Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Evaluation Of Financial And Non-Financial Environmental Disclosures Of Ten Publicly-Listed Mining Companies In The Philippines, Nimpha M. Aquino

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study determined the environmental disclosure practices of 10 mining companies in the Philippines by examining the nature and extent of disclosures in the financial and non-financial sections of their 2006 corporate annual reports. It was found out that there was no uniformity in the environmental disclosures of the 10 mining companies. It was also discovered that there was no existing environmental reporting standards as far as environmental disclosure is concerned. The study provided recommendations to the standard-setting council to improve the firms’ environmental disclosure compliance with a discussion regarding the benefits these recommendations might offer.

Stock Diversification And Integer Programming, Emilina R. Sarreal

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study shows how investors can maximize returns by preparing and monitoring their own stock portfolio by using an integer programming model with an algorithm that can be computed in spreadsheet and linear programming software. Further, the study emphasizes the importance of diversifying stockholdings to reap optimal returns and minimum volatility/risk. It also suggests employing behavioral portfolio theory where goals/aspirations of investors are combined with their reward-to-volatility profile.

Risk Management In The Indian Petrochemical Industry (With Special Reference To Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd.), Tamma K. Reddy, Subhayan Basu

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study focuses on the identification and acceptance or offsetting of the risks threatening the profitability and existence of any petrochemical organization. It deals with the foreign exchange risk management policy of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd. and how it could be implemented in the risk minimization or the profit maximization of the company. It applies theories about risks and offers insights and recommendations to the company regarding their management of risk exposures.

Exchange Rate Pass-Through For Selected Southeast Asian Countries, Stephanie L. Chan

DLSU Business & Economics Review

Long- and short-run exchange rate pass-through coefficients were estimated for Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines using a simple model based on absolute purchasing power parity. Results were lower than 0.30 for all four countries. Cointegration tests confirmed the existence of a long-run relationship between CPI, GDP, exchange rate, and the U.S. PPI for the countries studied. However, the post-estimation tests showed that a more comprehensive model may need to be developed. The low coefficients reflect the success of the countries in stabilizing their inflation levels, though implying that exchange rate interventions may be less effective in restoring trade balance.

Problem-Solving Behaviors In College Relationships, Bethanie Frattini-Scott

Honors Program Theses

This study examined the individual characteristics that affect one’s willingness and ability to resolve problems in romantic relationships and one’s decision to seek support from a romantic partner. One hundred twenty-six college students in romantic relationships completed measures of attachment style, relationship efficacy, partner attributions, and relationship satisfaction, and responded to hypothetical scenarios assessing their problem-solving and support-seeking behaviors. Participants reporting higher attachment ambivalence were more perceptive than others to threats to their relationships and exhibited a greater effort to reduce conflict, although they reported lower levels of confidence in their problemsolving abilities. People reporting higher avoidance anticipated placing greater …

Attention And Memory In Young And Middle-Aged Adults, Emily Sorensen

Honors Program Theses

Within the field of communication sciences and disorders, studies concerning performance on cognitive tests tend to focus on the differences between young and old-age groups. The geriatric population has significantly increased over the years and will continue to rise in the coming decades. This rise in the number of older adults has resulted in research that is directed towards investigating the decline in cognitive ability in the aging population.

Powerful And Powerless Speech Styles In Employment Mock Interviews, Amanda M. Wilson

Honors Program Theses

This thesis examines powerful and powerless speech styles in employment mock interviews. A powerless speech style is defined as the use of linguistic features that have negative effects on how the speaker is perceived. Features analyzed in this study include intensifiers, hedges, and hesitations. A powerful speech style is defined as the absence of powerless linguistic features within speech. Twenty-eight examples of employment mock interviews conducted in the office of Career Services at the University of Northern Iowa were recorded for analysis in this thesis. Four common questions within the interviews were selected and the responses were transcribed and analyzed, …

Neurocognitive Deficits And Functional Outcome In Bipolar Disorder, Danielle T. Bello

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bipolar disorder affects approximately 1% of the population. It is a severe and debilitating illness, causing serious impairment of interpersonal, occupational and social functioning. The disorder is characterized by marked mood swings as well significant neurocognitive deficits. Based on work with other psychiatric and neurological disorders, neurocognitive deficits in bipolar disorder are expected to be strong predictors of functional capacity. However, few studies have evaluated the consequences of neurocognitive deficits in this disorder. Most available studies have focused on the clinical correlates of functional outcome, such as number of hospitalizations, age of disorder onset, and severity of symptoms. While useful, …

Biofeedback Assisted Relaxation Training Program To Decrease Test Anxiety In Nursing Students, Catherine Andrea Prato

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Nursing programs have been cited as being among the most stressful undergraduate programs. Students' knowledge and skills are consistently tested and monitored, and students may fail a course or be dropped from their nursing program if scores are not above a certain standard. Anxiety reactions are common to situations perceived as threatening; however, excessive anxiety may paralyze an individual and interfere with effective learning, functioning, and testing. Numerous studies have found increased anxiety causes physiological changes including increased respirations and heart rate, and decreased peripheral skin temperature. The purpose of this study was two fold. First test anxiety was measured …

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder And Other Consequences Of A Picu Admission, Stephanie Ann Stowman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Currently, there is a paucity of literature regarding children's experiences in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) relative to caregivers' experiences. Children admitted to a PICU and their caregivers are at risk for various psychopathology. Disorders commonly identified in seriously ill children include depression, anxiety, acute stress disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Caregivers of seriously ill children are at increased risk of depression, generalized anxiety disorder, acute stress disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Researchers often fail to examine all relevant psychopathology and contributing factors and stressors, such as family environment, in seriously ill children and their caregivers. This study assessed …

Race Stereotypic Crimes And Juror Decision Making: Hispanic, Black, And White Defendants, Joseph Francis Boetcher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A race stereotypic crime is a crime that most people tend to associate with a certain race. This is a type of racial bias that affects juror decision making by undermining the presumption of innocence and lowering the prosecution's burden of proof. Two studies investigated race stereotypic crimes. Study 1 used a new scale to identify race stereotypic crimes for black, Hispanic, and white males. Study 2 used a mock juror paradigm with a realistic stimulus and sensitive measures to focus on the influence of this type of bias on mock juror decision making. Study 1: Participants were 143 undergraduate …

A Validation Study Of Risk Management Systems, Bridget Kelly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive validity of Risk Management Systems (RMS) as a risk assessment instrument. To date, a published validation study does not exist for the RMS. The study employs secondary data analysis to examine the predictive validity of RMS recidivism and violence scores on three outcomes: arrest, unsuccessful termination from supervision, and technical violations. The study sample consisted of 830 probationers from the United States Probation Office, District of Nevada. The analyses showed that RMS recidivism and violence scores were moderately predictive of all three outcomes.

A Perspective Of Global Capitalism, James Soller

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since the 1970s, the political-economic structure of global society has undergone drastic restructuring. International political economy is concerned with providing explanations for these changes. This thesis will provide an alternative view of international relations that is often marginalized in the mainstream literature. It will be argued that global society needs to be understood under the historical context of capitalism and the class relations that stem from it. Central to this argument is a Gramscian derived articulation of hegemony. Thus, hegemony will be conceptualized in this thesis as a transnational class that governs over global society through consent and coercion. While …

A Palestinian State, Jennifer A. Hileman-Tabios

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Should an independent, sovereign state of Palestine have the right to exist? The establishment of an independent Palestinian state is important because it could possibly end an extended period of violence with Israel, where civilian casualties have been high, and it could help to solidify a foundation of political tolerance and acceptance in the Middle East. Under the proposed two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state is possible. However, to determine if a Palestinian state is viable, it will be necessary to examine internal political struggles, economic resources, systems of communication, political systems and internal and external political policies. This qualitative …

Eminent Domain: The Unintended Consequences Of Kelo, Tracy Lynn Bower

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In recent years, local governments in the United States have increasingly used eminent domain to promote economic development, raising concerns among property-right advocates over what those advocates view as unlawful, or what should be unlawful, takings of private property in order to benefit another private property owner. This philosophical and legal dispute reached a crisis point in the 2005 United States Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London. In that decision, the court narrowly upheld a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling granting the City of New London permission to redevelop land that had been seized from existing homeowners …

Optimization Of The Microprecipitation Procedure For Nuclear Forensics Applications, Lyndsey Renee Kelly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Microprecipitation has become one of the most widely used sample preparation techniques for alpha spectroscopy. Many factors during the precipitation process can affect the yield and energy resolution by adding unwanted mass to the sample. Current applications in nuclear forensics call for an optimization of energy resolution and yield in order to improve identification and quantify specific radionuclides. The purpose of this research is to determine the optimal parameters used for microprecipitation. The optimal solution temperature, precipitation time, carrier amount, and hydrofluoric acid amount are used to investigate the influence of varying the type of carrier, as well as, the …

On-Board Three-Dimensional Object Tracking: Software And Hardware Solutions, Ajay Kumar Mandava

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

We describe a real time system for recognition and tracking 3D objects such as UAVs, airplanes, fighters with the optical sensor. Given a 2D image, the system has to perform background subtraction, recognize relative rotation, scale and translation of the object to sustain a prescribed topology of the fleet. In the thesis a comparative study of different algorithms and performance evaluation is carried out based on time and accuracy constraints. For background subtraction task we evaluate frame differencing, approximate median filter, mixture of Gaussians and propose classification based on neural network methods. For object detection we analyze the performance of …

Bullying Prevention In Secondary Schools, John William Augustine

Graduate Research Papers

Many secondary students are negatively impacted from being bullied at school. Being bullied can impact a student's focus and cause psychological problems, along with many other negative consequences. Every school is impacted by bullying to some point and most schools have taken some type of intervention in order to prevent or address bullying. Teachers, administrators, counselors, parents, and students all have some impact on the school environment. Students impacted at school are the bullies, those bullied, and those that are bystanders. Some prevention strategies have tried to reduce bullying by focusing on a certain group. Bullying is a complex problem …

Further Delineation Of The Role Of The Amygdala In Face Processing And Racial Categorization, Osman Afzal Chowdhry

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

DNA exonerations in the legal system have increased steadily since 1989 from one or two per year to an average of 21 per year since 2001. A disquieting number of these exonerations originated from wrongful convictions following cross-racial identifications. Explaining the prevalence of erroneous cross-racial identifications centers on the Cross Race Effect (CRE), a phenomena whereby recognition for one's own race greatly outweighs recognition ability for other-race faces. Forty years of research in this area has produced a number of competing explanations. Recent neurological evidence has demonstrated separate neural regions for the processing of same-race and other-race faces as well …

Functions And Correlates Of Deliberate Self-Harm Among Adjudicated Male Adolescents, Jenna Silverman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is self-inflicted physical injury without suicidal intent. Recent studies indicated that more adolescent males engage in DSH than previously identified. Research demonstrated that DSH is common in forensic settings and highly correlated with several mental health disorders. This study included 103 adjudicated male adolescents assessed for DSH and mental health concerns. Twenty-two participants with DSH history and 21 controls were interviewed about coping skills, mental health problems, and DSH functions. Results indicated that 66%, especially African American and Hispanic participants, reported DSH history. Participants with DSH history reported more aggression, emotional lability, alienation/boredom, and internalizing disorders but …

Brothers Are Better Than Sisters: A Semiotic, Feminist Analysis Of Hbo's "Rome", Patricia Mamie Peers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 2005, the Home Box Office and British Broadcasting Corporation partnered to produce Rome , a television series that retells the Roman histories of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Augustus through the lives of two centurion soldiers, Titus Pullo and Lucious Vorenus. The show's producers endeavored to bring Roman streets to life and included more storylines of women, men and children of all classes. At first considered a more egalitarian approach to history, Rome 's women are said to "challenge expectations" (Vu, 2005) and "forge a new path" (Ragalie, 2007, p. 2). But does this new representation challenge the old …

Latin America: Contesting Extraction, Producing Geographies, Anthony J. Bebbington

Geography

Characterizing continents is the business of fools, inviting the charge of essentialization, over-generalization, and caricature of nuanced and complex processes varying across space and over time. Likewise it can attract the criticism that to privilege the national or the regional understates the transnational dimensions of social change, and to take a territorialized view diverts attention from the networks that cut across space, linking distant actors and places. This short essay therefore claims neither to be a reflection on Latin America-wide phenomena, and far less a statement on the most significant aspects of the political economy of the region. It does, …

"Please Mr Bebbington, Don't Come Here And Tell Us What To Do", Anthony J. Bebbington

Geography

The work in question addresses the relationships between mining, local development and democracy, and the thus-far most contentious part of this research has focused on a region affected by a mining project executed by a UK based "resource development" company. This specific part of the research has been conducted in conjunction with a UK based solidarity organization, the Peru Support Group as well as with Oxfam UK's office in Perú. The criticism of meddling came from the director in Peru of the Chinese consortium that in early 2007 acquired majority ownership of the mining company – the title paraphrases his …

The World Development Report 2009 'Reshapes Economic Geography': Geographical Reflections, Jonathan Rigg, Anthony J. Bebbington, Katherine V. Gough, Deborah F. Bryceson, Jytte Agergaard, Niels Fold, Cecilia Tacoli

Geography

The Report focuses on the spatial transformations that must happen for countries to develop. Cities, migration and trade, it is claimed, have been the main catalysts of progress and hence ‗Growing cities, ever more mobile people, and increasingly specialised products are … essential for economic success‘ (World Bank 2009, xx). These greater densities, shorter distances and reduced divisions will, the Report argues, bring about unbalanced growth: however, over time, other policies and mechanisms for integration will foster convergence in living standards. Development, seen through the Report‘s eyes, involves a necessary (and welcome) spatial unevenness in economic activity coupled with progressive …

Methods Of Scoring Elicited Imitation Items: An Empirical Study, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Dan P. Dewey, Jeremiah Lane Mcghee, Aaron Johnson, Ross Hendrickson

Faculty Publications

NNS oral proficiency test for English

NNS listen to, repeat back isolated English sentences (60/test)

Responses are recorded and scored later by human evaluators

Rationale: subjects can’t process linguistic vocabulary, structures they don’t know yet

Institutional Challenges For Mining And Sustainability In Peru, Anthony J. Bebbington, Jeffrey T. Bury

Geography

Global consumption continues to generate growth in mining. In lesser developed economies, this growth offers the potential to generate new resources for development, but also creates challenges to sustainability in the regions in which extraction occurs. This context leads to debate on the institutional arrangements most likely to build synergies between mining, livelihoods, and development, and on the socio-political conditions under which such institutions can emerge. Building from a multiyear, three-country program of research projects, Peru, a global center of mining expansion, serves as an exemplar for analyzing the effects of extractive industry on livelihoods and the conditions under which …

Contesting Environmental Transformation: Political Ecologies And Environmentalisms In Latin America And The Caribbean, Anthony J. Bebbington

Geography

The available download on this page is the author manuscript accepted for publication. This version has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process.

Detecting Coached Underreporting On The Mmpi-2 And Mmpi-2-Rf, Elizabeth M. Bolinger

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Early analyses performed by the authors of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) and others (Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2008; Sellbom & Bagby, 2008) have shown promise in detecting faking good profiles. Two validity scales designed to detect underreporting and defensiveness on the MMPI-2-RF are the L-r (a measure of underreporting by claiming unlikely moral virtues) and the K-r (a measure of underreporting by claiming good psychological adjustment) scales (Wygant, Ben-Porath, & Tellegen, 2007). These early studies have found very similar results and patterns as observed in studies of underreporting with the MMPI-2. This study attempts to add to …

Voluntary Simplicity And Its Effects On Personal Identity, Family Life, And Relationships, Julie Ann Fox

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

With the seemingly endless advance of technology and the resulting cheaper material goods, consumption levels have risen to record highs. Over-consumption is having devastating effects on the environment, as well as on families and societies. We are encouraged by the advertising industry to consume at every turn, and buying things has become a substitute source of self-worth for many people. But an abundance of material items has not brought personal fulfillment for most Americans. A growing number of people have begun to question the hollow promises of consumerism, searching instead for alternative ways to find contentment, meaning, and purpose in …

The Effects Of Sport And Physical Activity On Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder In Youth From Mass Trauma Populations, Sydney De Victoria-Michel

Honors Program Theses

This project will focus on the effects of exercise and sport on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD can be debilitating to those who suffer, and incredibly confusing when children are involved. Feelings of rage, anger, depression and anxiety can render individuals incapable of normal day-to-day activities. Traditional treatment options offer individual and group therapy in which the patients simply share their feelings and experiences. Although there have been a vast number of studies and texts published on PTSD sufferers using treatment based on psychotherapy, there has been little done to document effects of exercise and physical activity on PTSD. Despite …