Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mcquade Messenger- Winter 2008, Merrimack College

McQuade Messenger

Triannual newsletter outlining the activities, events, hours, features, and resources available at McQuade Library. Winter 2008, 6 pages.

Net Energy Of Cellulosic Ethanol From Switchgrass, Marty R. Schmer, Kenneth P. Vogel, Robert B. Mitchell, Richard K. Perrin

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Perennial herbaceous plants such as switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) are being evaluated as cellulosic bioenergy crops. Two major concerns have been the net energy efficiency and economic feasibility of switchgrass and similar crops. All previous energy analyses have been based on data from research plots (<5m²) and estimated inputs. We managed switchgrass as a biomass energy crop in field trials of 3–9 ha (1 ha=10,000m²) on marginal cropland on 10 farms across a wide precipitation and temperature gradient in the midcontinental U.S. to determine net energy and economic costs based on known farm inputs …

Managing Global Climate Change An Executive Interview With Carole Brookins, H. Douglas Jose

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Carole Brookins is an international consultant known for her work as a policy and trade strategist on issues concerning the global political economy and its effect on the food and agriculture sector. She currently serves on the board of several corporate and non- profit organizations concerned with global food system issues and is currently helping to develop solutions which can offset the effects of global climate change through the reduction and management of carbon emissions—an issue of increasing importance in future food marketing and world trade. Ms. Brookins served as U.S. Executive Director to The World Bank from 2001-2005 and …

Managing Global Climate Change An Executive Interview With David Lobell, H. Douglas Jose

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Many of the world’s poorest regions could face severe crop losses in the next two decades because of climate change, according to Dr. David Lobell, a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University in the program on Food Security and Environment.

The average world temperature is increasing slightly says Lobell and a one-degree Celsius increase over time greatly impacts climatic growing conditions. Unfortunately, agriculture is also the human enterprise most vulnerable to changes in climate. Understanding where these climate threats will be is central to our efforts in fighting hunger and poverty over the coming decades. Dr. Lobell outlines some of …

Democratic Failure: Tracking The Ebb Of Democracy's Flow, 1800–2006, Sanja E. Sray

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Scant attention has focused on the systematic study of democratic failure. This dissertation partially corrects this oversight. Tracing the roots of antidemocratic sentiment across the centuries, it first argues that the advance of institutions, fueled by underlying shifts in values and innovation in political philosophy, was key to freeing democracy from its bondage as a most disparaged form of governance. Focusing on the measurable aspects of these institutions, the study focuses on describing patterns of behavior when democracies fail. First, it shows that there have been clusters of democratic failure. These clusters, or counterwaves, find their roots in ancient antidemocratic …

Identifying Juror Bias: Using The Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire For More Effective Voir Dire, Sara Jane Mobley

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses

A vast amount of empirical study exists regarding both the juror decision-making process and testing the validity of various methods for finding juror bias. Juror decision making is based on a multitude of factors including, but not limited to, ability to retain information, strength of evidence, preconceived ideas about lawyers, the justice system and law enforcement. Further, the concern regarding judicial economy during voir dire gives rise to ineffective attorney questioning as well as pressure placed on jurors to fulfill their duty to serve. This study seeks to rely on a version of the Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire or PJAQ …

Analysis Of Police Officer Perceptions And Attitudes Regarding Vehicle Pursuits, Christopher G. Cook

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses

The purpose of this study was to analyze differences in the way that officers respond to pursuit scenarios. This project used a survey questionnaire to gather responses from participants who read a chase scenario and considered the type of offense and risk factors to the public as they answered. Similarities and differences were analyzed in relation to demographical data regarding gender and years of experience as a police officer. Officers and supervisors were asked to respond to each scenario how they actually felt, without regard to current institutional constraints such as policies and procedures.

The Amber Alert: A Comparative Analysis Of The Suggested Federal Amber Alert Activation Guidelines And Individual State Activation Criteria, Jacklyn Leann Donalson

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses

This study focuses on the AMBER Alert system, in particular the criteria that should be present prior to the issuance of an alert. The purpose of this study is to review individual state's AMBER Alert activation criteria as they relate to the suggested federal AMBER Alert activation guidelines. Police department's interpretations of their state's AMBER Alert criteria were also analyzed on a case-by-case basis. The findings of this study suggest that the federal government should ensure that all states use standardized activation criteria that includes confirmation of an abduction prior to an AMBER Alert activation.

Prison Programming In Texas: Do We Practice What We Preach, Molly Baldwin

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses

Prison programming is an important aspect of the criminal justice system. Programming can be used to help solve many problems in the system. In this thesis, educational and life skills programs offered in public prisons in Texas are examined. Comparisons are made to the number of programs in women's and men's prisons. This thesis argues that Texas needs to offer more programming and that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice might not be living up to its mission statement in terms of the number of programs offered. Simply stated the educational and life skills programs that are offered in the …

The Southeastern Librarian V. 55, No. 4 (Winter 2008) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 55, No. 4 (Winter 2008).

Hbcu News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent activities from the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Highlights include: Highlights of the HBCU Library Alliances 2nd Leadership Institute; the HBCU Library Alliance launches their mentor development program

Ebsco Product News

The Southeastern Librarian

News from EBSCO. Highlights include: more publishers launch electronic content distribution services via MetaPress 2.0; EBSCO named one of "Companies that Matter Most" for seventh straight year; Teton Data Systems and EMpact partner to provide Stat!Ref Medical Reference library to institutions worldwide; EBSCO Information Services rep returning to academia.

State News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent developments from SELA member institutions.

Book Review Of 'Havens In A Storm: The Struggle For Global Tax Regulation', Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

This short essay is a review of J.C. Sharman's book Havens in a Storm: The Struggle for Global Tax Regulation. In the essay, I first provide a brief overview of Sharman's book, which approaches the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's struggle with tax havens over harmful tax competition from a political science perspective. I then describe how the book (and, by extension, this review) will be of interest not only to those in the fields of international tax and international relations, but also to those concerned more generally with the dynamics of struggles between the powerful and the weak. …

Writing To Learn Law And Writing In Law: An Intellectual Property Illustration, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This essay, prepared as part of a Symposium on teaching intellectual property law, describes a method of combining substantive law teaching with a species of what is commonly called "skills" training. The method involves assessing students not via traditional final exams but instead via research memos patterned after assignments that junior lawyers might encounter in actual legal practice. The essay grounds the method in the theoretical disposition known generally as "writing to learn." It argues that students are likely to learn intellectual property law effectively if they learn to practice as intellectual property lawyers, and specifically to write as intellectual …

The Heart Of The Game: Putting Race And Educational Equity At The Center Of Title Ix, Deborah L. Brake, Verna L. Williams

Articles

This article examines how race and educational equity issues shape women's sports experiences, building upon the narrative of Darnellia Russell, a high school basketball player profiled in the documentary The Heart of the Game. Darnellia is a star player who, because of an unintended pregnancy, has to fight to play the game she loves.

This girl's story provides a unique and underutilized lens through which to examine gender and athletics, as well as evaluate the legal framework for gender equality in sport. In focusing on this narrative, we seek to give voice to black female athletes and to express their …

Intellectual Property And Americana, Or Why Ip Gets The Blues, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This essay, prepared as part of a Symposium on intellectual property law and business models, suggests the re-examination of the role of intellectual property law in the persistence of cultural forms of all sorts, including (but not limited to) business models. Some argue that the absence of intellectual property law inhibits the emergence of durable or persistent cultural forms; copyright and patent regimes are justified precisely because they supply foundations for durability. The essay tests that proposition via brief reviews of three persistent but very different cultural models, each of which represents a distinct form of American culture: The Rocky …

Baghdad Booksellers, Basra Carpet Merchants, And The Law Of God And Man: Legal Pluralism And The Contemporary Muslim Experience, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

There is a crisis in our law schools in the study of Islamic law and the law of the Muslim polities. The current approaches either focus exclusively on national codes to the derogation of other vitally important influences on the legal order, most importantly the body of norms and rules derived from Islamic foundational texts known as the shari'a, or they regard as secondary, and at times irrelevant, the actual legal order of the societies in favor of an academic construction of the theories of medieval Muslim jurists. Neither of these approaches reflects with a necessary degree of accuracy the …

A Winning Solution For Youtube And Utube? Corresponding Trademarks And Domain Name Sharing, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

In June of 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled on a motion to dismiss various claims against the Youtube video-sharing service. The claimant was Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment Corp ("Universal"), a manufacturer of pipes and tubing products. Since 1996, Universal has used the domain name utube.com - phonetically the same as Youtube's domain name, youtube.com. Youtube.com was registered in 2005 and gained almost-immediate popularity as a video-sharing website. As a result, Universal experienced excessive web traffic by Internet users looking for youtube.com and mistakenly typing utube.com into their web browsers. Universal's servers …

Non-Profit Hospitals, Tax Exemptions And Access For The Uninsured, Mary Crossley

Articles

These comments approach the topic of tax exemption for non-profit hospitals from the perspective of the 46 plus million Americans who have no health insurance and the significant additional number who are underinsured. In essence, persons who are underinsured have some form of health coverage but they remain at serious risk for significant out-of-pocket expenditures when they become sick. From this perspective, the key question is what role, if any, do the non-profit health care sector and, more particularly, non-profit hospitals have to play in addressing the vexing problems posed by the large number of uninsured and underinsured. These problems …

The Business Of Academic Publishing: A Strategic Analysis Of The Academic Journal Publishing Industry And Its Impact On The Future Of Scholarly Publishing, Glenn S. Mcguigan, Robert D. Russell

E-JASL 1999-2009 (Volumes 1-10)

Abstract

Academic libraries cannot pay the regularly escalating subscription prices for scholarly journals. These libraries face a crisis that has continued for many years revealing a commercial system that supports a business model that has become unsustainable. This paper examines the “serials crisis,” as it has come to be known, and the economics of the academic journal publishing industry. By identifying trends within the industry, an analysis of the industry is undertaken using elements of the five forces framework developed by Michael Porter. Prescriptions are offered concerning what can be done and what should be done to address this problem.

Online File Sharing: Resolving The Tensions Between Privacy And Property, Frances Grodzinsky, Herman T. Tavani

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

This essay expands upon an earlier work (Grodzinsky and Tavani, 2005) in which we analyzed the implications of the Verizon v RIAA case for P2P Networks vis-à-vis concerns affecting personal privacy and intellectual property. In the present essay we revisit some of the concerns surrounding this case by analyzing the intellectual property and privacy issues that emerged in the MGM Studios v. Grokster case. These two cases illustrate some of the key tensions that exist between privacy and property interests in cyberspace. In our analysis, we contrast Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Interoperability and we examine some newer distribution models …

Super Fuzzy Matrices And Super Fuzzy Models For Social Scientists, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, K. Amal

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The concept of supermatrix for social scientists was first introduced by Paul Horst. The main purpose of his book was to introduce this concept to social scientists, students, teachers and research workers who lacked mathematical training. He wanted them to be equipped in a branch of mathematics that was increasingly valuable for the analysis of scientific data. This book introduces the concept of fuzzy super matrices and operations on them. The author has provided only those operations on fuzzy supermatrices that are essential for developing super fuzzy multi expert models. We do not indulge in labourious use of suffixes or …

Social Politics And Freedom: Incorporating Civil Society Into Arendt's Political Thought, Grant J. Rozeboom

Honors Program Theses

The possibility of human freedom has captivated philosophers throughout the ages, often leading them to conclude that freedom is a unique capacity of humanity, exemplifying our potential for politics, contemplation, and/or religious salvation. In the modern age, beginning with the political writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, freedom has been understood (at least within the early liberal tradition and common discourse) as unhindered and individuated economic movement, motivated by self-interest and actualized most fully in institutions such as the consumerist free market. Yet, we find that the more we devote our actions to fulfilling our individual interests and needs, …

Chinese Neutrosophy And Taoist Natural Philosophy, Florentin Smarandache, Jiang Zhengjie

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Cultural Advantages In China: Tale Of Six Cities, Florentin Smarandache, Fu Yuhua, Victor Christianto

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

Nowadays, plenty of factories from Europe and other developed countries have been relocated to this country, considering its tremendous economic scale and rapid growth rate during the past three decades. But most of what happens inside the China nowadays is deeply hidden from the outside world (“the foreigners” as China people would call). This fact is partly because most reports on China were written by the so‐called fly‐high experts who are busy completing their reports despite a busy schedule. Very few books or reports were written by people inside, or at least “foreigners” who spent a few years in China. …

Cost Benefit Analysis Of Wind Turbine Investment In Oberlin, Ohio, Saul Domingo Flores

Honors Papers

As concern over global climate change and fears of rising energy costs permeate our collective and individual decision making, more and more private institutions are seeking out innovative and feasible solutions to meet these issues. Many colleges and universities throughout the United States have been among the first private and public institutions to dedicate themselves to positions of climate neutrality and have begun to incorporate the ethics of conservation and commitment to environmental sustainability into their primary objectives. To date nearly five hundred institutions of higher education have signed the American College and Universities Climate Change Commitment, pledging to take …

The Impact Of Colleges On House Prices In Ohio, Graham Mathieu Johnson

Honors Papers

Using a hedonic pricing model, I estimated the effects of changes in college and university characteristics on house prices in three regions of Ohio. I used cross-sectional housing and census data for the year 2000, compiled by David M. Brasington of Louisiana State University, and college data from Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges 2001. I measured college and university impact within radii ranging from one to two miles around a campus admissions office, allowing for an investigation of how the impact of academic institutions changes with distance. I found that changes in campus size, undergraduate student population, graduate student population, …

The Effect Of Teach For America Teachers Outside Their Classrooms, Sarah Prenovitz

Honors Papers

Teach for America (TFA) aims to some day make it possible for every American child to receive a great education. As means to that end TFA attempts to get teachers "willing to go above and beyond the constraints of the system to ensure that their students excel" into classrooms, to encourage "long-term, sustained leadership in education;" and to "change the prevailing ideology around educational inequity," which supports a rationalization that poor children achieve less than others because they are unmotivated and do not receive support at home (see www.teachforamerica.org). The organization argues that teachers alone cannot change the system, but …

Learning To Eat Appreciatively And Thoughtfully (Eat): Connecting With Food Through School Gardens, Lina A. Yamashita

Honors Papers

Many young people today do not learn to cook, or eat nutritious, regular meals together with their families, or go shopping for produce. Because of this, they do not have the opportunity to develop any real appreciation for food. To make matters worse, many public schools fail to teach students anything at all about the complex environmental and cultural history of food – how it is produced, preserved, prepared, and distributed. At the same time, schools serve lunches that often lack nutritional value. In this thesis, I argue the importance of giving students the opportunity to connect to food through …