College of Liberal Arts
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10877/17052
Browse
Browsing College of Liberal Arts by Type "Article"
Now showing 1 - 20 of 201
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item 21st Century Expeditionary Mindset and Core Values: A Review of the Literature(2009-10-31) Shields, Patricia M.This paper reviews literature on the expeditionary mindset and core values taking into account the 21st century security and technology environments. The paper begins by developing the historical context and providing definitions. Next, the paper explores the connection between the expeditionary mindset and military transformation. Key tenets of the 21st century expeditionary mindset are identified and examined. Soldiers with an expeditionary mindset should first, be mentally prepared to deploy on short notice anywhere in the world; second, have the critical-thinking skills necessary to adapt quickly to a changing operational environment; third, work cooperatively with members of a Joint team; fourth, posses knowledge of the culture in the area of the local populace, and; fifth, the expeditionary force will be using 21st century network centric technology. The paper concludes with a discussion of military core values within the context of an expeditionary mindset.Item A Cross-Level Exploratory Analysis of “Neighborhood Effects” on Urban Behavior: An Evolutionary Perspective(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2015-11) Weaver, RussellIt is now generally accepted that spatially-based neighborhood or contextual attributes influence individual behaviors. However, studies of contextual effects often operationalize “neighborhoods” as static, single-level administrative units that are chosen for data availability rather than theoretical reasons. This practice has led to new calls for sound conceptual models that guide data collection efforts and statistical analyses related to these phenomena. While many such models are in use or being proposed in the social sciences, this article argues that research in the field of evolutionary studies offers alternative and interesting ways of investigating neighborhood effects. Accordingly, the article pursues two objectives. First, it makes connections between neighborhood effects research in the social sciences and relevant literature in evolutionary game theory and evolutionary urban geography. Second, these interdisciplinary interactions guide the development of a cross-level conceptual model of neighborhood effects on urban social behavior. The conceptual model is then translated into an empirical model that tests whether and how property maintenance behavior in a selected U.S. study area changes as a function of neighborhood context. The findings reveal that neighborhood effects operate at multiple, interacting spatial levels in the study area, which suggests that conventional single-level administrative boundaries are not equipped to capture these effects. While they are proffered as exploratory, the results nonetheless imply that insights from evolutionary research can add depth and theoretical grounding to contextual effects studies in the social sciences.Item A Geographically Weighted Regression Analysis of the Underlying Factors Related to the Surface Urban Heat Island Phenomenon(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2018-09) Zhao, Chunhong; Jensen, Jennifer L. R.; Weng, Qihao; Weaver, RussellThis study investigated how underlying biophysical attributes affect the characterization of the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) phenomenon using (and comparing) two statistical techniques: global regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR). Land surface temperature (LST) was calculated from Landsat 8 imagery for 20 July 2015 for the metropolitan areas of Austin and San Antonio, Texas. We sought to examine SUHI by relating LST to Lidar-derived terrain factors, land cover composition, and landscape pattern metrics developed using the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2011. The results indicate that (1) land cover composition is closely related to the SUHI effect for both metropolitan areas, as indicated by the global regression coefficients of building fraction and NDVI, with values of 0.29 and −0.74 for Austin, and 0.19 and −0.38 for San Antonio, respectively. The terrain morphology was also an indicator of the SUHI phenomenon, implied by the elevation (0.20 for Austin and 0.09 for San Antonio) and northness (0.20 for Austin and 0.09 for San Antonio); (2) the SUHI phenomenon of Austin on 20 July 2015 was affected by the spatial pattern of the land use and land cover (LULC), which was not detected for San Antonio; and (3) with a local determination coefficient higher than 0.8, GWR had higher explanatory power of the underlying factors compared to global regression. By accommodating spatial non-stationarity and allowing the model parameters to vary in space, GWR illustrated the spatial heterogeneity of the relationships between different land surface properties and the LST. The GWR analysis of SUHI phenomenon can provide unique information for site-specific land planning and policy implementation for SUHI mitigation.Item A Pragmatic Teaching Philosophy(Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, 2003-01-08) Shields, Patricia M.No abstract prepared.Item A Review of the Applications of Remote Sensing in Fire Ecology(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2019-11) Szpakowski, David M.; Jensen, Jennifer L. R.Wildfire plays an important role in ecosystem dynamics, land management, and global processes. Understanding the dynamics associated with wildfire, such as risks, spatial distribution, and effects is important for developing a clear understanding of its ecological influences. Remote sensing technologies provide a means to study fire ecology at multiple scales using an efficient and quantitative method. This paper provides a broad review of the applications of remote sensing techniques in fire ecology. Remote sensing applications related to fire risk mapping, fuel mapping, active fire detection, burned area estimates, burn severity assessment, and post-fire vegetation recovery monitoring are discussed. Emphasis is given to the roles of multispectral sensors, lidar, and emerging UAS technologies in mapping, analyzing, and monitoring various environmental properties related to fire activity. Examples of current and past research are provided, and future research trends are discussed. In general, remote sensing technologies provide a low-cost, multi-temporal means for conducting local, regional, and global-scale fire ecology research, and current research is rapidly evolving with the introduction of new technologies and techniques which are increasing accuracy and efficiency. Future research is anticipated to continue to build upon emerging technologies, improve current methods, and integrate novel approaches to analysis and classification.Item "A Superior Kind of Working Woman": The Contested Meaning of Vocational Education for Girls in Progressive Era Chicago(Cambridge University Press, 2021-07) Oram, RubyProgressive Era school officials transformed public education in American cities by teaching male students trades like foundry, carpentry, and mechanics in classrooms outfitted like factories. Historians have demonstrated how this “vocational education movement” was championed by male administrators and business leaders anxious to train the next generation of expert tradesmen. But women also hoped vocational education could prepare female students for industrial careers. In the early twentieth century, members of the National Women’s Trade Union League demanded that public schools open trade programs to female students and teach future working women the history of capitalism and the philosophy of collective bargaining. Their ambitious goals were tempered by some middle-class reformers and club women who argued vocational programs should also prepare female students for homemaking and motherhood. This article uses Chicago as a case study to explore how Progressive Era women competed and collaborated to reform vocational education for girls, and how female students responded to new school programs designed to prepare them for work both in and outside the home.Item “[A]n Exterior Air of Pilgrimage”: The Resilience of Pilgrimage Ecopoetics and Slow Travel from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2020-10-08) Morrison, Susan SigneWhile the Beats can be seen as critical actors in the environmental humanities, their works should be seen over the longue durée. They are not only an origin, but are also recipients, of an environmentally aware tradition. With Geoffrey Chaucer and Jack Kerouac, we see how a contemporary American icon functions as a text parallel to something generally seen as discrete and past, an instance of the modern embracing, interpreting, and appropriating the medieval. I argue that The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer influenced Kerouac’s shaping of On the Road. In the unpublished autograph manuscript travel diary dating from 1948–1949 (On the Road notebook), Kerouac imagines the novel as a quest tale, thinking of pilgrimage during its gestation. Further, Kerouac explicitly cites Chaucer. His novel can be seen not only in the tradition of Chaucer, but can bring out aspects of pilgrimage ecopoetics in general. These connections include structural elements, the spiritual development of the narrator, reliance on vernacular dialect, acute environmental awareness, and slow travel. Chaucer’s influence on Kerouac highlights how certain elements characteristic of pilgrimage literature persist well into the modern period, in a resilience of form, language, and ecological sensibility.Item Accuracy of Cited “Facts” in Medical Research Articles: A Review of Study Methodology and Recalculation of Quotation Error Rate(Public Library of Science, 2017-09) Mogull, ScottPrevious reviews estimated that approximately 20 to 25% of assertions cited from original research articles, or "facts," are inaccurately quoted in the medical literature. These reviews noted that the original studies were dissimilar and only began to compare the methods of the original studies. The aim of this review is to examine the methods of the original studies and provide a more specific rate of incorrectly cited assertions, or quotation errors, in original research articles published in medical journals. Additionally, the estimate of quotation errors calculated here is based on the ratio of quotation errors to quotations examined (a percent) rather than the more prevalent and weighted metric of quotation errors to the references selected. Overall, this resulted in a lower estimate of the quotation error rate in original medical research articles. A total of 15 studies met the criteria for inclusion in the primary quantitative analysis. Quotation errors were divided into two categories: content ("factual") or source (improper indirect citation) errors. Content errors were further subdivided into major and minor errors depending on the degree that the assertion differed from the original source. The rate of quotation errors recalculated here is 14.5% (10.5% to 18.6% at a 95% confidence interval). These content errors are predominantly, 64.8% (56.1% to 73.5% at a 95% confidence interval), major errors or cited assertions in which the referenced source either fails to substantiate, is unrelated to, or contradicts the assertion. Minor errors, which are an oversimplification, overgeneralization, or trivial inaccuracies, are 35.2% (26.5% to 43.9% at a 95% confidence interval). Additionally, improper secondary (or indirect) citations, which are distinguished from calculations of quotation accuracy, occur at a rate of 10.4% (3.4% to 17.5% at a 95% confidence interval).Item Achieving Organizational Flexibility through Ambidexterity(US Army War College, 2017-08) Shields, Patricia M.; Travis, DonaldThis article introduces the concept of organizational ambidexterity and explains its value to military planning and problem-solving from the tactical to strategic levels.Item African American Experiences in the Historic Dunbar Neighborhood in San Marcos, Texas: A Case Study of Counter-Life Stories(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2020-10-03) Ashford-Hanserd, Shetay; Sarmiento, Eric; Myles, Colleen C.; Rayburn, Steven W.; Roundtree, Aimee K.; Hayton, Mary-Patricia; Ybarra, Edward; Benitez, Sarai; Clifford, Theresa M.; Pierce, Christopher; Williams, Chad D.; Maleki, ShadiThe purpose of this participatory research project is to examine the lived experiences (counter-life stories) of current and former Dunbar residents and congregants of Dunbar churches to demonstrate how local stories counter the dominant perspective about the experiences of American Americans in the Dunbar community. Once a thriving community at the center of civil rights activities in Hays County, Texas, the neighborhood has evolved in many ways in the past several decades, contrary to popular belief. This case study employs counter-life story methodology to uncover the hidden truths about Dunbar residents and congregants’ experiences to generate new knowledge about the experiences of African Americans in San Marcos, Texas, and Hays County. Thematic analysis of unfiltered commentary from Dunbar community members revealed three emergent themes: history of racism and slavery, impact of environmental and social racism, and rebuilding and restoring the community. Individual and shared strengths make the community unique and resilient. In-migration of new community members has been outpaced by outmigration. Finally, issues of taxation, representation, and the ongoing deterioration of neighborhood infrastructure are forefront in community members’ minds. In sum, the bedrock of personal and community values and hard work has not changed, but external forces continue to affect the community and compel it to pivot and make plans for change. Personal and communal strengths make the community unique and resilient. Future work will enlist geographic data and methods to help further investigate changes over time.Item Alabama and the Texas Revolution(Texas State Historical Association, 1947-01) Elliott, ClaudeNo abstract prepared.Item Animal Harms and Food Production: Informing Ethical Choices(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2021-04-23) Hampton, Jordan O.; Hyndman, Timothy H.; Allen, Benjamin L.; Fischer, BobEthical food choices have become an important societal theme in post-industrial countries. Many consumers are particularly interested in the animal welfare implications of the various foods they may choose to consume. However, concepts in animal welfare are rapidly evolving towards consideration of all animals (including wildlife) in contemporary approaches such as “One Welfare”. This approach requires recognition that negative impacts (harms) may be intentional and obvious (e.g., slaughter of livestock) but also include the under-appreciated indirect or unintentional harms that often impact wildlife (e.g., land clearing). This is especially true in the Anthropocene, where impacts on non-human life are almost ubiquitous across all human activities. We applied the “harms” model of animal welfare assessment to several common food production systems and provide a framework for assessing the breadth (not intensity) of harms imposed. We considered all harms caused to wild as well as domestic animals, both direct effects and indirect effects. We described 21 forms of harm and considered how they applied to 16 forms of food production. Our analysis suggests that all food production systems harm animals to some degree and that the majority of these harms affect wildlife, not livestock. We conclude that the food production systems likely to impose the greatest overall breadth of harms to animals are intensive animal agriculture industries (e.g., dairy) that rely on a secondary food production system (e.g., cropping), while harvesting of locally available wild plants, mushrooms or seaweed is likely to impose the least harms. We present this conceptual analysis as a resource for those who want to begin considering the complex animal welfare trade-offs involved in their food choices.Item Anomalous blocking over Greenland preceded the 2013 extreme early melt of local sea ice(Cambridge University Press, 2018-07) Ballinger, Thomas J.; Hanna, Edward; Hall, Richard J.; Cropper, Thomas E.; Miller, Jeffrey; Ribergaard, Mads H.; Overland, James E.; Hoyer, JacobThe Arctic marine environment is undergoing a transition from thick multi-year to first-year sea-ice cover with coincident lengthening of the melt season. Such changes are evident in the Baffin Bay-Davis Strait-Labrador Sea (BDL) region where melt onset has occurred ~8 days decade−1 earlier from 1979 to 2015. A series of anomalously early events has occurred since the mid-1990s, overlapping a period of increased upper-air ridging across Greenland and the northwestern North Atlantic. We investigate an extreme early melt event observed in spring 2013. (~6σ below the 1981–2010 melt climatology), with respect to preceding sub-seasonal mid-tropospheric circulation conditions as described by a daily Greenland Blocking Index (GBI). The 40-days prior to the 2013 BDL melt onset are characterized by a persistent, strong 500 hPa anticyclone over the region (GBI >+1 on >75% of days). This circulation pattern advected warm air from northeastern Canada and the northwestern Atlantic poleward onto the thin, first-year sea ice and caused melt ~50 days earlier than normal. The episodic increase in the ridging atmospheric pattern near western Greenland as in 2013, exemplified by large positive GBI values, is an important recent process impacting the atmospheric circulation over a North Atlantic cryosphere undergoing accelerated regional climate change.Item Anti-Ishmael: Novel Beginnings in Moby-Dick(Taylor & Francis, 2007-01) Tally, Robert T., Jr.No abstract prepared.Item Applying Place-Based Social-Ecological Research to Address Water Scarcity: Insights for Future Research(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2018-05) Castro, Antonio J.; Quintas-Soriano, Cristina; Brandt, Jodi; Atkinson, Carla L.; Baxter, Colden V.; Burnham, Morey; Egoh, Benis N.; Garcia-Llorente, Marina; Julian, Jason P.; Martin-Lopez, Berta; Liao, Felix Haifeng; Running, Katrina; Vaughn, Caryn C.; Norstrom, Albert V.Globally, environmental and social change in water-scarce regions challenge the sustainability of social-ecological systems. WaterSES, a sponsored working group within the Program for Ecosystem Change and Society, explores and compares the social-ecological dynamics related to water scarcity across placed-based international research sites with contrasting local and regional water needs and governance, including research sites in Spain and Sweden in Europe, South Africa, China, and Alabama, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Texas in the USA. This paper aims to provide a commentary on insights into conducting future solutions-oriented research on water scarcity based on the understanding of the social-ecological dynamics of water scarce regions.Item Arbitration Clauses in Adhesion Contracts(American Arbitration Association, 1978-01) Wright, Walter A.Arbitration has long been valued as a voluntary process. Under ideal circumstances, two parties of relatively equal bargaining power agree to arbitrate as an alternative to litigation. A major exception to this rule occurs in the area of adhesion contracts. Standard form contracts reduce the time and cost involved in bargaining individual agreements. Yet, in using such a contract, a weaker party must agree--without any real choice--to arbitrate disputes in order to obtain goods or services it requires. Courts have often refused to enforce adhesion contracts or any of its terms when they have concluded that the stronger bargaining party has abused its dominant position. The author reviews the factors the courts weigh in making that decision.Item Assessing the Factors Associated with the Possession of an Academic Ethic in College(Pennsylvania Sociological Society, 2014-09) Chee, Kyong Hee; Pino, Nathan W.; Smith, William L.Possession of an academic ethic in college is known to result in a higher likelihood of college success, but less is known about the factors associated with the development of an academic ethic in the first place. Based on an analysis of data collected from two U.S. universities we find that in addition to race and gender, college preparatory course enrollment and high school type (public or private), as mediated by social class, are associated with the extent to which one possesses an academic ethic in high school, which in turn predicts the possession of an academic ethic in college. In addition, the results show support for the positive influence of academic mentors on the level of one's academic ethic in college, particularly for nonwhite and female students. High schools and colleges can make use of this information to better socialize students for the transition experience and college success.Item Assessment of Ensemble Models for Groundwater Potential Modeling and Prediction in a Karst Watershed(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2021-09-16) Farzin, Mohsen; Avand, Mohammadtaghi; Ahmadzadeh, Hassan; Zelenakova, Martina; Tiefenbacher, JohnDue to numerous droughts in recent years, the amount of surface water in arid and semi-arid regions has decreased significantly, so reliance on groundwater to meet local and regional demands has increased. The Kabgian watershed is a karst watershed in southwestern Iran that provides a significant proportion of drinking and agriculture water supplies in the area. This study identified areas with karst groundwater potential using a combination of machine learning and statistical models, including entropy-SVM-LN, entropy-SVM-SG, and entropy-SVM-RBF. To do this, 384 karst springs were identified and mapped. Sixteen factors that are related to karst potential were identified from a review of the literature, and these were compiled for the study area. The 384 locations were randomly separated into two categories for training (269 location) and validation (115 location) datasets to be used in the modeling process. The ROC curve was used to evaluate the modeling results. The models used, in general, were good at determining the location of karst groundwater potential. The evaluation showed that the E-SVM-RBF model had an area under the curve of 0.92, indicating that it was most accurate estimator of groundwater potential among the ensemble models. Evaluation of the relative importance of each of the 16 factors revealed that land use, a vector ruggedness measure, curvature, and topography roughness index were the most important explainers of the presence of karst groundwater in the study area. It was also found that the factors affecting the presence of karst springs are significantly different from non-karst springs.Item Assessment of Image-Based Point Cloud Products to Generate a Bare Earth Surface and Estimate Canopy Heights in a Woodland Ecosystem(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2016-01) Jensen, Jennifer L. R.; Mathews, Adam J.We examine the utility of Structure from Motion (SfM) point cloud products to generate a digital terrain model (DTM) and estimate canopy heights in a woodland ecosystem in the Texas Hill Country, USA. Very high spatial resolution images were acquired with a Canon PowerShot A800 digital camera mounted on an unmanned aerial system. Image mosaicking and dense point matching were accomplished using Agisoft PhotoScan. The resulting point cloud was classified according to ground/non-ground classes and used to interpolate a high resolution DTM which was both compared to a DTM from an existing lidar dataset and used to model vegetation height for fifteen 20 × 20 m plots. Differences in the interpolated DTM surfaces demonstrate that the SfM surface overestimates lidar-modeled ground height with a mean difference of 0.19 m and standard deviation of 0.66 m. Height estimates obtained solely from SfM products were successful with R² values of 0.91, 0.90, and 0.89 for mean, median, and maximum canopy height, respectively. Use of the lidar DTM in the analyses resulted in R² values of 0.90, 0.89, and 0.89 for mean, median, and maximum canopy height. Our results suggest that SfM-derived point cloud products function as well as lidar data for estimating vegetation canopy height for our specific study area. View Full-TextItem Assessment of the outbreak risk, mapping and infection behavior of COVID-19: Application of the autoregressive integrated-moving average (ARIMA) and polynomial models(Public Library of Science, 2020-07-28) Pourghasemi, Hamid Reza; Pouyan, Soheila; Farajzadeh, Zakariya; Sadhasivam, Nitheshnirmal; Heidari, Bahram; Babaei, Sedigheh; Tiefenbacher, JohnInfectious disease outbreaks pose a significant threat to human health worldwide. The outbreak of pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a global health emergency. Thus, identification of regions with high risk for COVID-19 outbreak and analyzing the behaviour of the infection is a major priority of the governmental organizations and epidemiologists worldwide. The aims of the present study were to analyze the risk factors of coronavirus outbreak for identifying the areas having high risk of infection and to evaluate the behaviour of infection in Fars Province, Iran. A geographic information system (GIS)-based machine learning algorithm (MLA), support vector machine (SVM), was used for the assessment of the outbreak risk of COVID-19 in Fars Province, Iran whereas the daily observations of infected cases were tested in the—polynomial and the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models to examine the patterns of virus infestation in the province and in Iran. The results of the disease outbreak in Iran were compared with the data for Iran and the world. Sixteen effective factors were selected for spatial modelling of outbreak risk. The validation outcome reveals that SVM achieved an AUC value of 0.786 (March 20), 0.799 (March 29), and 86.6 (April 10) that displays a good prediction of outbreak risk change detection. The results of the third-degree polynomial and ARIMA models in the province revealed an increasing trend with an evidence of turning, demonstrating extensive quarantines has been effective. The general trends of virus infestation in Iran and Fars Province were similar, although a more volatile growth of the infected cases is expected in the province. The results of this study might assist better programming COVID-19 disease prevention and control and gaining sorts of predictive capability would have wide-ranging benefits.