No description available.

The research focus of this study hoped to answer: “Do mothers have a more difficult time coping with their child’s challenging behaviors when they were using drugs, than they do when they are sober?” Mothers using street drugs may have challenges with their children after using drugs, whether illegal or legal (like alcohol or methadone). Mothers may have challenges during drug use with these children, but are the challenges the same once mothers are clean and sober? This research took on the positivist paradigm in hopes to answer this question. The researcher got an understanding of these challenges by asking questions about the drugs used during and after pregnancy, and the challenges they had with their child’s behavior while using drugs as opposed to the challenges they have with child’s behavior while sober. These questions were asked at the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission where many women are referred and mandated by the courts, or Child Protective Services, behind past or current substance use. Results of these findings indicated that there was a reduction in problematic behaviors that seemed to be correlated with mother’s sobriety

The LapDance Scholarship was conceived in November of 2009, opened for applications in December 2010, and awarded its final scholarship in October 2012. The Scholarship has been awarded to ten recipients for the funding of their art projects. The total monies awarded totals $2,886. The Scholarship was created by Hailey Jude Minder and administered by Emily Moran Barwick. Part of its inspiration was the idea of funding something as decidedly "high brow" as fine art with something as decidedly "low brow" as lap dancing (to borrow from the chosen vernacular of the high court justices of New York in their recent ruling). The LapDance Scholarship was open to any Iowa City resident, and was awarded on a monthly basis. All applications were submitted through the blog lapdancescholarship.blogspot.com. The Scholarship is a multi-faceted project that has spanned three years, involved thousands of hours of labor, and funded ten artistic endeavors with both local and international applications. While the Scholarship itself is simple in its premise (artist applies, artist is chosen, Hailey performs lap dances, Hailey gets money, money is given to artist), the history, development, and inherent implications and issues of the Scholarship are anything but. In the following pages, I attempt to offer some of the layers of this project. I will delve into the history and development of the Scholarship as well some of the foundational thought processes underlying its conception and issues sparked by its existence. I do not claim to have produced an exhaustive analysis on all of the various elements arising from and inherent within the Scholarship, but rather an intimate view of certain aspects, moments, and thoughts. I have intentionally left out any hard and fast conclusions. I find that approach neither productive nor realistically possible. Nothing here is black and white, including my own identity and position. I am so personally entwined with this project, as it has come, literally, from my body and mind, that I cannot successfully separate myself as an objective viewer and analyst. Nor can I fully separate Emily and Hailey. So I offer you instances, layers, windows in. I offer you select parts, allow you to look, touch, consider. I offer you some of what I have to give. I offer you some, but not all.

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is the nation's principal tool for accomplishing river conservation. Congress intended for the Act to apply to rivers regardless of ownership of adjacent lands, but efforts to implement the Act on rivers bordered by private property have met with limited success. This paper presents the underlying issues related to private land applications, explores the range of ideas and opinions existing among river conservation experts, agency river planners and others regarding how to work with these issues, identifies areas of general concurrence and least agreement, and makes recommendations for future private land applications of the Act.

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore critical issues and challenges that might arise in agile software development processes with Scrum. It also sought to provide management guidelines to help organizations avoid and overcome barriers in adopting the Scrum method as a future software development method. A qualitative research method design was used to capture the knowledge of practitioners and scrutinize the Scrum software development process in its natural settings. An in-depth case study was conducted in two organizations where the Scrum method was fully integrated in every aspect of two organizations' software development processes. One organization provides large-scale and mission-critical applications and the other provides small- and medium-scale applications. Differences between two organizations provided useful contrasts for the data analysis. Data were collected through an email survey, observations, documents, and semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The email survey was used to refine interview questions; all of the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed, and later coded for analysis. Triangulation in the data collection process provided useful information for different perspectives on the issues, allowed for cross-checking, and yielded stronger substantiation of concepts and common categories. The research presented four common categories of issues and challenges of the Scrum method, and management guidelines to help organizations that are already using the Scrum method or planning to employ it in the future. The framework for a hybrid software development model is then proposed as a future study.

The discrepancy between what students are being taught within K-12 science classrooms and what they experience in the real world has been well documented. This study sought to explore the ways a high school biology curriculum, which integrates socioscientific issues, impacts students' emotive reasoning and their ability to evaluate evidence, make informed decisions on contemporary scientific dilemmas, and integrate scientific content knowledge in their reasoning on SSI. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to examine differences within and between an SSI treatment group and a comparison group as well as individual differences among students' responses over a semester of high school biology. Results indicated students used emotions largely to evaluate evidence and make decisions on contentious scientific dilemmas. In addition, the results showed students used newly gained scientific content knowledge to make logical predictions on contentious scientific issues. Statistical significance was found between groups of students in regard to their interest in the use of embryonic stem cell treatments to restore rats' vision, as well as students' abilities to evaluate evidence. Theoretical implications regarding the use of SSI in the classroom are presented.

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) of 1999 has on the consolidation of the banking industry. The FSMA allows banks to simultaneously offer commercial banking, investment, and insurance services. I find a strong positive market response to the announcement of bank acquisition of brokerage firms (10.2 percent) and insurance companies (9.3 percent), but no significant response to bank acquisitions. I also find support for two complimentary hypotheses that explain the long-run returns to the acquiring banks. The "product-market spillover hypothesis" states that the post-consolidation returns of the acquirer are directly related to the banks' ability to cross market their products and services to a more diverse client base, while the efficiency hypothesis states that banks acquire financial services companies to realize efficiency gains resulting from exploiting economies of scale. Finally, I show that the premiums paid in the post-FSMA acquisitions increases with the diversity of the transaction. In addition, this study is the first to link managerial turnover to mutual fund managerial structure in a manner that indicates the strong presence of a conflict of interests between investors and fund sponsors in an area of fund governance where we have been led to believe there are strong and well-functioning mechanisms to guard against the exploitation of investors. I utilize the unique characteristics of mutual funds where managers sometimes manage multiple "firms" simultaneously, something not generally observed in industrial firms. I test the governance mechanisms using the mutual fund complexes management structure; unitary and multiple fund management (UFM and MFM). This study shows that UFMs tend to have higher asset growth rates and higher fees than MFMs, suggesting that sponsors can benefit more from keeping them intact. I find that changing managers under the UFM is more costly to sponsors making them more reluctant to fire poor performers. I document that underperforming UFM are -2.77 percent less likely to be replaced than their underperforming MFM counterparts. In addition, the conflict of interests affect the replacement decision, as high expense ratio fund managers have a lower probability of replacement for a given level of underperformance.

Aboriginal people make a great contribution to Australian sport in conditions of considerable adversity, and yet their contribution goes largely unacknowledged. This study investigates the experiences of one Aboriginal family with an extensive history of involvement with Australian Rules Football using methodologies which seek, and value, Aboriginal perspectives on their involvement. It privileges Indigenous knowledge. The study focuses particularly on the involvement of the Hayward family in Australian Rules Football - the game they love - and in which they have been intensely involved for many generations. The study describes how the Haywards of southwest Western Australia, like most Aboriginal families, experienced an extensive period of colonisation in which their social and cultural autonomy and power were eroded. The historical experience of Aboriginal Australians is vastly different to that of mainstream Australians, and grossly inequitable, not only in terms of economic and educational opportunity, but also in terms of access to sporting opportunities. In many ways, the story of the Hayward family is representative of the experiences of many Black sportsmen and women over the past hundred years. It is suggested that, in order to understand Aboriginal participation and foster the development of Aboriginal sportspeople of all ages, an understanding of the context of their lives is crucial. This study then, explores my extended family's experiences as participants in mainstream sport. It describes how the Haywards, like their community contemporaries, have confronted the limited opportunities afforded to them in their ambitions to gain access, equity of participation, and appropriate reward for effort in their sporting endeavours. / Over many generations of Aboriginal participation in the game, there has been considerable inequality of opportunity to enter and participate. In their efforts to participate, members of the Hayward family faced many obstacles unacknowledged by non-Aboriginal players, administrators and spectators. The study shows that many of these obstacles had little to do with the sporting prowess of the Haywards. Every past and present player interviewed as part of this research told of circumstances where they felt that they had not been given a fair go - be it by an umpire, a team official, opposing players, players from their own team, or the crowd. For every case of acceptance of Aboriginal players by a football club, there are many stories of rejection by other clubs. Despite these obstacles, the study found that the Haywards (like many Aboriginal people) see sport (and particularly football) as significant in their lives. They love the game but, equally importantly, they believe that sporting prowess can open a path of entry to mainstream society, provide important economic advantages and offer opportunities for broader social participation while maintaining strong traditions of Aboriginal virtuosity and relationships. The study concludes by suggesting that, despite the adversities encountered by this family in their desire to participate in football, there has been much in the game that has brought pleasure, a sense of success, satisfaction and achievement to them. While this is the story of one family, I believe it provides important insights into experiences common to many Aboriginal families and sportspersons, and that this research deepens our understanding of Australian social history. Football has been, and continues to be, a valued part of the lives of many Aboriginal people.

In the last five years there has been a dramatic increase in perceived levels of antisocial behaviour amongst students in Secondary and National High schools in Papua New Guinea. Certain events have caught the public's attention, such as the burning down of school buildings and reports of Satanic worship. Despite widespread concern, there seems to be little understanding of why such problems are occurring and no systematic studies to estimate the exact extent of such behaviours or their underlying cause. The main objective of this study was to collect information about the students' perspectives on the nature and extent of these perceived problems. For ethical reasons, and with regard to ease of access to participants within the time frame of the study, data were collected from the first year student teachers at Madang Teachers' College, Papua New Guinea, who had been Secondary/National High school students only a few months previously. As this was an exploratory investigation, and it was not known whether participants would feel more at ease talking one-on-one with the researcher or in groups, two methodologies were used: focus group discussions and individual interviews. The research was conducted over a period of three weeks in June 2007, and involved a total of 21 participants (three focus groups of five, five and six people respectively, and six individual interviewees, one of whom also joined a group). The main findings to emerge from these discussions were as follows. First, the participants explained their own and other students' behaviour in terms of exploring old and new traditions of school life. Second, although several participants reported knowledge of supernatural practices, many of the group activities described in the discussions were normal activities among peer cliques that provided a sense of belonging and positive support for school achievement. There were no major differences in the stories told by male and female participants, and no obvious differences in the type of information provided under different research conditions. There was some disagreement among participants as to whether or not school authorities should take strong action to eliminate the possibility of cult practices. The findings are interpreted with reference to both Western psychological ideas about the nature of adolescence, and to local traditions, practices, and understandings of lifespan development. In particular, the notion of 'searching for identity' stands out in these accounts of student behaviour. This was an exploratory study and not designed to yield results that provide an overall picture of the situation in the Secondary/National High schools of Papua New Guinea. Nevertheless, participants' reports did relate to events experienced in the majority of PNG Secondary and National High schools, and some recommendations are tentatively offered.

Take that woman explores social issues as a piece of mainstream fiction. The story revolves around realistic characters, in a contemporary setting, facing situations which many people encounter in their lives. The piece isn't didactic. Nor does it force-feed the reader; rather it provides information in bite-sized pieces so it can be easily digested. Take that woman is the story of a group of people brought together by a wedding. Set in the present, the action takes place in Canberra on a day in early November. The story moves between Australia and England, between the present and the past as it examines the conflicts the day generates for the couple's families and friends. Not only does the wedding serve as a device to bring the characters together, it also highlights the seriousness of the issues being explored. The account is a fictional piece as fiction can be an effective communication tool. Information is disseminated in different forms through a variety of media, both electronic and print. But, however widely, or creatively, the material is distributed, there is nothing to ensure the recipient will read or understand the information. Mainstream fiction can be a means of raising awareness about serious social issues, of changing attitudes, and, ultimately, behaviours. The research for the piece involved a search of literature, films and videos, and relevant websites. It also consisted of personal interviews with subject experts, workers in the field of domestic violence, and people who have been exposed to violence in their own relationships.