Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does Large Family Size Predict Political Centrism?, Benjamin Schmidt

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

Suggesting that voting might be correlated with the number of children voters have has been rare but not unheard of in the last decade. In a 2004 article for American Conservative, Steve Sailer noted a correlation between states with higher birth rates among white voters and the support for incumbent Republican President George W. Bush. Sailer recognized that Bush won the nineteen states with the highest white fertility while Senator John Kerry won the sixteen with the lowest (2004). He also suggested that the lifestyle preferences of white, conservative parents might be to blame for the apparent Republican tilt among …

Unpopular But Effective? The Drone Strike Dilemma, Jake Berlin

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

In the mountainous region of northwestern Pakistan known as Waziristan, local tribesmen have grown accustomed to living in a state of constant vigilance. Death from above can come at virtually any time in the form of laser-guided missile strikes launched by U.S. predator and reaper drones. The drones are controlled remotely by pilots thousands of miles away at bases in the U.S. and can hover for hours before delivering their deadly payload. Advanced cameras allow drone operators to see their targets from distances that are impossible for the targets to see them, and the missiles launched by drones exhibit astounding …

Do You Hear The People Sing?: Populist Discourse In The French Revolution, Rebecca Dudley

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

The rallying cry of the French Revolutionaries was "Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!" (liberty, equality, fraternity), and the French Revolution, a pivotal moment in French, European, and world history, has been consistently considered one of the first and most significant nationalist movements. Research and literature thus far on discourse in this revolution have focused on nationalism Qenkins 1990; Hayward 1991; O'Brien 1988), along with the discourses of violence and terror that led to the graphic revolution (Ozouf 1984; Leoussi 2001). The presence of nationalist discourse and nationalist sentiment in the French Revolution is undeniable, but there are other elements potentially missing from …

Front Matter

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.

"All Things Denote There Is A God": Platonic Metaphysics, Thomistic Analogy, And The Creation Of A Christian Philosophy, Neil Longo

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

In Raphael's School of Athens, Plato famously points upward, while Aristotle brings his hand forward, parallel to the ground. Western thought has positioned itself between these two poles. Its dual purpose was to explain what was and explore what could be. This distinction worked its way into Christianity, which quickly divided itself between the spiritual and the physical, the church militant and the church triumphant, the city of God and the city of man. The audacious goal of St. Thomas Aquinas was to synthesize these urges in such a way as to logically describe the Kingdom of God using the …

Volume 33, Issue 1 Full Issue

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.

Advances In Promoting Literacy And Human Rights For Women And Girls Through Mobile Learning, Helen Crompton, Judith Dunkerly-Bean

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This article is taken from a larger review of extant research from a chapter titled “The role of mobile learning in promoting global literacy and human rights for women and girls” from the Handbook of Research on the Societal Impact of Digital Media. In this article we review the fairly recent advances in combating illiteracy around the globe through the use of mobile phones and e-readers most recently in the Worldreader program and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) mobile phone and reading initiatives. Utilizing key human rights publications and the lens of transnational feminist discourse, which …

Pre-Service Teacher Social Networking Decisions And Training Needs: A Mixed Methods Study, Helen Crompton, Kelly Rippard, Jody Sommerfeldt

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

The use of social networks in America has risen nearly tenfold in a decade, rising from 7% in 2005 to 65% in 2015. This rise in the use of social networks has presented new ethical, legal, and professional challenges for educators. Teachers are held to higher standards of moral behavior than the general population. This mixed-methods study examined the types of social networks used by pre-service teachers and if they are making good decisions when using social networks. The findings show that the pre-service teachers were unsure what to post. Based on this finding, the researchers provide training suggestions to …

Open Access Theses & Dissertations: Airing The Anxieties & Finding The Facts, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Writing a thesis or dissertation is hard, and now that most theses and dissertations are deposited and distributed electronically, graduating students face an additional complication: they must decide whether they want to make their dissertations immediately open access (OA), or, at universities that require OA, they must come to terms with the fact that their work will be OA. In this presentation, I survey and scrutinize the anxieties and myths surrounding OA theses and dissertations.

Zines In The Classroom: Critical Librarianship And Participatory Collections, Robin Potter, Alycia Sellie

Publications and Research

This lesson plan outlines using zines in a library classroom with a critical pedagogy approach. It was written based upon the teaching each author did with the Brooklyn College Library Zine Collection.

Ideologías Lingüísticas, José Del Valle, Vítor Meirinho

Publications and Research

This article provides an introduction to the concept of linguistic ideologies and its applicability to sociolinguistic analysis.

Working Memory And Interference Control In Children With Specific Language Impairment, Klara Marton, Naomi Eichorn, Luca Campanelli, Lilla Zakarias

Publications and Research

Language and communication disorders are often associated with deficits in working memory (WM) and interference control. WM studies involving children with specific language impairment (SLI) have traditionally been framed using either resource theories or decay accounts, particularly Baddeley's model. Although significant interference problems in children with SLI are apparent in error analysis data from WM and language tasks, interference theories and paradigms have not been widely used in the SLI literature. A primary goal of the present paper is to provide an overview of interference deficits in children with SLI. Review of the extant literature on interference control shows deficits …

Turning The Table Over: Collaboration And Critique At The New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival, Erin Colleen Jordan

LSU Master's Theses

In the late 1970s, the African American Jazz Coalition responded to the marginalization of black vendors at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival by partnering with the Festival to create the Koindu Marketplace, now known as Congo Square. Whereas much public representation of the Festival suggests a transcendence of racial boundaries inside Festival grounds, the content and structure of contemporary interviews with the activists reflect continued racial tensions, power dynamics, and resentment. This thesis analyzes oral histories with the founders of the Afrikan American Jazz Coalition stored at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Archive. Critical discourse analysis …

Fear No Evil: Making Sense Of Intersectionality And Fear Of Crime Amongst Blacks In High Crime Neighborhoods, Melinda Jackson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The extant literature on fear of crime has relied almost entirely upon quantitative data and was criticized as atheoretical due to its focus on the demographic characteristics associated with vulnerability. Emerging qualitative research on fear of crime has begun to overcome this limitation by drawing upon an intersectional lens, but quantitative assessments have yet to fully incorporate this theoretical development. The current study addresses this limitation by analyzing qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews and quantitative data collected as part of a large-scale survey. The primary goal of this dissertation is to take an intersectional approach to understand the relationships …

Mad Genius: A Manifesto For Entrepreneurs, Leticia Camacho

Faculty Publications

[Gage] is a prolific author best known for Risky Is the New Safe (2012). This newest publication is written in a personal narrative style and includes a few swear words. The book is "a manifesto about ideas. Big ideas, small ideas, and outlandish ideas. Ideas that innovate, ideas that disrupt markets, and especially ideas that irritate." The book is organized in three sections.

Increasing College Opportunity: School Counselors And Fafsa Completion, Laura Owen, Erik Westlund

Journal of College Access

Closing postsecondary opportunity gaps has become a national, state and local educational priority. To help eliminate these gaps, the US Department of Education initiated a project that provided real time student level Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion status to large urban school districts. Leveraging this information, school counselors identified and supported students and families as they navigated the financial aid process, resulting in statistically significant impacts on FAFSA completion and college attendance.

Use Of Dynamic Visualizations For Engineering Technology, Industrial Technology, And Science Education Students: Implications On Ability To Correctly Create A Sectional View Sketch, Petros J. Katsioloudis, Daniel Dickerson, Vukica Jovanovic, Mildred V. Jones

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Spatial abilities, specifically visualization, play a significant role in the achievement in a wide array of professions including, but not limited to, engineering, technical, mathematical, and scientific professions. However, there is little correlation between the advantages of spatial ability as measured through the creation of a sectional-view sketch between engineering technology, industrial technology, and science education students. A causal-comparative study was selected as a means to perform the comparative analysis of spatial visualization ability. This study was done to determine the existence of statistically significant difference between engineering technology, industrial technology, and science education students’ ability to correctly create a …

Identification And Development Of Patron Personas For An Academic Library, Holt Zaugg, Scott Rackham

Faculty Publications

Purpose. Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science and continued refinements to his initial laws place identification of patron’s needs and connection of those needs to library services of primary importance in libraries (Ranganathan, 1931; Crawford & Gorman, 1995; Noruzi, 2004). Identifying and developing personas or user group descriptions helps to identify the unique nature of library patrons. Each persona helps librarians to identify or create services specific to the persona of library patrons. As each library persona is better understood, the library faculty and staff are able to prepare and plan for service delivery. Initially personas were developed for undergraduate …

Finding The Public Domain: Copyright Review Management System Toolkit, Richard C. Adler, Justin Bonfiglio, Kristina Eden, Brian S. Hall, Melissa Levine, University Of Michigan Library Copyright Office

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Working over a span of nearly eight years, the University of Michigan Library received three grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to generously fund CRMS, a cooperative effort by partner research libraries to identify books in the public domain in HathiTrust. In CRMS- US (2008– 11), CRMS reviewed over 170,000 volumes in the HathiTrust Digital Library that were published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 (“CRMS- US”). That first project team— which included reviewers from the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota, and Indiana University— identified nearly 87,000 volumes …

Converting Scholarly Journals To Open Access: A Review Of Approaches And Experiences, David J. Solomon, Mikael Laakso, Bo-Christer Björk, Peter Suber Editor

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This report identifies ways through which subscription-based scholarly journals have converted their publishing models to open access (OA). The major goal was to identify specific scenarios that have been used or proposed for transitioning subscription journals to OA so that these scenarios can provide options for others seeking to “flip” their journals to OA. The report is based on the published literature as well as “gray” literature such as blog posts and press releases. In addition, interviews were conducted with eight experts in scholarly publishing. The report identifies a variety of goals for converting a journal to OA. While there …

Monograph Costing Tool: A User’S Guide, Nancy Maron, Kim Schmelzinger

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This tool is designed to help presses of all sizes determine the full costs of publishing monographs. It may be useful if you are preparing to apply for a subvention to publish a monograph and need an itemized cost statement. Or, it might just be information you need to have in order to better assess and run your business. The process described below will be easiest if centrally coordinated, whether by the press director, business manager, or the Chief Financial Officer. It will almost certainly require some time for departmental heads. Whether or not you choose to involve more staff …

Intellectual Freedom For Authors: A Very Brief Overview Of United States Copyright, Sue Ann Gardner

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

VIII: Intellectual Freedom for Authors: A Very Brief Overview of United States Copyright

What Can Be Copyrighted and What Rights Are Conferred?

Who Owns Copyright in a Work?

Copyright Formalities

Transfer of Copyright

Length of Term of Copyright

Permissions and Licensing

Fair Use

Consequences of Infringement

Open Educational Resources: Policy, Costs And Transformation, Fengchun Miao, Sanjaya Mishra, Rory Mcgreal

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Open Educational Resources (OER) — teaching, learning and research materials that their owners make free for others to use, revise and share — offer a powerful means of expanding the reach and effectiveness of worldwide education.

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and UNESCO co-organised the World OER Congress in 2012 in Paris. That Congress resulted in the OER Paris Declaration: a statement that urged governments around the world to release, as OER, all teaching, learning and research materials developed with public funds.

This book, drawing on 15 case studies contributed by 29 OER researchers and policy-makers from 15 countries across …

United States Geological Survey (Usgs) Response To The Office Of Science And Technology Policy Memo, 2013: Public Access Plan (January 2016)

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

USGS response to OSTP memo, 2013: Public Access Plan (January 2016)

Defining A Smart Nation: The Case Of Singapore, Siu Loon Hoe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the key characteristics and propose a working definition of a smart nation.Design/methodology/approach - A case study of Singapore through an analysis of the key speeches made by senior Singapore leaders, publicly available government documents and news reports since the launch of the smart nation initiative in December 2014 was carried out.Findings - Just like smart cities, the idea of a smart nation is an evolving concept. However, there are some emerging characteristics that define a smart nation.Research limitations/implications - The paper provides an initial understanding of the key characteristics and …

Exploring Intermedia Agenda Setting Effects Of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Andrew Abad

LSU Master's Theses

The HBO television program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is a new and unique take on the typical political comedy show popularized by programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Uninterrupted by commercial breaks and with full creative control, host John Oliver and his team spend 30 minutes on Sunday nights discussing a typically underreported story at length, abandoning the monologue and interview portions reminiscent of traditional political comedy shows in favor of a long-form style investigation into a particular issue or topic. The main segment of each episode is then uploaded to the social media website, …

The Mechanisms Of Auditory Distraction: The Roles Of Interference-By-Process And Attention Capture, Danielle A. Lutfi-Proctor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

It is generally believed that there are two main mechanisms of auditory distraction: attention capture and interference-by-process. Attention capture is said to occur when sounds drag your attention away from what you are attempting to focus on and harm performance as a consequence. Interference-by-process, meanwhile, states that the processing of the sounds can conflict with the processing needed to complete the task of interest. Whether or not the two mechanisms can jointly lead to distraction is unclear at this time. The following dissertation examined the roles of both distraction mechanisms in a cross-modal variant of the Stroop task, in which …

Influence Of Motivation On Phonics Effectiveness, Rachel L. Bradley

LSU Master's Theses

Reading is a basic life skill, and is paramount to students’ success in school. In fact, skilled readers tend to succeed in subject areas including mathematics, social studies, and science (Valleley & Shriver, 2003). Phonics is one of the cornerstones of learning to read. Without mastering phonics, students are more likely to experience persistent difficulties in reading (Elbro, 1996; Bus and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, 1999; Rose, 2006). However, student motivation to read can impact the effectiveness of reading programs (Melekoglu, 2011). The current study examines the influence of motivation on the effectiveness of a phonics program with six first-graders …

Testing The Asset-Based Theory Of American Social Welfare: Does A Future-Orientation Mediate The Relationship Between Asset-Ownership And Financial Responsibility?, Louie Fletcher Bickham Iii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The ownership of financial assets protects American households from experiencing the struggles of income poverty. The asset-based theory of American social welfare, which was conceptualized by Professor Michael Sherraden in 1991 and amended in 2001 by other scholars, posited that social welfare programs diminish the prevalence of poverty by enabling households to save funds to purchase assets. This theory has been scantly tested—especially among American households—despite a great amount of funds being invested into programs designed to help low-income American households to build assets. The only previous study that examined the intermediary role of future-orientations on the effect of asset-ownership …

Glue Sticks And Gaffs: Disassembling The Drag Queening Body, Ray Siebenkittel

LSU Master's Theses

Drag queening men, typically gay men who perform femininities for entertainment, use makeup, padding, injections and other tools to change their bodies for performance. I focus on the backstage activities of drag performers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, rather than conventional observations from the audience, to explore the negotiation, construction and implications of these bodies, both physically and discursively. Through autoethnographic accounts and participating in my own drag performance, I highlight the often unseen, less frequently discussed aspects of drag queening in order to lessen the distance between the efforts of performers and the stage. Drag queening men’s bodies are a …