Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What Is Libkey Nomad?, Joanne Romano

TMC Library Newsletter (2015-)

LibKey Nomad is an optional browser extension that uses the same technology as Browzine to get you to PDFs faster—even in PubMed! It eliminates the need to find the “Open Athens login” on publisher sites and the frustration of having to find the PDF button on different publisher sites.

Relevance Of Storybooks In Promoting Students’ Reading Culture, Ogechukwu Vivian Amanambu, Leona Eucharia Ekechukwu, Ngozi Theresa Onuora, Chinedu Obinna Ejimonye, Onyedika Lilian Ikeazota, Theresa Olunwa Oforka, Kennedy O. Ololo

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This paper explored past studies that demonstrated how relevant storybooks are in promoting reading culture amongst students. The paper employed the review of literature approach to collect and synthesize information majorly from primary and secondary sources taking cognizance of the research objective. The study reviewed the basis of reading, storybooks, and the benefits of storybooks in improving students’ reading culture and the importance of storybooks and strategies for improving students’ reading culture. From the extant literature reviewed, students’ reading culture is influenced when they are exposed to storybooks.

The Perceived Impact Of Covid-19 Pandemic On Healthcare Cost In Bangladesh, Hasibul Islam, Fatema Johora, Asma A. Abbasy, Masud Rana, Niyungeko Antoine

Journal of Global Business Insights

The study showed the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare expenses including the price of medicines, protective equipment, medical devices, healthcare facilities, and food. A self-administered questionnaire was used as the data collection tool and 400 people from different Bangladesh divisions (Dhaka, Chittagong, Barisal, Khulna, Mymensingh, Rajshahi, and Sylhet) participated in this study. Multiple regression analysis was used to estimate the impact of independent variables on dependent variables. R programming environment was used to perform the statistical analysis. Cronbach’s alpha was used for determination of reliability and found acceptable internal consistency. The price of protective equipment (POPE), the price …

Entrepreneurship In Singapore, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

Singapore has completed its catch-up growth phase and needs to find a new growth engine. Entrepreneurship can contribute to a nation’s productivity growth. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, a theoretical framework is presented, along with empirical evidence, to understand government interventions aimed at boosting entrepreneurship. Second, using the framework, the chapter discusses whether Singapore’s current policies are suitable for helping entrepreneurship. The theory demonstrates four reasons why government intervention is needed: (1) resource misallocation, (2) positive externality, (3) entrepreneurial human capital, and (4) tax and default policies. Singapore’s government has implemented various policies that potentially fix market …

Equal-Quantile Rules In Resource Allocation With Uncertain Needs, Yan Long, Jay Sethuraman, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

A group of agents have uncertain needs on a resource, which must be allocated before uncertainty re-solves. We propose a parametric class of division rules we call equal-quantile rules. The parameter lambda of an equal-quantile rule is the maximal probability of satiation imposed on agents - for each agent, the prob-ability that his assignment is no less than his realized need is at most lambda. It determines the extent to which the resource should be used to satiate agents. If the resource is no more than the sum of the agents' lambda-quantile assignments, it is fully allocated and the rule …

Subnational Map Of Poverty Generated From Remote-Sensing Data In Africa: Using Machine Learning Models And Advanced Regression Methods For Poverty Estimation, Lionel N. Hanke

Master's Theses

According to the 2020 poverty estimates from the World Bank, it is estimated that 9.1% - 9.4% of the global population lived on less than $1.90 per day. It is estimated that the Covid-19 pandemic further aggravated the issue by pushing more than 1% of the global population below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (WorldBank, 2020). To provide help and formulate effective measures, poverty needs to be located as exact as possible. For this purpose, it was investigated whether regression methods with aggregated remote-sensing data could be used to estimate poverty in Africa. Therefore, five distinct regression …

Must Consent Be Informed? Patient Rights, State Authority, And The Moral Basis Of The Physician's Duties Of Disclosure, D. Robert Macdougall

Publications and Research

Legal standards of disclosure in a variety of jurisdictions require physicians to inform patients about the likely consequences of treatment, as a condition for obtaining the patient’s consent. Such a duty to inform is special insofar as extensive disclosure of risks and potential benefits is not usually a condition for obtaining consent in non-medical transactions.

What could morally justify the physician’s special legal duty to inform? I argue that existing justifications have tried but failed to ground such special duties directly in basic and general rights, such as autonomy rights. As an alternative to such direct justifications, I develop an …

Reimagining Recovery: Debt, Mutual Aid, And Disaster Governance In Puerto Rico, Sarah Molinari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the politics and lived experiences of debt and climate disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. It examines mutual aid and debt resistance in relation to governance techniques and overlapping crises marked by the U.S. territory’s bankruptcy, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (2017), and culminating with popular mobilizations in the summer of 2019 that propelled the governor’s resignation. Tracing the ways that the post-hurricane social disaster and debt crisis are mutually constitutive, I investigate a case of women-led grassroots mutual aid organizing in the east-central municipality of Caguas, Puerto Rico and a political movement calling for a citizen audit …

Detection And Morphological Analysis Of Novel Russian Loanwords, Yulia Spektor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper investigates recent English loanwords in Russian and explores ways in which computational methods can help further theoretical research. The goal of the study is two-fold: to find new, previously unattested loanwords borrowed over the last decade and to examine the rate of adaptation of the new borrowings, attested by the degree to which they conform to the constraints of the Russian language. First, we train a finite-state pipeline that combines character n-gram language models, which encode phonotactic and lexical properties of loanwords, with a binary classifier to detect loanwords. The model achieves state-of-the-art performance results during evaluation, surpassing …

Desire, Culture, And The Body, Zoey Lavallee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What is the nature of desire? In this dissertation I develop a theory of desire according to which desires are essentially enculturated states that play the role of presenting favorable outcomes that act as inputs to intention formation, and thereby intentional action. This analysis of desire debunks a common assumption shared by prominent accounts of desire in philosophy of mind, what can be called the dualist assumption: that bodily desires such as urges and appetites differ in kind from conceptual desires that are typically described as higher cognitive attitudes. I argue that the desires traditionally understood as bodily or appetitive …

The Objective Function: Science And Society In The Age Of Machine Intelligence, Emanuel D. Moss

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Machine intelligence, or the use of complex computational and statistical practices to make predictions and classifications based on data representations of phenomena, has been applied to domains as disparate as criminal justice, commerce, medicine, media and the arts, mechanical engineering, among others. How has machine intelligence become able to glide so freely across, and to make such waves for, these domains? In this dissertation, I take up that question by ethnographically engaging with how the authority of machine learning has been constructed such that it can influence so many domains, and I investigate what the consequences are of it being …

An Interdisciplinary Investigation Of Infant Sleep: How We Study It, What It Means For Other Areas Of Development, And Where Methodological Creativity Can Take Us, Melissa Noel Horger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present dissertation is broken into six chapters. Chapters 2 through 5 comprise four research projects that build upon each other and in both theoretical and methodological ways. The bookends – my introduction and conclusion – are written for an interdisciplinary, even lay audience. In its entirety, the text is centered on infant sleep. First, I describe the functional role of sleep and liken it to a barista working in a coffee shop. Then, I lay out researcher choices – of design and measurement – when incorporating sleep as a facet of a research paradigm. After comparing three measurement techniques …

Living In Permanent Transience: An Ethnography Of Contemporary Alexandria, Alexandra K. Schindler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of two distinct groups — Syrian refugees fleeing war and heading for Europe and young Egyptian artists and intellectuals living in post-revolution Alexandria, Egypt. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this project shows how the experience of living in permanent transience is a condition of both groups struggling to make Alexandria feel like home. The recent influx of Syrian refugees into Alexandria has had a significant impact on this Mediterranean coastal city, as it has become both the scene of emergent social and economic relations, and a crucial …

Demobilizing And Reintegrating Ex-Combatants: Explaining Success And Failure On The National And Subnational Levels, Sally Sharif

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) is the largest intervention in nearly all the United Nation ongoing large-scale peacekeeping missions and is tasked with restoring public security, law, and order after conflict. A well-planned and flexible reintegration process is known to restore social capital and promote the viability of long-term peace locally, nationally, and internationally. War-torn countries run the risk of returning to war if former combatants are not provided with vocational skills, placed into employment, and reintegrated successfully. Through analyzing DDR programs on the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, this dissertation is an attempt at finding determinants for a successful DDR …

Drawing The Line: Second-Graders Negotiate, Articulate, And Resist Colorism In Their Homes, Schools, And Communities In A Delhi School, Jyoti Gupta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

DuBois’ “problem of the color line” has persisted in the 21st century, and “dark children” continue to face discrimination and are disproportionately impacted in school systems. Renewed interest in origin stories and practices of colorism in Black and other communities of color in the United States and an emerging global colorism frame point to shared experiences of children of color in the public school system. Researchers have suggested that colorism experiences are comparable across ethnic groups in the United States and, arguably, in India, where Islamophobia and casteism intersect with colorism, and manifest in discriminatory practices in schools. Using participatory …

Increasing Access To Finance By Collateral Reform: Evidence From The West Bank And Gaza (Proceedings Version), Zachary Hrenko, Jeffrey B. Nugent

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Although capital has long been believed to be an engine of economic growth, making widespread access to credit a crucial ingredient to success in stimulating development, all too frequently firms in developing countries face serious obstacles in getting access to credit, their most important source of finance. Many studies have shown that access to finance is an especially strong obstacle to the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises (or “SMEs”), which contribute greatly to private sector employment and growth across the world (Ayyagari, Beck, and Demirgüç-Kunt, 2007 and Ayyagari, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Maksimovic, 2011). As a result, it is important for …

Towards Improving Engagement Of Youth Of Color In Cross-Age Mentoring Programs In High Poverty, High Crime Neighborhoods, Maria V. Wathen, Patrick L.F. Decker, Maryse H. Richards, Katherine Tyson Mccrea, Cynthia Onyeka, Charity N. Weishar, Donnelly Will

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study examines predictors of attendance in a cross-age youth mentoring program offered in four high-poverty, high-crime communities. Youth in greatest need of after school and summer interventions are those residing in such communities, but programs are scarce. More specific to mentoring programs that do exist, past research has demonstrated the significance of attendance as a predictor of positive outcomes. Two datasets were combined for this study: The Saving Lives, Inspiring Youth (SLIY) mentoring program dataset and a neighborhood database. OLS regression results show that for all participants, traveling from a lower-crime home area to a program in a higher-crime …

Law Library Blog (September 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (October 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Supporting Stem Education In The School Library With Digital Tools, Lucy Santos Green, Mellissa Johnston, Amanda Jones, Erica Thompson

Faculty Publications

The prominence of technology in STEM education provides opportunities for teacher librarians to collaborate with teachers across multiple disciplines and embrace leadership roles through integrating digital tools for teaching and learning. This presentation will discuss work from the federally funded REALISD project which is providing professional development for K-12 teacher librarians for designing and facilitating STEM learning in their schools. Participants will learn about locating, accessing, and evaluating digital resources, along with strategies for utilizing resources to provide learning experiences in the STEM areas through both formal and informal instruction.

Essence Of Partnership Management In Project-Based Learning: Insights From A University’S Global Project Programme, Gary Pan, Poh Sun Seow, Shankararaman, Venky, Kevin Koh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Universities today are embracing teaching pedagogy of project-based learning (PBL) through collaboration with industry. PBL allows students to learn theory in the classroom, then apply what they have learned in the field, solving a wide array of business or societal challenges facing organizations, while at the same time, solidifying their own knowledge. While there are many benefits of such academic-industry partnership, there are also challenges that if not addressed, may have serious consequences. This study aims to develop a framework that highlights the essence of partnership management in a PBL setting and validate the framework by conducting a focus group …

How Xiaomi Redefined What It Means To Be A Platform, Tony W. Wong, Yanting Guo, Liang Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Traditional platform businesses generally fall into one of two categories: Ecosystems, such as Apple’s App Store, which offer limited resources to a wide array of independently-run firms; and Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) companies, such as Intel Capital, which invest heavily into a small number of ventures that promise either financial or strategic returns. However, new research into Xiaomi’s growth strategy suggests that the Beijing-based electronics giant has developed a blended approach, borrowing elements of both traditional ecosystem and CVC firms to create a broad ecosystem of strongly-supported partner ventures. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with executives from both …

The 2021 Ipr Future Of Communications In Asia Report, Sarah Crawshaw, Alexis B. Fitzsimmons, Tina Mccorkindale, Pang, A., Stephen Thomas, Su Lin Yeo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

IPR interviewed 27 senior communications executives who work for Asian-headquartered companies, specifically in mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore and India, through February 2020. Interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis was conducted. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, IPR conducted follow-up focus groups with nearly 20 senior communications leaders in Asia in November and December 2020 to better understand the long-term impact of the pandemic on communications in the region. These sessions were conducted according to Chatham House rules, so the participants’ identifiers have been removed.

Towards Better Data Augmentation Using Wasserstein Distance In Variational Auto-Encoder, Zichuan Chen, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

VAE, or variational auto-encoder, compresses data into latent attributes, and generates new data of different varieties. VAE based on KL divergence has been considered as an effective technique for data augmentation. In this paper, we propose the use of Wasserstein distance as a measure of distributional similarity for the latent attributes, and show its superior theoretical lower bound (ELBO) compared with that of KL divergence under mild conditions. Using multiple experiments, we demonstrate that the new loss function exhibits better convergence property and generates artificial images that could better aid the image classification tasks.

Learning Amid Disruption: Bouncing Forward Into A Changed World, Rachel Reichenbach, Jewlya Lynn, Jen Heeg

The Foundation Review

The philanthropic sector has come to recognize the importance of bringing a systems lens to its work, seeking to influence upstream drivers of complex problems, and being adaptive in its approaches instead of implementing static, multiyear plans. Yet, integrating these concepts into practice continues to pose a challenge.

Humanity United — a foundation dedicated to cultivating the conditions for enduring freedom and peace — had been grappling with this charge when the disruption caused by COVID-19 led it into a crisis response mode in 2020, similar to many other philanthropic institutions. That disruption also challenged our old ways of being, …

Assessing Philanthropic Impact: How The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’S Building Bridges Initiative Supported The Field Of Philanthropic And Nonprofit Studies, Peter C. Weber, Robert Long

The Foundation Review

In the 1990s, nonprofit management education was an emerging discipline with few established academic centers seeking to increase connectivity, build out the field, and gain financial sustainability. While organized philanthropy supported this development, foundations’ impact on individual programs and the field more broadly is unclear.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Building Bridges Initiative, a $13.5 million, five-year program to fund nonprofit academic centers as a strategy to increase the nonprofit sector’s capacity, exemplifies the potentials and limits of a private foundation’s engagement with emerging academic disciplines. This article assesses the long-term sustainability of grant investments and to what degree successful projects …

“Not A Free Version Of A Broken System:” Medical Humanitarianism And Immigrant Health Justice In The United States, Erin Hoekstra

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Medical humanitarian organizations are increasingly the primary healthcare providers for unauthorized migrants in high-income countries. Existing studies of medical humanitarianism in the Global North reveal tensions between principles of traditionally apolitical humanitarianism and human rights. In practice, these tensions translate into organizational debates about prioritizing direct service provision to meet immediate needs or advocacy to effect long-term systemic change. Informed by these debates, this paper asserts the importance of immigration and health policy contexts as central to shaping the relationship between healthcare provision and political advocacy within medical humanitarian NGOs. Drawing from twelve months of fieldwork with medical humanitarian NGOs …

Lost Causal: Debunking Myths About Causal Analysis In Philanthropy, Jewlya Lynn, Sarah Stachowiak, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

What if philanthropic evaluations told us that changes in the world had occurred, as well as how and why they occurred, including in what ways foundation funding and grantees contributed to those changes? What if evaluations made change pathways more visible, tested hypotheses and assumptions, and generated new insights based on what happened in the “black box” of systems change strategies? This type of learning comes from causal analysis — inquiry that explores cause-andeffect relationships.

Yet currently in philanthropy, particularly for strategies and initiatives that feature high complexity, few evaluations use robust techniques for understanding causality. Instead, philanthropic evaluation tends …

Brazilian Foundations And The Responses To Covid-19, Marcos Paulo Lucca-Silveira, Pietro Rodrigues, Marketa Jerabek, Marcia Kalvon Woods, João Paulo Vergueiro

The Foundation Review

This article aims to systematically analyze the contribution of corporate and family foundations in the fight against COVID-19 in Brazil, one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. Despite its resultant economic and social crisis, the pandemic has sparked an unprecedented wave of philanthropy in Brazil. It is estimated that more than $1.2 billion has been raised and donated by corporations, corporate and private foundations, crowdfunding, and fundraising campaigns.

Foundations, in particular, have played an important role in financing relevant scientific work, supporting public policies, and assisting nonprofit organizations and vulnerable communities. And while there is increasing knowledge about …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.