Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Iterative Approach To Ground Penetrating Radar At The Maya Site Of Pacbitun, Belize, Sheldon Skaggs, Terry G. Powis, Clara R. Rucker, George Micheletti

Publications and Research

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) surveys provide distinct advantages for archaeological prospection in ancient, complex, urban Maya sites, particularly where dense foliage or modern debris may preclude other remote sensing or geophysical techniques. Unidirectional GPR surveys using a 500 MHz shielded antenna were performed at the Middle Preclassic Maya site of Pacbitun, Belize. The survey in 2012 identified numerous linear and circular anomalies between 1 m and 2 m deep. Based on these anomalies, one 1 m × 4 m unit and three smaller units were excavated in 2013. These test units revealed a curved plaster surface not previously found at …

Total Youth Arrests For Violent Crime Still Falling Nationwide, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Youth arrests for violent crime are declining across the country. Using Federal Bureau of Investigation data, this databit details trends from 1980 to 2015 and demonstrates how the nation is still seeing a 20-year decline in violent youth crime.

The Capacity Of Cognitive Control Estimated From A Perceptual Decision Making Task, Tingting Wu, Alexander J. Dufford, Melissa-Ann Mackie, Laura J. Egan, Jin Fan

Publications and Research

Cognitive control refers to the processes that permit selection and prioritization of information processing in different cognitive domains to reach the capacity-limited conscious mind. Although previous studies have suggested that the capacity of cognitive control itself is limited, a direct quantification of this capacity has not been attempted. In this behavioral study, we manipulated the information rate of cognitive control by parametrically varying both the uncertainty of stimul measured as information entropy and the exposure time of the stimuli. We used the relationship between the participants’ response accuracy and the information rate of cognitive control (in bits per second, bps) …

New Approaches To Data-Driven Civilian Oversight Of Law Enforcement: An Introduction To The Second Nacole/Cjpr Special Issue, Daniel L. Stageman, Nicole M. Napolitano, Brian Buchner

Publications and Research

In April of 2016, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) and John Jay College partnered to sponsor the Academic Symposium “Building Public Trust: Generating Evidence to Enhance Police Accountability and Legitimacy.” This essay introduces the Criminal Justice Policy Review Special Issue featuring peer-reviewed, empirical research papers first presented at the Symposium. We provide context for the Symposium in relation to contemporary national discourse on police accountability and legitimacy. In addition, we review each of the papers presented at the Symposium, and provide in-depth reviews of each of the manuscripts included in the Special Issue.

An Analysis Of Electronic Cigarette And Cigarette Advertising In Us Women’S Magazines, Corey Hannah Basch, Jennifer Mongiovi, Grace Clarke Hillyer, Danna Ethan, Rodney Hammond

Publications and Research

Background: Traditional cigarette advertising has existed in the US for over 200 years. Studies suggest that advertising has an impact on the initiation and maintenance of smoking behaviors. In recent years, electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) emerged on the market as an alternative to the traditional tobacco cigarette. The purpose of this study was to describe advertisements in popular US magazines marketed to women for cigarettes and e-cigarettes.

Methods: This study involved analyzing 99 issues of 14 popular US magazines marketed to women.

Results: Compared to advertisements for traditional cigarettes, advertisements for e-cigarettes were more often found in magazines geared toward the …

Puerto Ricans In Virginia, The United States, And Puerto Rico, 2014, Center For Puerto Rican Studies

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

In 2014, Virginia had the 11th largest Puerto Rican population in the United States with 92,319 Puerto Ricans, accounting for 1.8 percent of all Puerto Ricans living in the United States. From 2000 to 2014, the number of Puerto Ricans in Virginia more than doubled from 41,131 to 92,319.

Puerto Ricans In North Carolina, The United States, And Puerto Rico, 2014, Center For Puerto Rican Studies

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

In 2014 an estimated 89,212 Puerto Ricans lived in North Carolina and accounted for 1.7% of all Puerto Ricans living in the United States. The number of Puerto Ricans in North Carolina almost tripled from 31,117 in the year 2000 to 89,212 in 2014.

Resource Description And Access: Internationalizing, Teaching And Learning Rda Cataloging Abroad, Sheau-Yueh J. Chao

Publications and Research

This article presents the history and development of cataloging codes, an overview of the Resource Description and Access (RDA) training courses, the author’s experiences in library teaching and learning, cultural exchanges with the Chinese librarians at the National Central Library (NCL), international librarianship in cataloging, library technology and development in Taiwan as well as the National Central Library and the Library Association of China (LAC), and key findings of RDA in its development and transition, implementation, and implications.

Hackathons For Libraries And Librarians, Robin Camille Davis

Publications and Research

Hackathons can be ideal opportunities for libraries and librarians to promote new services and tools. In these social events, attendees form teams and work on a project together within a given time limit. This article explains hackathons, provides a brief history, and details how libraries and librarians can get involved. Similar event structures, like hack days and edit-a-thons, are also considered.

Can Noncompliant Behavior Explain Racial/Ethnic Disparities In The Use Of Force By The Nypd? An Econometric Analysis Of New York's Stop-And-Frisk, Omari-Khalid Rahman

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to analyze spatiotemporal variations in NYPD policing patterns in an attempt to identify the causal mechanism(s) driving the observed racial/ethnic disparities; specifically, it addresses questions of how changing neighborhood demographics influence the decision-making of NYPD officers/precincts as it relates to their controversial Stop-and-Frisk policy.

Geographies Of Desecration: Race, Indigeneity, And The Militarization Of Hawai'i, Laurel Turbin Mei-Singh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Geographies of Desecration: Race, Indigeneity, and the Militarization of Hawai‘i develops a genealogy of military fences and their relationship to Hawaiian struggles for self-determination and national liberation. Military occupation has transformed entire ways of life on the islands by altering Hawaiian land tenure systems through displacement, disruption of subsistence practices, and environmental degradation. Hawaiian mo‘olelo (stories, history) also structure life in a highly militarized place, centering interconnectivity between human and nonhuman realms while impelling grassroots efforts that shape its landscape.

This dissertation develops in-depth case studies of militarized sites on the Wai‘anae Coast of O‘ahu, where military bases occupy 34% …

Feminine Ideology, Relational Self-Concept, And Internalizing Symptoms In Women, Anjali George

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Investigators have theorized that women may experience internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety more frequently than men in part because of unique socialization processes that women undergo. One aspect of early socialization thought to contribute to women’s propensity for depression and anxiety is the way women are brought up to relate to themselves in relation to others, often placing greater importance on the needs, desires, and value of others, at times at a psychological cost to themselves. This study attempts to elucidate the relationship between gender socialization, relational self-concept, and internalizing symptoms in women.

Methods: Two hundred and …

Losing Values: Illiquidity, Personhood, And The Return Of Authoritarianism In Skopje, Macedonia, Fabio Mattioli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On May 17, 2015, over 50,000 people took to the streets of Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, protesting against Prime Minister Gruevski and his party, the conservative neoliberal Internal Revolutionary Organization of Macedonia (VMRO). After nine years of authoritarian government, it was the first significant demonstration in which the population demanded accountability for Gruevski's despotic system of rule. This dissertation is the story of how Gruevski's system of power was built and why it lasted for so long. I argue that a series of failing financial processes, which included the use of illiquidity, created the material and …

Looking For Leverage: Strategic Resources, Contentious Bargaining, And Us-African Security Cooperation, Sobukwe O. Odinga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to much of the international relations literature on security alliances weaker states are rarely in a position to drive hard bargains with their more powerful allies. Yet African states, for example, do not simply endure what they must to be of service to powerful friends. They often attempt to use security alliances to gain leverage over their stronger partners and extract concessions from them. When and why do they succeed?

This dissertation focuses on intelligence liaisons, military basing agreements, and coordinated military interventions as strategic resources that Ethiopia, Zaire (now D.R.C.), and Uganda have mobilized in intra-alliance bargaining with …

Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy Of War And Medicine, Sandra Lee Trappen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine undertakes study of how global conflict and violence shape the entire range of social production, from commodities and culture to social goods and social theory. The research presented in this work draws from cutting-edge theories in body and science studies, in addition to theories of affect and biopolitics to address how war became a problem solving paradigm in medicine. Combat casualties are shown to serve as a material nexus for medical knowledge production. Although the focus here is on medicine and medical innovation in particular, these developments are connected to …

The Transatlantic Oarsmen Cooperative: Doubling Down On A Transatlantic Financial Regulatory Regime, Joselyn Muhleisen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project argues that, in the wake of the 2007-09 financial crisis, the United States (US) and European Union (EU) are doubling down on finance-led domestic growth strategies and that this is their goal in constructing a transatlantic financial regulatory regime. The regime’s goal privileges the input of industry actors over other civil society actors. The construction of this regime is in response to pressure from emerging markets and to service domestic industry actors after the financial crisis. The regime is intended to allow the US and EU to maintain their dominance within the international financial regulatory regime and continue …

Extracting Indigeneity: Oil, Environment And Self-Determination In The Falkland Islands (Malvinas), James J. A. Blair

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnographic and historical project examines how the settlers of the Falkland Islands (In Spanish, Malvinas) are constructing themselves as “natives” through new forms of governance over energy resources. Three decades after a violent war that cemented the archipelago’s British status, offshore oil discoveries led Argentina to renew its sovereignty claim. In response, the Falkland Islanders held a 2013 referendum on self-determination, in which 99.8% voted to remain British, with just three dissenters out of 1,517 valid votes. Most of the Islanders are white settlers, making their invocation of self-determination different from that of former colonial subjects with aboriginal rights. …

From Sensory Perception To Lexical-Semantic Processing: An Erp Study In Non-Verbal Children With Autism, Chiara Cantiani, Naseem A. Choudhury, Yan H. Yu, Valerie L. Shafer, Richard G. Schwartz, April A. Benasich

Publications and Research

This study examines electrocortical activity associated with visual and auditory sensory perception and lexical-semantic processing in nonverbal (NV) or minimally-verbal (MV) children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Currently, there is no agreement on whether these children comprehend incoming linguistic information and whether their perception is comparable to that of typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10 NV/MV children with ASD and 10 neurotypical children were recorded during a picture-word matching paradigm. Atypical ERP responses were evident at all levels of processing in children with ASD. Basic perceptual processing was delayed in both visual and auditory domains but overall was …

New Trade, New Politics: Intra-Industry Trade And Domestic Political Coalitions, Mary Anne Madeira

Publications and Research

Why are industries highly active in some battles over international trade policies, but in other instances, individual firms are highly active and industry groups are subdued? I argue that rising intra-industry trade in the postwar period has undermined traditional trade coalitions and created new opportunities for individual firms to become politically active. Drawing on new trade theories from economics, as well as work on firm heterogeneity and lobbying, I argue that industry associations become less active as intra-industry trade increases due to competing trade preferences among member firms. At the same time, individual firms become more politically active. My results …

Statistical Learning In Specific Language Impairment And Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis, Rita Obeid, Patricia J. Brooks, Kasey L. Powers, Kristen Gillespie-Lynch, Jarrad A. G. Lum

Publications and Research

Impairments in statistical learning might be a common deficit among individuals with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Using metaanalysis, we examined statistical learning in SLI (14 studies, 15 comparisons) and ASD (13 studies, 20 comparisons) to evaluate this hypothesis. Effect sizes were examined as a function of diagnosis across multiple statistical learning tasks (Serial Reaction Time, Contextual Cueing, Artificial Grammar Learning, Speech Stream, Observational Learning, and Probabilistic Classification). Individuals with SLI showed deficits in statistical learning relative to age-matched controls. In contrast, statistical learning was intact in individuals with ASD relative to controls. Effect sizes did …

The Limits Of Liberal Planning: The Lindsay Administration's Failed Plan To Control Development On Staten Island, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

Staten Island grew rapidly after the Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened in 1964. Mayor John Lindsay introduced a plan to control and guide development there, and encouraged planned unit development. The Rouse Company, then building Columbia, Maryland, was contracted to plan new communities for the southern third of Staten Island to more than double the borough’s population. State Senator John Marchi introduced legislation for the South Richmond Development Corporation in 1971. The plan called for the city to use eminent domain to buy property and transfer it to the Rouse Company, which would also construct residential towers on landfill in Raritan …

Inducing Application Of Interdisciplinary Frameworks: Experiences From The Domains Of Information Literacy And Responsible Conduct Of Research, Anne E. Leonard, Jean E. Hillstrom

Publications and Research

Constructivist frameworks for information literacy and research ethics can be developed and nurtured in the context of an interdisciplinary course. Using the frameworks of two disciplines, students went on an experiential journey in support of ethics foundations through guest lectures and active learning exercises. This study describes the development and content of the responsible conduct of research and information literacy modules and discusses the role of each in an interdisciplinary course. Learning goals for both modules were evaluated by examining student responses in a free-writing exercise at the end of the semester, concluding with a discussion of the structural and …

Associations Between Mental Health And Ebola-Related Health Behaviors: A Regionally Representative Cross-Sectional Survey In Post-Conflict Sierra Leone, Theresa S. Betancourt, Robert T. Brennan, Patrick Vinck, Tyler J. Vanderweele, Dayo Spencer-Walters, Joshua Jeong, Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith, Phuong Pham

Publications and Research

Background

Little attention has been paid to potential relationships between mental health, trauma, and personal exposures to Ebola virus disease (EVD) and health behaviors in post-conflict West Africa. We tested a conceptual model linking mental health and trauma to EVD risk behaviors and EVD prevention behaviors.

Methods and Findings

Using survey data from a representative sample in the Western Urban and Western Rural districts of Sierra Leone, this study examines associations between war exposures, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depression, anxiety, and personal EVD exposure (e.g., having family members or friends diagnosed with EVD) and EVD-related health behaviors among 1,008 …

Tellin' It Like It Is: Politics And Donald Trump's Language, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

A lot about Trump’s success, and about the new verbal armament he wields (not to mention the old of the rest of the political field) can be learned from George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” Trump may be a naif when it comes to language but, as they say, “out of the mouths of babes…. ” Though his own language reflects more closely William Wordsworth’s ‘spontaneous overflowing’ than it does the considered speech and writing Orwell advocates, he has identified the weakness of his opponents much in the way Orwell did seventy years ago.

Globalization And The Environmental Impact Of Fdi, Nadia Doytch, Merih Uctum

Economics Working Papers

We analyze the environmental impact of capital inflows and investigate the halo effect (FDI improves the environment). We control for the type of FDI inflows, the EKC (Environmental Kuznets Curve) effect and country income level, and find (i) a differential industry effect: while total foreign investment in aggregate has a negative effect on all countries, this can be traced in particular to capital flows to manufacturing and nonfinancial services sectors.; (ii) an income inequality effect: foreign investment flowing into poorer countries has harmful effects on environment consistent with the race-to-the bottom argument, while capital flowing to richer countries has a …

Should The New England Education Research Organization Start A Journal In The Age Of Audit Culture? Reflections On Academic Publishing, Metrics, And The New Academy, Edward Lehner, Kate Finley

Publications and Research

A large regional educational research association can straightforwardly establish a scholarly journal associated with its annual meeting. However, this work underscores the complicated scholarly ecosystem that an association enters when publishing a journal. The social sciences’ scholarly literature exists in a related series of networks that could be described as a type of “audit culture.” Within audit culture, two major academic publishers, Elsevier and Thomson Reuters, have established competing, yet strikingly collinear, journal metrics systems: Scopus and Web of Science, respectively. These and other bibliometrics systems are used to assess, order, and rank the supposed value of a researcher’s work. …

Effects Of Ultra-Violet B On The Behavior Of Red-Eared Sliders (Trachemys Scripta Elegans), Edgar Alarcon

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to test the predictions that (1) turtles raised under mercury vapor artificial lamps will display the greatest amount of time spent in ultra-violet zones, and (2) turtles are able to differentiate between UVB and non-UVB light sources. Prediction 1 was partially supported, while prediction 2 was met.

Influence Of Social Status On Spatial Attention In African Cichlids (Astatotilapia Burtoni), Rebecca Bang

Theses and Dissertations

The present study used subordinate and dominant African cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni to test the hypothesis that social status will influence the perception of spatial cues during startle escape behavior. Our results show escape behavior that imply a focused spatial attention to potential threats in dominant fish.

The Effect Of Perceived Parental Autonomy Granting On Vocational Identity And Communication In Emerging Adults, Emily Salmany

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examines the relationship between autonomy granting parenting, vocational identity and communication between emerging adults and parents. It is hypothesized that emerging adults with autonomy granting parents have achieved more stable vocational identities and are better able to communicate with their parents than emerging adults without such parents.

The Effect Of Play Group On The Behavior Of Shelter Dogs, Stephanie Flower

Theses and Dissertations

This study looked at two groups of dogs, one which attended play group prior to receiving their behavior evaluation and one that did not. The group that attended play group showed significantly lower scores when looking at the dog to dog portion of the behavior evaluation.