The number of studies related to students from rural backgrounds in higher education has waned in recent decades; however, over one-third of children in the United States continue to be educated in rural locales and their college-going and college-completion rates lag behind those of their urban and suburban peers. Because many rural students are white, they are typically considered part of the white majority on campuses, but they often encounter challenges unique to students from rural backgrounds and unlike those of their majority white peers from urban or suburban backgrounds. Therefore, a number of researchers have called for additional, qualitative studies regarding students from rural backgrounds as a unique cultural group and their experiences with higher education. The current study utilizes portraiture, the qualitative methodology developed by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and Jessica Hoffmann-Davis, and a cultural framework combining social capital and critical standpoint theories to explore factors that affect students' enrollment, persistence, experiences, and perceptions related to higher education. Six students from one rural Texas high school who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school classes participated in the study, which included in-depth interviews, observations, and analyses. Each of the students collaborated in the creation of his or her portrait as well; these portraits portray the students' higher education experiences in considerable detail. Several factors are shown to have an impact on the experiences of rural students in higher education, including social capital, relationships, tacit knowledge, and finances. The study also demonstrates that female students from rural backgrounds face additional barriers related to higher education, such as romantic relationships, limitations on their future plans, and self-confidence. Implications for research, practice, and policy are also offered as opportunities to improve the experiences of rural students in higher education, and ultimately, their college enrollment and persistence rates. / text

Today's mobile student population follows diverse paths. This research presents findings from a qualitative study investigating the perceptions of transfer students while they were actively engaged in the transfer process. Fifty-seven incoming community college transfer students (n=57) were interviewed, in a large metropolitan area, through e-journaling during fall 2006 (while students were still attending community colleges) and during spring 2007 (students' first semester of admission to the university). The following research questions guided the study: What do transfer students perceive as a successful transfer process? From the transfer student's perspective, what supports are needed to accommodate a successful transfer process? From the transfer student's perspective, what barriers inhibit successful transfer? The study sought to identify transfer student retention policies and practices that offer the most promising outcomes, as substantiated by the transfer students. Their experiences and perceptions might have implications for improving programs and policies at either the sending or receiving institution. The necessity to determine the challenges faced by students when entering a four-year institution is key to understanding student persistence and success in attaining the baccalaureate. The Urban Transfer Research Network (UTRN) is a project funded through Lumina Foundation for Education. The purpose of this collaborative project is to chart the pathways and success of transfer students who begin their college careers at community colleges. The research conducted in this study served as the pilot study for UTRN's qualitative research. The findings suggest three first stage transfer adjustment themes. The first stage includes: students' expectations prior to entering the university, students' initial experiences of marginality, complications from the need for guidance combined with feelings of entitlement, and students learning to navigate the university system. The second stage of the transfer students' adjustment identified the support systems needed by students: personal attention, academic integration, social interaction, and technology. Barriers to successful transfer involved the lack of communication students perceived among and within the community college and the university. The third and final stage of the transfer adjustment process offered student recommendations for change supporting reflections of self-reliance, and balance of academic rigor and personal identity.

Living on campus has long been an important part of many students' collegiate experience. Most research describing the benefits of living on campus was conducted in the 1960s and 1970s and was based upon students living in double rooms on double loaded corridors with community bathrooms. In recent years, the style of residence hall buildings has changed from these traditional rooms to suite and apartment-style housing offering more privacy and greater amenities to students. This study sought to examine how first year students living in three different types of residence hall environments differ on measures of social and academic integration, academic performance, involvement, and retention from the first to second year. One hundred and ninety one first year students living in three different types of residence halls (traditional, suite-style, and apartment-style) completed the Institutional Integration Scale during spring 2006. Students also gave permission for their GPAs and enrollment information to be obtained from the Registrar's Office. Results indicated that there were no significant differences in the social and academic integration, academic performance, involvement, or persistence among students living in these three different types of residence halls. While this study did not point to statistically significant differences, care must be taken in generalizing this finding to other settings due to the limited sample size used in this study. Suggestions for further research in this area are provided.

The purpose of this study was to explore individual perceptions of African-American at-risk students in an undergraduate teacher education program, specifically continuing students or community college transfer students in a four-year urban university College of Education (COE) program. Specific areas of interest included: (a) demographic characteristics profiling the study participants; (b) emotional and motivational factors as they affected the students; and (c) the personal thoughts and effect of institutional and environmental variables and administrative factors. Ten females volunteered to participate in a semi-structured interview. The 22 semi-structured interview questions were developed by the researcher. The questions captured the individual personal background, academic information, college environment, and reasons for leaving college. A triangulated set of research methods for data collection was used, including a demographic profile, the semi-structured interview, coding, and salient points and theme validation. Member checks and independent reviewers were used for verification and validation purposes.Conclusions drawn from this study include the findings that the majority of students were motivated to complete their degree, but a variety of barriers including personal problems, financial needs, faculty communication difficulties, lack of administrative support services, and isolation in classes existed. Some positive perceptions of the teacher education program included appreciation for most of the faculty in the college, technology services and the new facilities for the COE, and the existence of on-line advising capabilities. The following implications emerged from this study: (a) the COE needs a clear policy for recruiting at-risk African-American students; (b) flexible course selections and offerings conducive to non-traditional students are desirable; (c) a full-time recruiter to organize and facilitate student organization support is needed; (d) more African-American faculty are crucial as role models; and (e) it is essential to continue to focus on cultural awareness within the curriculum, and (f) creating a climate of support and togetherness in which students feel comfortable is necessary. Future research is recommended addressing the perceptions of at-risk African-American male students, other ethnic and racial minorities and other colleges within the university or across universities.

We employ 2011 European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data for Austria to perform Markovian mobility matrix analysis and uni- and multivariate econometric analysis to study intergenerational educational mobility by gender and migration background. We find that the educational attainment of girls and migrants relative to their parents is less mobile than for boys and natives. Further, the immobility of educational attainment is enhanced by the intersection of these identities: migrant girls are the least educationally mobile group and are especially likely to follow their mothers 19 educational footsteps, while native boys are the most mobile, especially compared to their mothers. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The primary focus of this dissertation is on information, its production and dissemination in society. In the first chapter, I explore the consequences of an increase in the number of newspapers on the quantity and quality of news provided and, ultimately, changes in political participation, using a new panel of local newspaper presence and political turnout in France from 1945 to 2012. My results shed new light on the role played by consumers' heterogeneity and increasing returns to scale in news production, and have implications for the study of the relationship between media competition and political participation. / Economics

<p>Multidrug tolerance (MDT) is the ability of pathogenic bacteria to survive killing from exposure to multiple antibiotics, and is a major obstacle in the treatment of infectious disease. A small population of bacteria (0.0001%) termed persisters is the culprit that causes MDT and allows these cells to persist. In <italic>Escherichia coli</italic>, the HipBA toxin&ndash;antitoxin pair plays a role in multidrug tolerance. HipA, a 50 kDa serine protein kinase, is the more stable toxin and abrogates cell growth in the absence of the more labile antitoxin HipB. HipB is a transcription repressor that binds to the four conserved (TATCCN₈GGATA) operator sites of the <italic>hipBA</italic> promoter to autoregulate expression of the <italic>hipBA</italic> operon. Delineation of the molecular mechanism of HipB&ndash;<italic>hipBA</italic>operator binding is critical to understand fully the regulation of persistence by HipB. Thus, we determined the equilibrium dissociation constants (K_d) of HipB for each of the four <italic>hipBA</italic> operators and the paired operator sites <italic>O₁O₂</italic> and <italic>O₃O₄</italic>. We found that the affinity of HipB for binding the <italic>O₁</italic> and <italic>O₃</italic> operators is seven to eight times higher than for the <italic>O₂</italic> and <italic>O₄</italic> operators. In addition, the affinity of HipB for the <italic>O₁O₂</italic> and <italic>O₃O₄</italic> operators is at least four times higher than the <italic>O₁</italic> and <italic>O₃</italic> operators. The HipB&ndash;operator complex structures reveal that HipB makes the same key contacts to the conserved TATCC motifs and bends each operator DNA by the same extent between 50&deg; to 70&deg; implying thus the affinity differences are attributed to indirect readout of the 8 base pair spacer (N₈). Mutational studies on residues involved in HipB&ndash;DNA interaction revealed the contribution of a series of selected residues to binding affinity with residues K38 and Q39 contributing greatly to affinity whereas other base contacting residues S29 and A40 contribute less to affinity. Surprisingly residue S43, which is involved in a hydrogen bond to the DNA phosphate backbone contributes more than expected because S43 forms a hydrogen bond network with nearby water molecules. </p><p>HipA was the first described <italic>bona fide</italic> persistence factor. The <italic>hip</italic> locus was discovered through a mutagenesis screen whereby <italic>hipA7</italic> was isolated. Described herein, biochemical and structure&ndash;function studies on HipA7, the gene product of the high persistent mutant allele having two point mutations G22S and D291A, revealed that the D291A mutation weakens the binding affinity for HipB by 3 to 4 fold. The HipA7 structure revealed the conformational heterogeneity of the P&ndash;loop motif (the ATP binding motif), which suggests a dynamic role of the loop in regulation of the kinase activity of HipA. To identify <italic>in vivo</italic> HipA substrates, we developed a mass spectrometry (MS)&ndash;based kinase assay, which led to identification of a novel phosphorylation site (residue S348) on HipA and a proposed consensus phosphorylation motif +&#981;S, where +, &#966; and S designate a positive, hydrophobic and serine amino acid residue, respectively. Phosphorylation of peptides with this consensus motif, including the S150 (EENDF<bold><underline>RIS</underline></bold>VAGAQEK), S348 (TGI<bold><underline>HIS</underline></bold>DLK) and GltX (GK<bold><underline>KLS</underline></bold>KRH), was confirmed subsequently by the MS&ndash;based kinase assay. Further analysis of the HipA7 structure suggested that HipA might undergo pyrophosphorylation on residue S150, and the MS&ndash;based kinase assay confirmed pyrophosphorylation of HipA. </p><p>Thus, our data support that HipA is a persistence factor via its kinase activity and precise <italic>hipBA</italic> gene regulation through HipB binding tightly to <italic>O₁</italic> and <italic>O₃</italic> is critical for the survival of bacteria in the presence of antibiotics. In addition, we propose a consensus motif for HipA substrates.</p> / Dissertation

After a brief overview of the standard attempts to give the persistence conditions of artifacts through time and material changes, I develop and present an account which capitalizes on Koons’s theory that artifacts are in some robust and important way social practices in order to explain their persistence through time. After one unsuccessful attempt to formulate a view that is not susceptible to Ship of Theseus like problems concerning the persistence conditions of artifacts, I present the full view: artifacts become artifacts when they are arranged in a particular formal manner by someone who is engaging in a creative social practice. The artifact then remains the same artifact so long as its form is sufficiently preserved and maintained according to maintaining social practices. In this way, the social practice that unifies the artifact is like the life that unifies an organism—so long as the social practice and the form persist, the artifact is the same artifact. To conclude, I look at several problems my view cannot yet account for, such as the persistence conditions of objects that are not manmade artifacts, and the commitment to ontic vagueness that my view seems to entail. / text

Many enterprise applications persist data beyond their lifetimes, usually in a database management system. Orthogonal persistence provides a clean programming model for communicating with databases. A program using orthogonal persistence operates over persistent and non-persistent data uniformly. However, a straightforward implementation of orthogonal persistence results in a large number of small queries each of which incurs a large overhead when accessing a remote database. In addition, the program cannot take advantage of a database's query optimizations for large and complex queries. Instead, most programs compose smaller queries into a single large query explicitly and send the query to the database through a command-level interface. These explicit queries compromise the modularity of programs because they do not compose well and they contain information about the program's future data access patterns. Consequently, programs with explicit queries are harder to maintain and reason about. In this thesis, we first define transparent persistence, a relaxation of orthogonal persistence. We show how transparent persistence in current tools can be made more practical by developing AutoFetch. The key idea in AutoFetch is to dynamically observe a program's data access patterns and use that information to reduce the number of queries. While AutoFetch is constrained by existing Java technology and tools, Remote Batch Invocation (RBI) adds the batch statement to the Java language. The batch statement is a general purpose mechanism for optimizing distributed communication using batching. RBI-DB specializes the ideas in RBI for databases. Both of these ideas help bridge the performance gap between orthogonally persistent systems and traditional database interfaces. / text

Despite a long history of providing open-door access to students who might not otherwise have an opportunity to attend college, community colleges have not been as effective in fostering student success. To counter this trend, early intervention programs have been developed to facilitate academic and social integration for first semester students to improve student success. However, there is much that is not known about the influence of orientation programs at community colleges as an intervention strategy. Therefore, this study examines the influence of one new student orientation on first semester student success. Grounded in frameworks developed by Astin (1984, 1993, 1999), Tinto (1975, 1993), and Bean and Metzner (1985), this study examines the ability of a new student orientation to academically and socially integrate students into the culture of the institution. The following research questions are posed: • Does new student orientation influence student retention; • Does new student orientation influence student success; • Does new student orientation influence student persistence; • Does new student orientation facilitate a student’s social integration into the institution? • Does new student orientation facilitate a student’s academic integration into the institution? The focus of this case study is a publicly supported, two-year, comprehensive community college that is part of a multiple college district located in a suburban area outside of a major city in Texas. Participants are students who attended a new student orientation session. Employing a mixed methods research approach, data is gathered on student success, retention, persistence, and through interviews. Findings demonstrate that there was no significant difference in first semester retention for students who participated in a new student orientation and for those who did not. However, students who participated in orientation were more likely to be successful in their first semester in college and much more likely to re-enroll for their second semester at the institution. New student orientation also facilitated students’ social and academic integration into the institution. This study concludes with recommendations for program improvement, recommendations for further research, and a discussion of implications for community college policy and practice in developing new student orientation programs. / text