Digital Commons Network^™

The Determinants Of Poverty In Pennsylvania Counties, Angelique Alcantara

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This study examines the determinants of poverty in Pennsylvania counties. Economic and demographic characteristics are evaluated in their relation to the poverty rate, using panel data from 2000 to 2019 for the 67 Pennsylvania counties. Data was collected from the U.S. Census Bureau. In accordance with the Hausman (1978) specification test, a two-way fixed effects model is estimated to account for unobserved county-specific and time-specific heterogeneity. Wald (1939) tests are used to determine joint significance for both demographic and economic variable groups. Results indicate that employment in manufacturing and in construction are negatively related to the poverty rate. Employment in …

Reclaiming And Reconceptualizing Accountability, Joseph Hailpern

Dissertations

This body of work contributes to the exploration of the intended and unintended consequences of the policy levers, referred to as education accountability policy, that have driven entire systems toward the inclusion of student performance data into educator performance ratings and the impact on the profession. Only from an extensive understanding of where we have been can a reimagined path forward be born to serve our youth and society better. This mixed methods dissertation does so by uncovering the legal landscape that defines the policy levers and bringing educators together in focus groups to delve deeply into these levers’ impact …

Socio-Ecological Challenges Of Hydroelectric Dams Among Ethnic Minorities In Northern Laos, Saleh Ahmed, Paige Liquin

Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Globally, hydroelectric dams are increasingly considered to be a sustainable source of renewable energy. Many countries have invested in hydroelectric projects to boost the local and national economies. The findings of recent hydroelectric projects are mixed. Even though the construction of these dams has provided immediate benefits to surrounding communities, long-term negative implications of hydroelectric development have called into question the true sustainability of hydroelectric projects. These negative impacts of hydroelectric dams include the resettlement of marginalized communities, in addition to significant alterations to the local environment and economy. Taking both the positive and negative impacts of hydroelectric development into …

Activetrans Priority Tool: An Analysis Of The San Luis Obispo Council Of Government’S Regional Transportation Plan Active Transportation Project List And Step-By-Step Methodology, William F. Daniels

City and Regional Planning

This is the first effort by SLOCOG to systematically rank and prioritize existing proposed active transportation projects through a GIS methodology across the county. The methodology demonstrates to member agencies and SLOCOG with a step-by-step approach to allocate limited resources to desired active transportation projects in an equitable way. The variables were selected by a Steering Committee. The report also includes suggestions for improved future analysis. This information can help to inform future plans and allocate funds.

The Regional Active Transportation Project Selection & Ranking Tool Methodology combines data from six factors to create a priority score. The six factors …

Incentivizing Electric Vehicle Adoption Through State And Federal Policies: Reviewing Influential Policies, Joshua Sabata, Subhaditya Shom, Ahmad Almaghrebi, Anne Mccollister, Mahmoud Alahmad

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

All-electric vehicles (EVs), battery-powered EVs (BEVs), and plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVS) are gaining market share and increasing in popularity with the buying public because the battery range (longer) and cost (lower) have reached sweet spots, the charging infrastructure is more robust, and concern with global cli­mate change is high. In 2013, only 100,000 EVs were sold in the United States, but by 2022, approximately 800,000 have been purchased. A similar growth is seen in EV sup­ply equipment (EVSE), i.e., EV charging stations, with 19,742 documented EV charging station locations in the United States in 2013 to 50,054 documented EV charging …

The Effect Of Irrigation On Dry-Farmed Vitis Vinifera L. Cv. Zinfandel As A Function Of Age, Jocelyn Alvarez Arredondo

Master's Theses

A one-year study was conducted in the Central Coast of California at a commercial vineyard to evaluate the effect of supplemental irrigation on dry-farmed Vitis vinifera L. cv. Zinfandel with varying vine ages during the 2021 growing season. The experimental block was historically dry-farmed on own-rooted Zinfandel vines, older vines were replaced as production quality decreased with a genetically identical scion grafted onto St. George (Vitis vinifera Scheel) rootstock. Six total treatments were included in this study, with Young vines (5 to 12 years old), Old vines (40 to 60 years old), and Control (2:1 ratio of old to …

Subaqueous Topographic Deformation In Abandoned Delta Lobes—A Case Study In The Yellow River Delta, China, Yunfeng Zhang, Yingying Chai, Caiping Hu, Yijun Xu, Yuyan Zhou, Huanliang Chen, Zijun Li, Shenting Gang, Shuwei Zheng

Faculty Publications

Reduction in river discharge and sediment load has left deltaic lobes in the world’s many river deltas starving, but knowledge of how the subaqueous topography of these abandoned subdeltas responds to environmental changes is limited. In this study, we aimed to determine the long-term dynamics of the subaqueous seabed of abandoned delta lobes to advance current knowledge. As a case study, we selected an abandoned subdelta on the Yellow River Delta of the Bohai Sea, China, for which three-decade long (1984–2017) bathymetric data and long-term river discharge and sediment load records are available. We analyzed the seafloor surface change and …

Unh: The Magazine Of The University Of New Hampshire, Summer 2023, Unh Magazine

UNH Magazine

No abstract provided.

Investigating Disparities And Safety Equity In Pedestrian Nighttime Crashes In Michigan, Sia Isaria Mwende

Masters Theses

For the past eleven years (2011 - 2021) in Michigan, 76 percent of all fatal pedestrian crashes occurred at night. Over the same period, about 36 percent of pedestrian nighttime crashes were fatal or incapacitating (KA), while only 25 percent of daytime pedestrian crashes were fatal or incapacitating (KA). Previous studies suggest that, overall, poor neighborhoods and racial minorities are associated with more pedestrian crashes. With more fatal and incapacitating pedestrian crashes occurring at night, it is imperative to examine how these crashes are distributed by economic status and racial makeup. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the racial and …

Natural And Anthropogenic Factors Affecting The Development Of Two Highland Agricultural Soils Of Bukidnon, Philippines, Guadalupe D. Calalang, Laurent Bock, Gilles Colinet, Vincent Hallet, Peter Walpole

The Philippine Agricultural Scientist

This research was conducted in two highland areas of Bukidnon, Philippines: Miarayon, a sub-catchment of the upper Cagayan de Oro River; and Bendum, a sub-catchment of the upper Pulangui River. Due to their pyroclastic parent rock materials, soils in the upper Cagayan de Oro are classified as Andic Cambisol in open and convex positions, and Andic Umbrisol in concave and depressed positions. Soils in the upper Pulangui are classified as Pisoplinthic Acrisol, Ferralic Nitisol, and Acric Nitisol in areas with ultramafic rock parent materials, and Haplic Cambisol with pyroclastic deposits. Element contents in rocks were congruent to the total soil …

Local Candidate Roots And Electoral Advantages In Us State Legislatures, Charles Russell Hunt, Stella Rouse

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A growing literature has revealed a notable electoral advantage for congressional and gubernatorial candidates with deep local roots in their home districts or states. However, there is a dearth of research on the presence and impact of local roots in state legislative races. In this paper, we close that gap by demonstrating the consistent and significant electoral impacts that state legislators’ local roots have on their reelection efforts. We use data capturing a representative cross-section of state legislative incumbents (N = ~5,000) and calculate a novel index measuring the depth of their local roots modeled after Hunt’s (2022, Home …

The Invisible Danger In Plain Site: Ending The Practice Of Building Housing In Exposure Zones, Adam J. Mikell

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

No Rain Coming In The Drought On Farmworker Labor Protections: Cedar Point Nursery V. Hassid’S Destruction Of Traditional Takings Law And Labor Protections For U.S. Farmworkers, Mercedes Guadalupe Molina

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Haunted Homelands: Mary Hunter Austin's Search For Belonging In California's Central Valley, Aimee M. Maddalena

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From childhood, Mary Hunter Austin resisted the social conformity expected of a young girl in 1850’s Carlinville, Illinois. Instead, causing her mother to “shed tears of vexation,” she was outspoken, opinionated, and read the “wrong” books, which, according to her mother, “was what made you queer so that people didn’t like you.” Young Mary had a rich inner life and was drawn in a spiritual, mystical way to the minutiae of the natural world. Also, she questioned the strict social structure that caused her mother to be outcast as a widow, while, at the same time, young women were beginning …

International Student Orientations: Indian Students At American Universities Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Param S. Ajmera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical …

Emancipatory And Retributive Labor: Conflicting Representations Of Enslaved Labor In Us And Caribbean Literature, 1830–1855, Michael Druffel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emancipatory and Retributive Labor follows the development of a concept that I call emancipatory labor as it appeared in the US and Caribbean during the period 1830 to 1855. Emancipatory labor is a subversive tactic in which enslaved people in the United States and Caribbean redefined a portion of their labor in capitalist terms. Re-theorizing a portion of enslaved labor stakes a claim to agency and humanity according to Western, humanistic logic. Examples of the types of labor being redefined include selling commodities, hiring time, and working “extras” for wages. I use enslaved person Lunsford Lane’s 1842 narrative as a …

Witnessing Climate Change In The United States Virgin Islands: Emotional Responses And Calls For Action, Thomas Bane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity in the 21^st century. This study investigated people’s observations of climate change in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI). A qualitative study was used with a Grounded Theory approach to better understand how people witnessed climate change events, what people’s emotional responses were, and what calls for action they had to respond to climate change in the USVI. The study had two parallel arms: five focus groups (n=17) with residents of the USVI and key informant interviews with community leaders (n=10). Participants witnessed a wide …

Transnational Ritual Poetics Of Blackness In Performance, Nina A. Mercer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I investigate transnational ritual poetics of Blackness through a historical, cultural, and spatial lens, centering my exploration on the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and waterways. I show how these formal poetics activate Africana cosmologies, cosmogonies, and mythologies dramaturgically by centering contemporary New York City performance works that bring together dance, theatre, and music. I contextualize NYC performance case studies in relation to performance practices in contemporary Salvador da Bahia. I am particularly interested in how the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and water as formal poetics catalyze interventions along contested water-ways and landscapes marked by Black …

Navigating Through World’S Military Spending Data With Scroll-Event Driven Visualization, Hong Beom Hur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Catching up with the current geopolitical event is more important than ever these days. Anti-western nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea constantly challenge the world order set by the United States and its close allies. As a result, the world has seen a rise in military spending consecutively for the last several years. This data visualization project aims to provide an easy-to-read summary of military spending data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for hotly conflicted regions: East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Scroll-event-driven visualization implemented using Scrollama.js and D3.js combines text, map, and data …

Slow Speed Rail: The Social, Psychological And Environmental Benefits Of Long-Distance Train Travel, Vincent Gragnani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Long-distance train travel in the United States is slow, inefficient and woefully underfunded. Trains are routinely delayed for freight traffic. Many major cities are served in the middle of the night, or not at all. And the cost of a sleeping compartment is far out of reach for most Americans. This is all in stark contrast to the reliable services offered across Europe and parts of Asia. But for the 3.5 million people who ride Amtrak’s long-distance trains every year, the experience can be a fulfilling one. This web-based project, slowspeedrail.com, explores these benefits, namely, an intimacy with the landscape …

Policing The Borders Of An Empire: A Political History Of Tagging (1960–2008), Maria Heyaca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Of the nearly 6 million people monitored by the prison and immigration enforcement complex in the US, a little over 4 million, or 70%, are under community supervision. If we narrow in on the nearly 350,000 people being monitored by the immigration system, the figure goes up to 93%. Yet, most studies on criminalization conducted in the US, prioritize confined individuals, neglecting community supervision. In this dissertation, I present the first theoretically driven, historical and sociological analysis that comprehensively targets fundamental questions about the political history of electronic monitoring in the US -- a practice also known as tagging. I …

Essays On Tax Impacts On Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance And Regional Disparity, Mei Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that cover topics on tax impacts on corporate finance, regional disparity and corporate governance.

Chapter 1 - How Do Net Operating Loss Carryforwards Affect Tax Impact on Corporate Capital Structure? This paper examines the impact of net operating loss (NOL) carryforwards on the tax implications of corporate capital structure. Leveraging the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), the largest tax reform in four decades, this paper investigates the effect of NOL carryforwards on firms' sensitivity to tax reforms. As NOL carryforwards have become increasingly significant since 2000, but not widely researched due …

Dispersion In Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Film: An Application Of Bogoliubov–Valatin Transformation For Hamiltonian Diagonalization, Chandra M. Adhikari, Da’Shawn M. Morris, Thomas W. Noonan, Tikaram Neupane, Basu R. Lamichhane, Bhoj R. Gautam

College of Health, Science, and Technology

We present a theoretical study on the energy dispersion of an ultrathin film of periodically-aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with the help of the Bogoliubov–Valatin transformation. The Hamiltonian of the film was derived using the many-particle green function technique in the Matsubara frequency formalism. The periodic array of SWCNTs was embedded in a dielectric with comparatively higher permittivity than the substrate and the superstrate such that the SWCNT film became independent with the axis of quantization but keeps the thickness as the variable parameter, making the film neither two-dimensional nor three-dimensional, but transdimensional. It was revealed that the energy dispersion …

Contextualizing Performers In Circus Route Books: Linked Data Entities And The Open Data Environment, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Focuses on the final phase of the 4-year Council on Library and Information Resources grant project Step Right Up: Digitizing Over 100 Years of Circus Route Books. The digital humanities exhibit, Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books 1875-1925, features essays, images, interactive timelines, and map data visualizations of circus routes with Native Lands, historical railroads, and population data. The study examines the project’s planning and data methodologies alongside the integration of technology tools and digital storytelling with complex histories to elevate underrepresented voices and exemplify the diverse historical record.

Regulatory Trading, David A. Weisbach

University of Chicago Law Review

Regulatory trading systems, such as the SO2 cap-and-trade system, are ubiquitous in environmental and natural resources law. In addition to cap-and-trade systems for pollutants such as SO2, NOx, and CO2, environmental and natural resources law uses trading in areas such as endangered species, water quality, wetlands, vehicle mileage, and forestry and farming practices. Trading, however, is rarely used as a regulatory approach in other areas of law. This Article seeks to identify the reasons for this dichotomy. To understand the dichotomy, the Article examines the uses of trading in environmental and natural resources law, where it has been successful, and …

Rich Dad, Gay Dad: The Wealth Traps Of Gay Fatherhood, Erez Aloni

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cervical Steroid Injections Are Not Effective For Prevention Of Surgical Treatment Of Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy., Mustfa K. Manzur, Andre M Samuel, Avani Vaishnav, Catherine Himo Gang, Evan D Sheha, Sheeraz A Qureshi

Student Papers, Posters & Projects

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to determine how often patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) and initially treated with cervical steroid injections (CSI) and to determine whether these injections provide any benefit in delaying ultimate surgical treatment.

METHODS: All patients with a new diagnosis of DCM, without previous cervical spine surgery or steroid injections, were identified in PearlDiver, a large insurance database. Steroid injection and surgery timing was identified using Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes. Multivariate logistic regression identified associations with surgical treatment.

RESULTS: A total of 686 patients with DCM were identified. …

Latinas In The Legal Academy: Progress And Promise, Raquel E. Aldana, Emile Loza De Siles, Solangel Maldonado, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The 2022 Inaugural Graciela Oliva ́rez Latinas in the Legal Academy (“GO LILA”) Workshop convened seventy-four outstanding and powerful Latina law professors and professional legal educators (collectively, “Latinas in the legal academy,” or “LILAs”) to document and celebrate our individual and collective journeys and to grow stronger together. In this essay, we, four of the Latina law professors who helped to co-found the GO LILA Workshop, share what we learned about and from each other. We invite other LILAs to join our community and share their stories and journeys. We hope that the data and lessons that we share can …

2022 Resident Visitation: Yellowstone National Park & Glacier National Park, Carter Bermingham, Megan Schultz, Matthew Pettigrew, Glenna Brown

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This particular study was conducted to better understand resident visitation to the national parks in the state, and to also understand some of the obstacles that may have prevented residents from visiting the parks in 2022. This report includes information on monthly visitation to both Glacier and Yellowstone national parks, as well as the number of respondents who were deterred by the flooding in Yellowstone and the ticketed-entry system in Glacier.

Snowmobile Recreation In Western Montana, Liam Harry, Melissa Weddell

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report is a summary of recreation snowmobilers in Western Montana regarding their visitor characteristics and demographics. The Institute forTourism and Recreation Research (ITRR) conducted surveys of snowmobilers to understand the profile and general characteristics of this user group.