Representing the Museum and the People: Rhetorical Sovereignty and the Representational Genres of American Indian Museums

This study addresses questions surrounding American Indian representations, specifically how Native nations use standard museum communicative structures to forward those communities' needs and goals, thus enacting what Scott Richard Lyons terms "rhetorical sovereignty." Using rhetoric studies' genre theory as the methodological tool, the genres of publicity/orientation literature, exhibits, and gift shops at three sites, the National Museum of the American Indian, Haskell Cultural Center and Museum, and Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways, are analyzed for how Native peoples employ these genres for their own purposes for multiple audiences. The analysis suggests these genres are retailored depending upon the cultural and rhetorical context of each site, revealing that "rhetorical sovereignty" grounds itself in the context of an individual community. Furthermore, while positive changes have occurred in American Indian representations through the adaptation of museum genres by Native communities, the potential for communicative contradictions across genres and audiences still occurs

A First Course in Causal Inference

I developed the lecture notes based on my ``Causal Inference'' course at the University of California Berkeley over the past seven years. Since half of the students were undergraduates, my lecture notes only require basic knowledge of probability theory, statistical inference, and linear and logistic regressions

Implementation Strategies for Modeling and Simulation in Military Organizations

Some IT project managers working for U.S. military organizations are struggling to implement modern modeling and simulation (M&S) technology. Implementation strategies are needed to help IT practitioners deliver meaningful simulations and models that ultimately help senior leaders make logical and science-based decisions. Grounded in the extended technology acceptance model, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies some IT project managers supporting U.S. military organizations use to implement modern M&S technology. The participants included 10 civil servants who successfully implemented modeling and simulation technology for military organizations located in the United States eastern region. Data was collected from one-on-one semistructured interviews (n = 10) and internal and external organizational documents (n = 12) provided by the participants. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Three major themes emerged: understand the true M&S requirements, incorporate subject matter experts throughout implementation, and anticipate and overcome persistent challenges. One recommendation is for practitioners to develop tasks and milestones to address these challenges at the beginning of implementation and add them to the project schedule. The implications for positive social change include the potential for successful implementation of models and military organizations\u27 simulations to safeguard human lives

Space transportation system and associated payloads: Glossary, acronyms, and abbreviations

A collection of some of the acronyms and abbreviations now in everyday use in the shuttle world is presented. It is a combination of lists that were prepared at Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, places where intensive shuttle activities are being carried out. This list is intended as a guide or reference and should not be considered to have the status and sanction of a dictionary

Moving On:Measuring Movement Remotely after Stroke

Most persons with stroke suffer from motor impairment, which restricts mobility on one side, and affects their independence in daily life activities. Measuring recovery is needed to develop individualized therapies. However, commonly used clinical outcomes suffer from low resolution and subjectivity. Therefore, objective biomechanical metrics should be identified to measure movement quality. However, non-portable laboratory setups are required in order to measure these metrics accurately. Alternatively, minimal wearable systems can be developed to simplify measurements performed at clinic or home to monitor recovery. Thus, the goal of the thesis was ‘To identify metrics that reflect movement quality of upper and lower extremities after stroke and develop wearable minimal systems for tracking the proposed metrics’. Section Upper Extremity First, we systematically reviewed literature ( Chapter II ) to identify metrics used to measure reaching recovery longitudinally post-stroke. Although several metrics were found, it was not clear how they differentiated recovery from compensation strategies. Future studies must address this gap in order to optimize stroke therapy. Next, we assessed a ‘valid’ measure for smoothness of upper paretic limb reaching ( Chapter III ), as this was commonly used to measure movement quality. After a systematic review and simulation analyses, we found that reaching smoothness is best measured using spectral arc length. The studies in this section offer us a better understanding of movement recovery in the upper extremity post-stroke. Section Lower Extremity Although metrics that reflect gait recovery are yet to be identified, in this section we focused on developing minimal solutions to measure gait quality. First, we showed the feasibility of 1D pressure insoles as a lightweight alternative for measuring 3D Ground Reaction Forces (GRF) ( Chapter IV ). In the following chapters, we developed a minimal system; the Portable Gait Lab (PGL) using only three Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) (one per foot and one on the pelvis). We explored the Centroidal Moment Pivot (CMP) point ( Chapter V ) as a biomechanical constraint that can help with the reduction in sensors. Then, we showed the feasibility of the PGL to track 3D GRF ( Chapters VI-VII ) and relative foot and CoM kinematics ( Chapter VIII-IX ) during variable overground walking by healthy participants. Finally, we performed a limited validation study in persons with chronic stroke ( Chapter X ). This thesis offers knowledge and tools which can help clinicians and researchers understand movement quality and thereby develop individualized therapies post-stroke

Master\u27s Thesis and Field Study Abstracts, July 1991-June 1996

This publication, the thirteenth in a series which began in 1957, contains the abstracts of Master\u27s Theses and Field Studies completed by graduate students of St. Cloud State University. The bulletin contains those theses and field studies completed during the period from July of 1991 through June of 1996. A bound copy of each thesis or field study is on file in the Learning Resources Center, which houses the library on this campus. The library copy of each thesis and field study is available for use on an interlibrary loan basis. Copies of this bulletin may be obtained from the Office of Graduate Studies, School of Graduate and Continuing Studies, 121 Administrative Services, St. Cloud State University, 720 S. Fourth Avenue, St. Cloud, Minnesota, 56301-4498

Investigations into the structure of crowdfunding research and the role of the content and linguistic cues in risk disclosure in crowdfunding campaigns

Crowdfunding is widely touted as a way to bring significant changes to the entrepreneurial finance landscape, enabling any entrepreneur to get easy access to financing by tapping into the online crowd. Because of its importance, crowdfunding research in various research areas continues to evolve. Despite its multidisciplinary nature, the centric of crowdfunding research is claimed to be on the determinants of success. This is particularly important given the high failure rate of crowdfunding campaigns and the lack of academic understanding in regard to the factors that contribute to funding success. These issues justify the need to: (1) reveal the overall objective of crowdfunding literature without a specific focus on success factors; and (2) to explore other factors that may contribute to crowdfunding success. In brief, this thesis seeks to investigate the structure and trend in crowdfunding research and to explore the role of risk disclosure in funding success. To achieve this, three empirical studies have been conducted. The first study adopts the bibliometric analysis in examining the structure and trends of crowdfunding-related publications using the citations, co-citations, and co-word analysis on a sample data of 2,956 articles published from the year 2008 to 2018. The data was collected from the premium Web of Science research database. Findings revealed that crowdfunding publications were predominantly in the business and management areas. Although crowdfunding is considered to have originated from the crowdsourcing concept, results from the co-word analysis unveiled that crowdfunding research has little connections to the broader concept of crowdsourcing. The results were expected as crowdfunding concept is specific to financing technology. The results also support previous claims by scholars that most of the publications in crowdfunding focus on funding success. These publications also receive higher citations which imply the importance of the topic in crowdfunding. These findings further support the need to investigate other factors that influence success. The next two studies investigate the role of risk disclosure in crowdfunding campaigns. Study 2 explores the role of risk disclosure in two phases of analysis. The first phase identifies the risk information categories communicated by the two groups of projects, the successful and the failed group. By utilising co-word analysis on a dataset that was comprised of 28,312 projects, the findings reveal that there are three categories of risk information:  risk related to the key operations and process (OPR), risk related to the ability of the team to complete the project (TR), and risk related to funding dependency and business process (FBR). In the second phase, the study utilises the computer-aided textual analysis approach to develop a specific dictionary to measure and identify the presence of the risk information categories in the risk disclosure messages. The study then applies the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and logistic regression to explore their relationship with success. The findings show that the OPR and TR are positively associated with success while the FBR has a negative relationship. The positive effects of OPR and TR imply that these risk information categories contain signals that are relatively costly to produce, in which only high-quality projects or experienced entrepreneurs could afford them. Findings on the FBR indicate that projects that communicate this risk information category are relatively low-quality when they solely depend on the outcome of the crowdfunding campaign. The results also show that when the 15 categories of projects were grouped into two major categories (i.e., technology and creative-based), these major categories of projects moderate the relationship between risk information categories and success. Furthermore, findings reveal that the technology-based projects have a stronger overall effect on success. This indicates that, except for the FBR, risk information disclosed by the entrepreneurs helps their projects to be successful, especially for entrepreneurs who are involved in technology-based projects. The investigation demonstrates that OPR and TR signal the preparedness and competency of the entrepreneurs. Further, the findings of FBR suggest that by fully relying on the campaign outcome and accentuating the risks of crowdfunding projects as similar to the risks involved in the business process signal, then, the projects disregard the intrinsic motivation of backers when funding a project on a reward-based crowdfunding platform. The third study complements the second study by investigating the effects of language usage in risk disclosure on success. This study examines the linguistic cues utilising the concept of language expectancy and impression management. By using the same sample as in the previous study (Study 2), the findings reveal that backers expect the entrepreneurs to discuss risk information using more concrete language. This indicates that language concreteness enhances the persuasion message even when discussing the uncertainty of crowdfunding projects. The analysis of the moderation effects on the relationship between language concreteness and success demonstrate that the temporal and social distance influences such relationships. The results indicate that entrepreneurs who set their funding duration shorter, and made themselves socially proximate, were expected to use more concrete language. Similar results were produced for the behaviour of entrepreneurs who attempted to reduce the social distance between themselves and the potential backers. These findings indicate that the effects of language concreteness were further enhanced when there was a fit between the expected language and the two psychological distance dimensions. Study 3 also reveals the importance of managing impressions when disclosing risk information in the disclosure. Findings indicate that impression management strategies such as tone management, excuses, exemplification and supplication lead to crowdfunding success. Interestingly, the supplication strategy that is considered as the most negative form of impression technique affects success positively. This suggests that making an impression of neediness coerced backers to support the project, thus further suggesting the backers' intrinsic motivation to fund a project on a reward-based crowdfunding platform. To summarise, this thesis provides valuable insights into crowdfunding research and the role of risk disclosure in crowdfunding success. Findings from Study 2 and 3, in particular, have significant theory, practical and policy implications. Key recommendations are provided for entrepreneurs, backers, and crowdfunding platforms on the importance of risk disclosure in influencing backers' funding decisions