-To-Justice Outreach Strategies, J. J. Prescott

Articles

The need for prospective beneficiaries to “take up” new programs is a common stumbling block for otherwise well-designed legal and policy innovations. I examine the take-up problem in the context of publicly provided court services and test the effectiveness of various outreach strategies that announce a newly available online court access platform. I study individuals with minor arrest warrants whose distrust of courts may dampen any take-up response. I partnered with a court to quasi-randomly assign outreach approaches to a cohort of individuals and find that outreach improves take-up, that the type of outreach matters, and that online platform access …

Legacies Of Industrial Contamination: Voices Of Resistance In White Lake, Michigan, Elizabeth A. Revord

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This research presents a case study of resistance to contamination from three large chemical plants by activists in the communities of Montague and Whitehall located on White Lake, Michigan. Although clean-up efforts have met state and federal guidelines for brownfield and Superfund sites, the people and community of White Lake have continued to be vigilant regarding environmental protection and harbor many concerns regarding their future and redevelopment of sites that are likely still contaminated.

The connection to place and sense of community that the residents of White Lake honor is the foundation of their resistance. Using data collected from semi-structured …

Copper Isotope Constraints On The Genesis Of The Keweenaw Peninsula Native Copper District, Michigan, Usa, T. J. Bornhorst, Ryan Mathur

A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum Publications

The Keweenaw Peninsula native copper district of Michigan, USA is the largest concentration of native copper in the world. The copper isotopic composition of native copper was measured from stratabound and vein deposits, hosted by multiple rift-filling basalt-dominated stratigraphic horizons over 110 km of strike length. The δ⁶⁵Cu of the native copper has an overall mean of +0.28‰ and a range of −0.32‰ to +0.80‰ (excluding one anomalous value). The data appear to be normally distributed and unimodal with no substantial differences between the native copper isotopic composition from the wide spread of deposits studied here. This suggests …

Juvenile Lifers And Juveniles In Michigan Prisons: A Population Of Special Concern, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

Prisoners serving life without parole for offenses they committed when they were juveniles have received much attention after the United States Supreme Court found in Miller v Alabama that mandatory life without parole for juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment and found that its Miller decision applied retroactively. Courts have begun the process of sentencing and resentencing these individuals, some of whom are still teens and some of whom have served 40 years or more in the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC). All told, not including new cases that come before the court, approximately 370 prisoners will receive individualized sentences under …

Intraspecific Differences In Belowground Associations And Seedling Root Morphology For The Biofuel Crop, Panicum Virgatum., Erin Renee Kinnetz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The perennial C₄ grass Panicum virgatum (switchgrass) is a promising bioenergy feedstock. Switchgrass is symbiotic with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). I examined 12 varieties of switchgrass grouped into 2 ecotypes (upland, lowland) to see if they differed in AMF abundance and root colonization using the GLBRC Variety Trials experiment. There was higher root colonization of lowland ecotype. A greenhouse experiment evaluated the role of live soil organisms in seedling establishment of 11 varieties. Live soil increased seedling survival, growth and influenced root morphology. Ecotypes differed in root architecture. Lowland developed a higher specific root length (SRL), a trait associated …

On Growing Up Finnish In The Midwest: A Family Oral History Project, Ingrid Ruth Nixon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores what oral history interviews with my mother reveal about the familial and community dynamics that influenced Finnish-American children growing up on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula between 1930 and 1950. Close to four hours of oral history interviews were conducted with Viola Nixon, who is second and third-generation Finnish-American on her father’s and mother’s sides, respectively. After conducting a narrative analysis of the interviews, five themes emerged as significant to community function: family, language, education, work and church. I grouped some of these themes together to create three stories informed by materials drawn from the interviews, a cookbook, and …

Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a triumphant work that provides the missing socio-legal data needed to prove why America should recognize housing as a human right. Desmond's masterful study of the effect of evictions on Milwaukee's urban poor in the wake of the 2008 U.S. housing crisis humanizes the evicted, and their landlords, through rich and detailed ethnographies. His intimate portrayals teach Evicted's readers about the agonizingly difficult choices that low-income, unsubsidized tenants must make in the private rental market. Evicted also reveals the contradictions between "law on the books" and "law-in-action." Its most …

Inland Dunes On The Abandoned Bed Of Glacial Lake Chicago Indicate Eolian Activity During The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, Southwestern Michigan, Usa, Patrick M. Colgan, William H. Amidon, Sara A. Thurkettle

Open Access Publishing Support Funded Articles

Inland dune fields have recently emerged as a source of data for reconstructing paleoenvironments and climate in the western Great Lakes region of North America during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. We employ optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) methods, radiocarbon ages, soils, and landform relationships to determine the age of inland dunes in Ottawa County, Michigan. These dunes rest on the abandoned bed of Glacial Lake Chicago, which is thought to have been exposed after ~13.6 ka. OSL analyses from two inland dunes yield ages ranging from 13.3±1.1 to 11.6±0.9 ka (uncertainty = 2 σ). Fine sand in the parabolic dunes suggests deflation …

Accumulating Risk: Environmental Justice And The History Of Capitalism In Detroit, 1880-2015, Josiah John Rector

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is an environmental history of Detroit, Michigan from the 19th century to the present. Recent scholarship on the history of capitalism has largely ignored the problem of environmental inequality, and the negative externalities of economic growth. In contrast, studies of the environmental justice movement have richly documented race, class, and gender inequalities in environmental risk exposure. However, they have neglected the relationship between the development of the environmental justice movement and the restructuring of American capitalism since the 1970s, including deindustrialization and the shift to neoliberalism. Bringing these fields together, this dissertation connects Detroit’s long-term economic transformation to …

Application Of 3-Dimensional Computed Tomographic Image Guidance To Watchman Implantation And Impact On Early Operator Learning Curve: Single-Center Experience, Dee Dee Wang, Marvin H. Eng, Daniel Kupsky, Eric Myers, Michael Forbes, Mehnaz Rahman, Mohammed Zaidan, Sachin Parikh, Janet Wyman, Milan Pantelic, Thomas Song, Jeffrey Nadig, Patrick Karabon, Adam Greenbaum, William O'Neill

Cardiology Articles

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to examine the impact of 3-dimensional (3D) computed tomographic (CT) guided procedural planning for left atrial appendage (LAA) occlusion on the early operator WATCHMAN learning curve.

BACKGROUND: Traditional WATCHMAN implantation is dependent on 2-dimensional transesophageal echocardiographic (TEE) sizing and intraprocedural guidance.

METHODS: LAA occlusion with the WATCHMAN device was performed in 53 patients. Pre-procedural case plans were generated from CT studies with recommended device size, catheter selection, and C-arm angle for deployment.

RESULTS: All 53 patients underwent successful LAA occlusion with the WATCHMAN. Three-dimensional CT LAA maximal-width sizing was 2.7 ± 2.2 mm …

The Employment Impact Of The New Economy Initiative (Nei) On The Detroit Region And The State Of Michigan, Brian Pittelko, Bryan Bommersbach, George A. Erickcek

Reports

No abstract provided.

An Assessment Of The Economic Impact Of The Proposed Stoneco Gravel Mine Operation On Richland Township, George Erickcek

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Trash Birder's Guide, Ashely Adams

All NMU Master's Theses

This collection of essays details the author’s experience with birds and the bird watching sub-culture. The author grapples with obsession, exploration, and human-animal relationships. Essays include the search for peregrine falcons and ‘u’aus, navigating “The Biggest Week in American Birding,” and tending to owls and geese at a bird sanctuary. In addition, the essays seek to use the langue and images of birding to create an interconnected narrative that not only illuminates the birding sub-culture, but also the world of a transient young birder.

Integrating Theory And Practice : A Guided Mentoring Research Process For Licensed Ministers In The West Michigan District Of The Wesleyan Church, Michael Anthony Black

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Pepperdine University School Of Law: Legal Summaries, Blair Castellanos

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The Perceptions Of Michigan Hunters Regarding Wolves (Canis Lupus) And The Ldea Of A Wolf-Hunt As A Management Option, Zachary A. Merrill

Masters Theses

Gray wolves (Canis lupus) are an important keystone species in mixed forest ecosystems throughout the Great Lakes region. Due to wolves being placed on the Endangered Species List in 1974, the wolf population of Michigan has increased from near extinction in 1974 to greater than 650 in 2013. The return of wolves to northern Michigan ecosystems has re-ignited complex debates regarding how humans and wolves should best coexist. Wildlife professionals have become increasingly aware of the importance of human response for sound wildlife management decisions. The most effective management plans require cooperation from all parties, including farmers, citizens, tourists, wildlife …

Race, Restructurings, And Equal Protection Doctrine Through The Lens Of Schuette V. Bamn, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Easy Come, Easy Go: The Plight Of Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

This article explores the plight of “short stayers” and argues that juvenile courts are failing to use two tools—the federal reasonable efforts requirement and the early appointment of parents’ counsel—to prevent the unnecessary entry of children into foster care. The article also argues that states should give parents and children the right to an expedited appeal of removal decisions to ensure removal standards are properly applied. Finally, this article argues that the federal government must acknowledge the problem of short stayers by utilizing data related to children who may unnecessarily enter foster care in the Child and Family Services Review, …

Fitting In: A Study Of Lesbian Mothers In Rural Southeastern Michigan, Allison Amadea Ranusch

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Lesbian parents residing in rural and small communities have received little scholarly attention. The primary focus of the existing research has highlighted the isolation experienced by lesbian parents within such locations, but little examination has been made of other issues or their coping mechanisms. This study was designed to address these deficits in knowledge and understanding through a series of eleven in-depth, qualitative interviews. Several stigma management strategies were discovered. For example, it was reported that engaging in farming and trade helped lesbian mothers "fit in" enough to gain some level of acceptance from their immediate neighbors. Stigma was also …

Alumni Speech, Delivered On November 11, 2015, Arend D. Lubbers

Presidential Speeches

Alumni Speech, delivered on November 11, 2015 by Arend D. Lubbers, who served as President of Grand Valley from 1969-2001.

Should Ui Eligibility Be Expanded To Low-Earning Workers? Evidence On Employment, Transfer Receipt, And Income From Administrative Data, Pauline Leung, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Recent efforts to expand unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility are expected to increase low-earning workers’ access to UI. Although the expansion’s aim is to smooth the income and consumption of previously ineligible workers, it is possible that UI benefits simply displace other sources of income. Standard economic models predict that UI delays reemployment, thereby reducing wage income. Additionally, low-earning workers are often eligible for benefits from means-tested programs, which may decrease with UI benefits. In this paper, we estimate the impact of UI eligibility on employment, means-tested program participation, and income after job loss using a unique individual-level administrative data set …

Sociodemographic Characteristics Of Heart Failure Associated Hospital Readmissions In Michigan Medicare Patients, Kelsey A. Peterson

Masters Theses

Repeated hospital admissions constitute a large proportion of healthcare expenses, but are incurred by a small minority of chronically ill patients. Rising healthcare expenditures and the link between readmissions and quality of care make readmission rates a high priority for clinicians as well as insurance payers. Though hospital readmissions have many components, one of the relationships which is still inconclusive is that between socioeconomic status and hospital readmission rates.

Investigating the conditions which have a substantial impact on the rate of hospital readmissions, heart failure stands out as it is the leading cause of death in the United States. This …

Using An Obcd Approach And Landsat Tm Data To Detect Harvesting On Nonindustrial Private Property In Upper Michigan, Riccardo Tortini, Audrey L. Mayer, Pieralberto Maianti

College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science Publications

Forest dynamics influence climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods at multiple scales, yet current resource policy addressing these dynamics is ineffective without reliable land use land cover change data. The collective impact of harvest decisions by many small forest owners can be substantial at the landscape scale, yet monitoring harvests and regrowth in these forests is challenging. Remote sensing is an obvious route to detect and monitor small-scale land use dynamics over large areas. Using an annual series of Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) images and a GIS shapefile of property boundaries, we identified units where harvests occurred from 2005 to 2011 using …

Occupational Outlook For The Construction Industry In The Greater Grand Rapids-Holland-Muskegon Region, Brian Pittelko, George A. Erickcek

Reports

No abstract provided.