Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Impact Of Urbanization On Temperature Variation In Big Cities: Measuring Health Risk While Targeting Vulnerable Population, Maryam E. Karimi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Densely populated cities are experiencing Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects and localized hotspots. Cities, such as New York can form heat islands all year round. This is primarily due to land surface modifications, radiative trapping in urban canyons and lack of cooling through evapotranspiration caused by displaced trees and vegetation. UHI refers to an increase in air and surface temperature in cities compared to surrounding suburban and rural areas. Large scale environmental forcing can cause subdivisions of UHI throughout a city. The combined of environmental forcing effects lead to the formation of hot pockets within the cities at micro-scale. The …

Mónica Mayer: Translocality And The Development Of Feminist Art In Contemporary Mexico, Alberto Mckelligan Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on Mónica Mayer (b. Mexico City, 1954), analyzing her work to understand the role played by the artistic and activist exchanges between feminists from Mexico City and Los Angeles in the development of feminist art in Mexico from the 1970s to the present. While scholars and curators are increasingly drawing attention to Mayer’s large body of work, which includes prints, drawings, installations, and public art interventions, the available literature emphasizes her connections to other artists working in her home country, positioning her artistic production within narratives of contemporary Mexican art.[1] In contrast, this dissertation foregrounds Mayer’s …

Local Immigration Enforcement Entrepreneurship In The Punishment Marketplace, Daniel L. Stageman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The contemporary neoliberal economic order plays a significant role in American social organization and policy-making. Most importantly, neoliberal ideology drives the creation and imposition of markets in public goods and services and the valorization of free market ideology in cultural life. The neoliberal ‘project of inequality’ is in turn delimited and upheld by an authoritarian system of punishment built around mass incarceration, surveillance, and an unprecedented level of social control directed at the lowest strata of American society – a group that includes both the urban underclass, and unauthorized immigrants.

This study lays out the theory of the punishment marketplace …

El Significado De La Construcción Con Ser Focalizador En El Español De Colombia, Ana I. González Támara

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One of the syntactic features of Colombian Spanish is the usage of focalizing SER (“TO BE”) reported by Cuervo (1885); Curnow & Travis (2003); Mendez (2009), among others authors, in constructions such as pago es el arriendo (I pay is the rent), or vino fue hoy (he/she came was right now) in alternation with simple forms (pago el arriendo- I pay the rent, or vino ahora- he/she came right now) and pseudo-clefts (Lo que yo pago es el arriendo- What I pay is the rent, or when he/she came was right now) …

From Rochel To Rose And Mendel To Max: First Name Americanization Patterns Among Twentieth-Century Jewish Immigrants To The United States, Jason H. Greenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There has been a dearth of investigation into the distribution of and the alterations among Jewish given names. Whereas Jewish surnames are a popular topic of study, first names receive far less analysis. Because Jewish immigrants to the United States frequently changed their names, this thesis can serve as a guide to genealogists and other scholars seeking to trace the paths of Jewish immigrants from Europe. Data was drawn from about 1500 naturalization records from Brooklyn in order to determine the correspondences between the given names featured on passenger lists and their Americanized counterparts. More than three-quarters of surveyed immigrants …

The Life And Death Of Urban Ethnic Enclaves: Gentrification And Ethnic Fragmentation In Brooklyn's 'Polish Town', Aneta Kostrzewa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the intersection of immigration and market-led gentrification in a fragmenting ethnic neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn– once home to a vibrant Polish community, now at risk of losing its social character as a traditional ethnic enclave. Extending Albert O. Hirschman’s theory of action to the Polish community in Greenpoint, I examine the conditions under which immigrants “participate”, “adapt” or “exit” as a response to neighborhood change. Based on participant observation, in-depth interviews and quantitative data, I argue that displacement or loss need not be the primary experience of longtime residents in gentrifying ethnic neighborhoods. Instead of emphasizing ethnic …

Essays In Corporate Responsibility And Finance, Mert Demir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters:

Chapter 1: The Effects of Corporate Social Performance and Social Norms on Market Valuation of Nonfinancial Disclosures Using a novel measure of the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures by global companies, this paper analyzes how CSR report quality affects firm value when mediating roles of social pressure and CSR performance are considered. I find that firms operating in socially controversial industries enjoy higher valuations when they issue high-quality CSR reports. I also find that for firms with poor CSR performance, higher-quality CSR disclosure is associated with a decline in firm value, while …

Early American Cookbooks: Creating And Analyzing A Digital Collection Using The Hathitrust Research Center Portal, Gioia Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Early American Cookbooks project is a carefully curated online collection of 1450 cookbooks published in the United States between 1800 and 1920. The purposes of the project are to create a freely available, searchable online collection of early American cookbooks, to offer an overview of the scope and contents of the collection, and to use digital humanities tools to explore trends and patterns in the metadata and the full text of the collection. The project has two basic components: a collection of 1450 full-text titles on HathiTrust and a website site to present a guide to the collection and …

Terrorism: A Tool For Shaping Public Opinion, Jonathan E. Voisich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public Opinion matters on issues of foreign policy. This makes controlling public opinion very important for governments. In this paper I will argue that elites use terrorism both as a tool for instilling fear and by creating a certain image of groups they wish to support or destroy in order to shape public opinion. I will examine both literature on framing and public opinion data on foreign policy to show why public opinion is so important and how it can be shaped. The two case studies showing terrorism being used in these ways will be the Ronald Reagan administration’s policy …

Dopamine D1 And D3 Receptor Polypharmacology In Cocaine Reward And Cocaine Seeking, Ewa J. Galaj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: In the search for efficacious pharmacotherapies to treat cocaine addiction much attention has been given to agents targeting D1 or D3 receptors because of the involvement of these receptors in cocaine-related behaviors. D1 and D3 receptor partial agonists and antagonists have been shown to reduce cocaine reward, reinstatement of cocaine seeking and conditioned place preference (CPP) in rodents and non-human primates. However, translation of these encouraging results with selective D1 or D3 receptor agents has been limited due to a number of factors including toxicity, poor pharmacokinetic properties and extrapyramidal and sedative side effects.

Purpose: Given the …

Rights And Feelings: Marriage Equality And The Language Of Citizenship In Argentina And The United States, Julie Hollar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

By comparing the struggles for marriage equality in Argentina and the United States, this research elucidates the ways discursive change happens around high-profile policy issues, as well as how that process shapes the playing field for future movements. This work builds on scholarship concerning the construction of target populations, arguing that in contests over meaning, the social construction of the central actors shapes both dynamics and outcomes. It uses content analysis and discourse analysis to compare the constructions of gays and lesbians and the state across cases and to trace their impact on the discursive opportunity structure. It also takes …

The Relationship Between Clinical Teaching Effectiveness And Emotional Intelligence In Clinical Nurse Faculty In Pre-Licensure Baccalaureate Programs In New York State, Caroline K. Mosca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is important to evaluate the Clinical Teaching Effectiveness (CTE) of nurse faculty because clinical teaching is one of the most effective pedagogies in nursing education (Billings & Halstead, 2012). However, clinical faculty must be able to manage effectively the stressors of the clinical setting, where lessons can be unpredictable and the environment is often laden with intense emotion (Gerolamo & Roemer, 2011; Ondrejka, 2013; Roberts, Chrisman, & Flowers, 2013). Emotional Intelligence (EI) may facilitate CTE because higher EI has been associated with improved management of stress in both nursing and the general workplace (Goleman, 1995; Görgens-Ekermans & Brand, 2012; …

A Whole New Wurld? How Unusual Brand Name Spelling Negatively Affects Sensory Perceptions Of New Products Through Cognitive And Affective Processing, Ann E. Mcneel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Introducing the importance of unusual brand name spelling to sensory marketing, this research shows that utilizing the linguistic device of unique brand name spelling can lead to differences in sensory perceptions and actual consumption of a variety of consumer products. Across five studies, we explore how perceptions of the uniqueness of a brand name can be achieved by varying one letter in the spelling of the brand name, and that such a small variation can result in less favorable sensory perceptions of taste (studies 1 and 3), scent (study 2), and vision (studies 4 and 5) as a result of …

Diversity's Impact On The Quality Of Deliberations, Amanda N. Bergold

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Racial minorities endure unfair treatment in our legal system on a variety of different outcomes, jury decisions in particular. Courts and researchers propose increasing diversity in juries as a method for improving jury deliberations and reducing racially biased outcomes for minority defendants (Peters v. Kiff, 1972; Sommers 2006). In the present research, I investigated the impact of diversity on the quality of deliberations, as defined by both sensitivity to case strength, and by more high quality contributions to deliberations. In the first study, both minority group members and majority group members provided more, higher quality, contributions when they …

The Technocratic Politics Of The Common Core State Standards In History, Kate Duguid

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper shows that the explicit aims of the American educational standards for public schools, the Common Core State Standards to teach history to create “college and career ready” students, marks a shift from preparing students for political participation to preparing them for market participation. I trace the intellectual and pedagogical origins of the Common Core’s pretense of technocratic apolitical values back through the previous two major American curricular reform efforts. In the first section I discuss the origins and development of the National History Standards and show how Cold War anxiety prompted a shift in evaluating students as potential …

Capturing The Attention Of Caregivers: Variability In Infant Vocalizations, Catharine A. Castelluccio De Diesbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The effect of variability in infant vocalizations on potential caregivers’ heart rate variability (HRV), facial expressions, and subjective ratings on emotional reactions and desire to approach the baby was examined in an evolutionary context. Recordings of non-canonical, canonical, fussing, and crying vocalizations were utilized to elicit physiological and self-reported reactions from sixty participants. Breastfeeding mothers, non-mothers at high estradiol point in menstrual cycle, non-mothers at low estradiol point in menstrual cycle, fathers, and non-fathers were included in the study. Participants wore Polar RS800 heart rate monitors, were video recorded for facial expression analysis, and filled out 11 point self-rating forms …

Es-Esa: An Information Retrieval Prototype Using Explicit Semantic Analysis And Elasticsearch, Brian D. Sloan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many modern information retrieval systems work by using keyword search to locate documents in an inverted index by matching those documents based on terms in a user’s query. While highly effective for many use-cases, one notable drawback to simple keyword-based searching is that the contextual knowledge surrounding the user’s underlying information need may be lost, particularly if the user’s query terms are ambiguous or have multiple meanings. Research in the field of semantic search aims to make progress towards resolving this. One methodology in particular, explicit semantic analysis, works by modeling a document not only as a set of …

The Value Of Value-Added: Science, Technology, And Policy In Educational Evaluation, Daniel Douglas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first decade of the 21^st century, researchers and policymakers in K-12 education began to focus on evaluating teacher and school performance based on students’ standardized test scores. One evaluative technique, value-added assessment (VAA), has been given particular attention. This research presents a comprehensive study of the theoretical, technical, historical and political dimensions VAA. Theoretically, the assumptions that underlie value-added diverge significantly from the observed operations of the schools and classrooms these models are supposed to evaluate. Technically, even if the theoretical assumptions are accepted, teachers’ actual value-added rankings are shown to be unstable across time periods and …

The Effects Of Parametrically Manipulating The Ratio Of Complimentary To Constructive Feedback Statements On Performance, Amanda Mentzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Performance feedback is frequently discussed and implemented. Although shown to be quite effective, the characteristics of feedback have yet to be fully explored. Feedback ratio was explored in this study. While participants evaluated the postural safety of body positions presented on a computer screen, researchers measured the (a) number of s that it took participants to evaluate body positions (i.e., response time), (b) percent of correctly evaluated body positions (i.e., percent correct), and (c) extent to which participants appreciated the statements they received after responding (i.e., rating). Using a mixed-factorial design, researchers manipulated feedback within groups and feedback ratio between …

Brief And Extended Experimental Analysis Of Spelling Deficits, Kimberly Reyes-Giordano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brief Experimental Analyses (BEA) have been primarily used to evaluate the effects of instructional variables on reading deficits with regular education students. The broader utility of BEA’s has been limited in academic scope and population. The current study aimed to expand upon previous research by determining the efficacy of a BEA in identifying effective spelling interventions for students with established spelling deficits. Four different spelling strategies, drawn from the BEA and broader spelling intervention literatures were integrated into the BEA assessment technology and were compared and experimentally analyzed. For all students, effective interventions were identified with clear distinctions between the …

Adhd And Theory Of Mind In School-Age Children: Exploring The Cognitive Nature Of Social Interactions In Children With Adhd, Rachel Feigenbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience significant difficulties with social skills (Barkley, 2006; DuPaul & Stoner, 2003; Stormont, 2001). The inhibitory deficit associated with ADHD is typically identified as the cause of these impaired social skills (Barkley, 2006). Additionally, some researchers have suggested that theory of mind (ToM), which is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others, may be involved, but the research on ToM deficits in children with ADHD is limited and the findings are mixed. A key methodological issue in this literature is the use of traditional but problematic measures of advanced …

Zooarchaeological And Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction Of Newly Excavated Middle Pleistocene Deposits From Elandsfontein, South Africa, Frances L. Forrest

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Increased consumption of animal tissue is arguably one of the most important adaptive transitions in early hominin behavior. A dietary shift toward regular tool-assisted meat consumption and increased competition with the carnivore paleoguild likely helped shape many important hominin adaptations such as foraging patterns, habitat preferences, and social behaviors. Yet, the ecological and behavioral implications for increased hominin carnivory remain poorly understood. This dissertation examines the zooarchaeological and paleoenvironmental history of an important Acheulean hominin locality, Elandsfontein, South Africa (ca. 1.0 – 0.6 Ma). The goal is to begin addressing under-investigated aspects of Acheulean hominin behavioral ecology and place Acheulean …

Asymmetric Alliances And Side Payments: Alliance Politics Between Unequal Powers, Muhammad S. Kabir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Strong states use foreign aid as side payments to form and maintain military alliances with small and poor states, to a degree not adequately appreciated in the international relations literature. The amount of aid necessary to form and sustain alliances with strong ones is affected by small states’ domestic politics—such as regime type (coalition size) and stability—and the divergence of their strategic interests with the strong power. The alliance and foreign aid literatures, however, have generally downplayed the importance of foreign aid in the formation of asymmetric alliances, have not explained when and why foreign aid matters for asymmetric alliances, …

Toward A Reoriented Radicalism: Black Marxism And Orientalism, Alexandros Orphanides

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 21st century has witnessed the unquestioned supremacy of late capitalism. It holds coercive power over nation states; it generates increased inequality within countries and around the globe. It can, today, exploit everywhere at once. The poorest countries in the world reside in the Global South. Of the twenty poorest countries in the world, seventeen are in Africa; the rest are elsewhere in the Global South. Of the hundred poorest countries in world, over 95 percent are in the Global South. In the United States, Blacks, Latinos, and Indigenous people have poverty rates that greatly exceed the national average. Poverty …

Overpopulation And The Impact On The Environment, Doris Baus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this research paper, the main focus is on the issue of overpopulation and its impact on the environment. The growing size of the global population is not an issue that appeared within the past couple of decades, but its origins come from the prehistoric time and extend to the very present day. Throughout the history, acknowledged scientists introduced the concept of “overpopulation” and predicted the future consequences if the world follows the same behavioral pattern. According to predictions, scientists invented the birth control pill and set population control through eugenics. Despite that, population continued to increase and fight with …

Climate-Based Policies May Increase Life-Cycle Social Costs Of Vehicle Fleet Operation, Isaac Emery, Eric G.. Mbonimpa, Alfred E. Thal Jr.

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cultivating (A) Sustainability Capital: Urban Agriculture, Eco-Gentrification, And The Uneven Valorization Of Social Reproduction, Nathan Mcclintock

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban agriculture (UA), for many activists and scholars, plays a prominent role in food justice struggles in cities throughout the Global North, a site of conflict between use and exchange values, and rallying point for progressive claims to the right to the city. Recent critiques, however, warn of its contribution to gentrification and displacement. The use/exchange value binary no longer as useful an analytic as it once was, geographers need to better understand UA’s contradictory relations to capital, particularly in the neoliberal Sustainable City. To this end, I bring together feminist theorizations of social reproduction, Bourdieu’s “species of capital”, and …

Do Savings And Assets Reduce Need-Based Aid For Dependent Students?, Margaret M. Clancy, Sondra G. Beverly

Center for Social Development Research

Federal programs such as Pell Grants provide financial aid for college according to need. Although the federal government is the principal source of need-based student aid, almost all states offer assistance. Rules governing student aid designate income as the primary indicator of ability to pay but assets are also considered. This policy brief documents the impact of assets on need-based aid for dependent students under current rules and formulas. The main observation is that savings and assets do not affect need-based aid for most dependent students. When assets count toward the EFC, savings held in 529 plan accounts have less …

Around The World, Adolescence Is A Time Of Heightened Sensation Seeking And Immature Self-Regulation, Laurence Steinberg, Grace Icenogle, Elizabeth P. Shulman, Kaitlyn Breiner, Jason Chein, Dario Bacchini, Lei Chang, Nandita Chaudhary, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Kostas A. Fanti, Jennifer E. Lansford, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Sombat Tapanya, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Liane Peña Alampay, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Hanan M S Takash

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

The dual systems model of adolescent risk‐taking portrays the period as one characterized by a combination of heightened sensation seeking and still‐maturing self‐regulation, but most tests of this model have been conducted in the United States or Western Europe. In the present study, these propositions are tested in an international sample of more than 5000 individuals between ages 10 and 30 years from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, using a multi‐method test battery that includes both self‐report and performance‐based measures of both constructs. Consistent with the dual systems model, sensation seeking increased between preadolescence and late …

Implementation, Cost, And Funding Of Bilingual Education In Texas: Lessons For Local And State Policymakers, David S. Knight, Elena Izquierdo, David E. Dematthews

Policy Briefs

Despite the rapid increase in enrollment of students who speak a language other than English at home, little prior research examines the resources required to implemented instructional programs for emergent bilinguals and whether school districts receive adequate funding for these programs. This policy brief (a) synthesizes research on implementation of bilingual education, (b) describes research on the cost of bilingual education programs, and (c) reports the findings of a study showing that bilingual education programs are severely underfunding in Texas and nationally.

The brief offers recommendations for local and state policymakers. School leaders can use bilingual education models to support …