Distinct bioinformatics datasets make it challenging for bioinformatics specialists to locate the required datasets and unify their format for result extraction. The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies to integrate distinct bioinformatics datasets. The technology acceptance model was used as the conceptual framework to understand the perceived usefulness and ease of use of integrating bioinformatics datasets. The population of this study included bioinformatics specialists of a research institution in Lebanon that has strategies to integrate distinct bioinformatics datasets. The data collection process included interviews with 6 bioinformatics specialists and reviewing 27 organizational documents relating to integrating bioinformatics datasets. Thematic analysis was used to identify codes and themes related to integrating distinct bioinformatics datasets. Key themes resulting from data analysis included a focus on integrating bioinformatics datasets, adding metadata with the submitted bioinformatics datasets, centralized bioinformatics database, resources, and bioinformatics tools. I showed throughout analyzing the findings of this study that specialists who promote standardizing techniques, adding metadata, and centralization may increase efficiency in integrating distinct bioinformatics datasets. Bioinformaticians, bioinformatics providers, the health care field, and society might benefit from this research. Improvement in bioinformatics affects poistevely the health-care field which has a positive social change. The results of this study might also lead to positive social change in research institutions, such as reduced workload, less frustration, reduction in costs, and increased efficiency while integrating distinct bioinformatics datasets.

<p> This paper attempts to quantify disparate growth in Hamilton's Central Area. The spatial variation over time of three economic indicators was studied to do this. These indicators were property tax assessments, and multi-family and single-family property sales. The Central Area was divided into four geographic zones so that the indicator change could be associated with different parts of the Area. The results indicate that the northeastern sections of the Central Area experienced and are continuing to experience slower economic growth compared to the southwestern sections. </p> / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Equal Employment Opportunity laws are a relatively new construct within the framework of American legal history. This area of law, however, has experienced significant development within a relatively short span of time. Over the last half-century, the Supreme Court of the United States has handed down several landmark decisions, clarifying the law as to what constitutes sexual harassment, and in which circumstances employers can be held liable for the harassing actions of employees. The purpose of this thesis is to examine this development, and to assess the question of whether the awards given to male victims of workplace sexual harassment are comparable to the awards given to female victims.

I believe that poetry has survived for thousands of years because it provides people with a transpersonal connection that they can't find elsewhere. I look for poetry that is more than an emotional expression, more than witty word play, and more than an interesting observation. I want poetry to give me that inspirational spark, that glimpse into a world beyond my own. Poems that succeed in doing this force me into a perspective that I haven't previously imagined by yoking together two or more seemingly disparate elements. This tension between the old elements and the new link between them creates energy for the poem. This poetic nexus contributes to the transpersonal experience that I seek.

Discourse and Disconnect: Black Teachers and the Quest for National Board Certification Paula J. Leftwich ABSTRACT Black teachers have been under-represented proportionate to their presence in the teaching population in both the application for and achievement of certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. This study sought to explore the possibility of a disconnect between the discourses of Black teachers and the discourses of the National Board Certification process. Further, it was designed to investigate the effectiveness of targeted mentoring strategies to increase the participation rate and achievement rate of Black teachers in this complex and lengthy process. Using procedures for the definition and analysis of discourse outlined by Gee, the author dissected document-based and process-embedded data to define the discourse of accomplished teaching embodied in the National Board and its disseminated philosophy and process for identifying and awarding credentials to National Board Certified Teachers. Participant data was gathered using a qualitative research design and a heuristic phenomenological approach. Discourse information gleaned from participant-produced process documents and interview transcripts were analyzed using Gees methods. Field notes and recordings from direct observations were analyzed using Hycners approach for the interpretation of phenomenological data. Deleuze and Guattaris rhizomatic analysis was applied to the overlaid, separate discourses. Specific areas of both congruence and disconnect were clearly identified. Participant checks and inter-rater reviews of data and confirmed the findings and validated the conclusions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the findings for the National Board, potential candidates, and advocates for each.

There are numerous studies that address the issue of discipline practices in schools. Within the last decade there have been an increasing number of scholars and school district personnel who have written about discipline, and more specifically, the discipline of specific populations of students such as African Americans. Although many of these studies address the disparate disciplinary practices that occur in many school districts, little attention is devoted to how students understand these practices in the larger context of their general school experiences. This research intends to fill the void in the literature that utilizes the experiences of students to understand inequitable discipline practices. The primary purpose of this study is to examine a selected group of "at-risk" African American male students' experiences and beliefs about disciplinary practices used in school.

Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, community members, community stakeholders, and academic researchers from Virginia Tech formed a community-academic partnership in 2009. In the formative months, the coalition decided to focus on reducing obesity in the region. The coalition adopted the name of The Dan River Partnership for a Healthy Community (DRPHC) with a mission to "foster community partnerships to combat obesity in the Dan River Region through healthy lifestyle initiative". During a planning workshop, the DRPHC created six causal models for the root causes of obesity in the region. Two causal models that focused on geographic and environmental influences for obesity are the foundation for this series of research. The focus of this dissertation is at the intersection of the food and physical activity environments and their characteristics that contribute to meeting fruit and vegetable intake and minutes of physical activity recommendations. The food environment is one aspect of built environment research that examines food locations for procurement and the variety, availability, and quality of different food options. To date, the vast majority of research on the food environment is based in urban, suburban, and metropolitan areas with high residential densities and populations. Rural areas are often understudied because of their dispersed and hard-to-reach populations; yet these individuals experience some of the worst health outcomes in the nation. This is due, in part, to the large overlaps of rural regions and food deserts, resulting in poor food choices and poor diets. The overall objective of this dissertation is to examine the associations of the food and physical activity environments with individual healthy behaviors. Three studies were conducted within the broader research plan to meet the overall objective. The first study systematically examined the food environment using the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey (NEMS) for all food outlets in Danville, VA, a small regional city within the health disparate region, to compare differences in healthy available food options by block group race and income. The second study expanded NEMS methodology to encompass all food outlets in the three-county Dan River region to examine if food environment and availability of healthy options was predictive of meeting fruit and vegetable intake recommendations. The last study examined the objective and perceived distance individuals must travel to reach a physical activity outlet and whether or not distance was a predictive factor of individual weekly minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity and meeting physical activity recommendations. / Ph. D.

Durante o século XX, o Brasil procurou reduzir ou eliminar a discriminação contra a população negra por meio de legislações punitivas com a finalidade de coibir a discriminação direta. O Estatuto da Igualdade Racial (Lei n.º 12.288/10) inova o ordenamento jurídico trazendo, explicitamente, a modalidade da discriminação indireta, que tem como um dos seus fundamentos a discriminação/racismo institucional. Pretendemos investigar a discriminação contra os negros, no contexto da segurança pública, sob a perspectiva desta modalidade de discriminação (institucional). A linha condutora de nossa pesquisa tem como eixo central a íntima ligação entre Democracia e Direitos Humanos, o que significa dizer que, nos regimes democráticos, é obrigação do Estado garantir a segurança pública com o devido respeito aos direitos humanos e o pleno exercício da cidadania. A partir destas premissas, passaremos a investigar quem são as maiores vítimas de um padrão de violência praticado por agentes responsáveis pela segurança pública e que atinge os cidadãos comuns. Segundo as estatísticas, os negros são vítimas costumeiras de perseguição, tortura e morte, além de mais numerosos na população carcerária. O racismo institucional na segurança pública é discutido, num primeiro momento, levando-se em consideração aspectos jurídicos, históricos e sociológicos relevantes para a compreensão da violência policial incidente sobre a população negra (crime, criminologia, segurança pública, polícia e sua relação com a questão racial no Brasil) e, num segundo momento, a partir de uma perspectiva jurídica, como uma forma de discriminação indireta. / During the twentieth century, Brazil sought to reduce or eliminate discrimination against the black population through punitive legislation in order to inhibit direct discrimination. The statute of Racial Equality (Law n.º 12.288/10) innovates the Law bringing the explicit form of indirect discrimination, which is a foundation of discrimination/ institutional racism. We intend to investigate discrimination against blacks in the context of public safety, from the perspective of this type of discrimination (institutional). The guiding principle of our research is the central axis of the intimate connection between Democracy and Human Rights, which means that, in a democracy regime, is the states obligation to ensure public safety with total respect for human rights and full citizenship. From this premises, we will investigate who is the biggest victims of a pattern are of violence committed by officials responsible for public safety and that affects ordinary citizens. According to statistics, blacks are usual victims of persecution, torture and death, and they are the bigger population in prison. Institutional racism in public safety is discussed at first, acknowledging account legal, historical and sociological studies important to the understanding of police violence incident on the black population (crime, criminology, public safety, police and its relationship to the racism in Brazil), and, second, from a legal perspective, as a form of indirect discrimination.

Durante o século XX, o Brasil procurou reduzir ou eliminar a discriminação contra a população negra por meio de legislações punitivas com a finalidade de coibir a discriminação direta. O Estatuto da Igualdade Racial (Lei n.º 12.288/10) inova o ordenamento jurídico trazendo, explicitamente, a modalidade da discriminação indireta, que tem como um dos seus fundamentos a discriminação/racismo institucional. Pretendemos investigar a discriminação contra os negros, no contexto da segurança pública, sob a perspectiva desta modalidade de discriminação (institucional). A linha condutora de nossa pesquisa tem como eixo central a íntima ligação entre Democracia e Direitos Humanos, o que significa dizer que, nos regimes democráticos, é obrigação do Estado garantir a segurança pública com o devido respeito aos direitos humanos e o pleno exercício da cidadania. A partir destas premissas, passaremos a investigar quem são as maiores vítimas de um padrão de violência praticado por agentes responsáveis pela segurança pública e que atinge os cidadãos comuns. Segundo as estatísticas, os negros são vítimas costumeiras de perseguição, tortura e morte, além de mais numerosos na população carcerária. O racismo institucional na segurança pública é discutido, num primeiro momento, levando-se em consideração aspectos jurídicos, históricos e sociológicos relevantes para a compreensão da violência policial incidente sobre a população negra (crime, criminologia, segurança pública, polícia e sua relação com a questão racial no Brasil) e, num segundo momento, a partir de uma perspectiva jurídica, como uma forma de discriminação indireta. / During the twentieth century, Brazil sought to reduce or eliminate discrimination against the black population through punitive legislation in order to inhibit direct discrimination. The statute of Racial Equality (Law n.º 12.288/10) innovates the Law bringing the explicit form of indirect discrimination, which is a foundation of discrimination/ institutional racism. We intend to investigate discrimination against blacks in the context of public safety, from the perspective of this type of discrimination (institutional). The guiding principle of our research is the central axis of the intimate connection between Democracy and Human Rights, which means that, in a democracy regime, is the states obligation to ensure public safety with total respect for human rights and full citizenship. From this premises, we will investigate who is the biggest victims of a pattern are of violence committed by officials responsible for public safety and that affects ordinary citizens. According to statistics, blacks are usual victims of persecution, torture and death, and they are the bigger population in prison. Institutional racism in public safety is discussed at first, acknowledging account legal, historical and sociological studies important to the understanding of police violence incident on the black population (crime, criminology, public safety, police and its relationship to the racism in Brazil), and, second, from a legal perspective, as a form of indirect discrimination.

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