This report documents the final report the Critical Digital Pedagogy Faculty Mentoring Network project funded through the University of North Texas Office of Faculty Success Team Mentoring Grant. This final report includes a summary of Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 activities, along with other related events.

This presentation discusses the University of North Texas Libraries' efforts to identify, document, and increase access to hidden or obscured collections.

This article discusses scholarly communication from a holistic perspective and includes some strategies implemented at University of North Texas Libraries.

Presentation for the 2017 UNT Open Access Symposium. This presentation provides background on the Denton Declaration, an open data manifesto created in 2012, before introducing panelists for a discussion on the future of open data and open access.

Presentation for the 2017 ALCTS Exchange Virtual Conference. This presentation explores multidimensional measures including percentage of expected use, percentage of expected holdings, and ratio of borrowings to holdings.

Discussion guide presentation for the 2017 ALCTS Exchange Virtual Conference. This guide explores multidimensional measures including percentage of expected use, percentage of expected holdings, and ratio of borrowings to holdings.

Presentation for the 2017 Open Access Symposium. This presentation provides an overview of the Data Refuge initiative by the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities and Penn Libraries.

Presentation for the 2017 Open Access Symposium. This presentation explores the need complex issues involved with preserving public records, specifically through the need to triage preservation efforts; understand the government information lifecycle; differentiate access and usage; and engagement with stakeholders.

Presentation at the 2017 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries. This presentation includes the case study of developing 3D models of the tools, hosting the resulting data in the digital library, and the pedagogical opportunities the project has afforded.

Presentation for the 2017 Open Access Symposium. This presentation discusses the outreach efforts and datasets available through the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

This column article discusses how academic librarians can assist with increasing student retention in STEM fields.

We are facing an energy crisis because of the limitation of the fossil fuel and the pollution caused by burning it. Clean energy technologies, such as fuel cells and metal-air batteries, are studied extensively because of this high efficiency and less pollution. Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are essential in the process of energy storage and conversion, and noble metals (e.g. Pt) are needed to catalyze the critical chemical reactions in these devices. Functionalized carbon nanomaterials such as heteroatom-doped and molecule-adsorbed graphene can be used as metal-free catalysts to replace the expensive and scarce platinum-based catalysts for the energy storage and conversion. Traditionally, experimental studies on the catalytic performance of carbon nanomaterials have been conducted extensively, however, there is a lack of computational studies to guide the experiments for rapid search for the best catalysts. In addition, theoretical mechanism and the rational design principle towards ORR and OER also need to be fully understood. In this dissertation, density functional theory calculations are performed to calculate the thermodynamic and electrochemical properties of heteroatom-doped graphene and molecule-adsorbed graphene for ORR and OER. Gibb's free energy, overpotential, charge transfer and edge effect are evaluated. The charge transfer analysis show …

The penchant towards development of high performance materials for light weighting engineering systems through various thermomechanical processing routes has been soaring vigorously. Friction stir processing (FSP) - a relatively new thermomechanical processing route had shown an excellent promise towards microstructural modification in many Al and Mg alloy systems. Nevertheless, the expansion of this process to high temperature materials like titanium alloys and steels is restricted by the limited availability of tool materials. Despite it challenges, the current thesis sets a tone for the usage of FSP to tailor the mechanical properties in titanium alloys and steels. FSP was carried out on three near beta titanium alloys, namely Ti6246, Ti185 and Tiβc with increasing β stability index, using various tool rotation rates and at a constant tool traverse speed. Microstructure and mechanical property relationship was studied using experimental techniques such as SEM, TEM, mini tensile testing and synchrotron x-ray diffraction. Two step aging on Ti6246 had resulted in an UTS of 2.2GPa and a specific strength around 500 MPa m3/mg, which is about 40% greater than any commercially available metallic material. Similarly, FSP on an ultra-high strength steel―Eglin steel had resulted in a strength greater than 2GPa with a ductility close …

Multimodular designs of electron donor-acceptor systems are the ultimate strategy in fabricating antenna-reaction center mimics for artificial photosynthetic applications. The studied photosystems clearly demonstrated efficient energy transfer from the antenna system to the primary electron donor, and charge stabilization of the radical ion pair achieved with the utilization of secondary electron donors that permits either electron migration or hole transfer. Moreover, the molecular arrangement of the photoactive components also influences the route of energy and electron transfer as observed from the aluminum(III) porphyrin-based photosystems. Furthermore, modulation of the photophysical and electronic properties of these photoactive units were illustrated from the thio-aryl substitution of subphthalocyanines yielding red-shifted Q bands of the said chromophore; hence, regulating the rate of charge separation and recombination in the subphthalocyanine-fullerene conjugates. These multicomponent photosystems has the potential to absorb the entire UV-visible-NIR spectrum of the light energy allowing maximum light-harvesting capability. Furthermore, it permits charge stabilization of the radical ion pair enabling the utilization of the transferred electron/s to be used by water oxidizing and proton reducing catalysts in full-scale artificial photosynthetic apparatuses.

In this study, I explored the different perceptions of teachers in a large urban school district in Texas towards a pay-for-performance program used on their respective campuses between 2011-2016. In total, 97 teachers from four different middle school campuses participated in this study. A descriptive analyst was conducted on teacher responses to an online survey to answer the research questions examined in this study: 1) What are teachers' perceptions of the pay-for-performance program's impact on teacher motivation?, 2) What are teachers' perceptions of the pay-for-performance program's impact on teacher retention?, and 3) What are the differences among teachers' perceptions of the pay-for-performance programs on the participating campuses? The results indicate 48.3% and 53.4% of the participants perceive pay-for-performance programs as having a positive impact on teacher motivation and teacher retention, respectively. Additionally, the results demonstrate 47.5% of participating teachers responded positively towards the pay-for-performance program on their respective campuses. This study has implications for policymakers and school district leaders who may consider implementing teacher pay-for-performance programs. Future research studies might explore school districts of different sizes throughout Texas and across the United States to gain a broader prospective of pay-for-performance programs.

Cognitive poetics, the recently developed field of literary theory which utilizes principles from cognitive science and cognitive linguistics to examine literature, is applied in this study to an exploration of the poetry of William Butler Yeats. The theoretical foundation for this approach is embodiment theory, the concept from cognitive linguistics that language is an embodied phenomenon and that meaning and meaning construction are bodily processes grounded in our sensorimotor experiences. A systematic analysis including conceptual metaphors, image schemas, cognitive mappings, mental spaces, and cognitive grammar is applied here to selected poems of Yeats to discover how these models can inform our readings of these poems. Special attention is devoted to Yeats's interest in the mind's eye, his crafting of syntax in stanzaic development, his atemporalization through grammar, and the antinomies which converge in selected symbols from his poems.

In this paper we explore coloring theorems for the reals, its quotients, cardinals, and their combinations. This work is done under the scope of the axiom of determinacy. We also explore generalizations of Mycielski's theorem and show how these can be used to establish coloring theorems. To finish, we discuss the strange realm of long unions.

Nearly 700,000 suspects with mental disorders are arrested and Mirandized each year. The current study systematically examined the effects of cognitive deficits and psychological symptoms on both Miranda comprehension and reasoning. The current sample was comprised of 85 adult psychiatric inpatients recruited from University Behavioral Health (UBH), a private psychiatric hospital in North Texas. Unexpectedly, most inpatients demonstrated pervasive deficits in their immediate recall of a representative Miranda warning, omitting approximately four-fifths of its content. In addition, the majority of inpatients evidenced damaging errors in their reasoning about waiver decisions. As a result, 64.7% waived and subsequently confessed after only a 3-5 minute interrogation. Interestingly, impaired verbal ability but not the severity of their symptoms predicted greater deficits in Miranda comprehension.

This project aims to explore the beliefs of international teachers regarding the students with whom they work, and the change in those beliefs over time. Participant observation, interviews, and questionnaires were used as tools of collection to address the following research questions: How did teachers' beliefs about students change over time? What variables were significantly associated with the rate of change in teacher beliefs about students? What types of challenges did teaches face while living and working in Thailand? Over the course of four months, I shadowed twenty-two U.S. teachers in thirteen different locations throughout Thailand. Participants were enrolled in an international teaching program in Thailand that provided a cultural orientation and teacher training. Participants were then assigned to teaching jobs throughout the country. Qualitative and quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS and NVivo software. This project contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning, and anthropological and education research dedicated to exploring teachers' beliefs about students. Results of the study provide vital information about what variables or experiences may influence a critical analysis of beliefs among teachers working with students who they perceive as different from themselves. Due to some of the parallels between this study population and that …

Ghana is identified among the developing countries with high maternal mortality ratio in Africa. This study unpacked the Demographic and Health Survey data by examining the maternal health indicators at the district level using GIS methods. Understanding the geographic patterns of antenatal care, place of delivery, and skilled birth attendants at the small scale will help to formulate and plan for location-specific health interventions that can improve maternal health care behavior among Ghanaian women. Districts with high rates and low rates were identified. Place of residence, Gini-Coefficient, wealth status, internet access, and religious affiliation were used to explore the underlying factors associated with the observed patterns. Economic inequality was positively associated with increased use of maternal health care services. The ongoing free maternal health policy serves as a cushion effect for the economic inequality among the districts in the Northern areas. Home delivery is common among the rural districts and is more prominent mostly in the western part of Northern Region and southwest of Upper West. Educating women about the free maternal health policy remains the most viable strategy for positive maternal health outcomes and in reducing MMR in Ghana.

This dissertation takes up the question of the social function of philosophy. Popular accounts of the nature and value of philosophy reinforce long-standing perceptions that philosophy is useless or irrelevant to pressing societal problems. Yet, the increasingly neoliberal political-economic environment of higher education places a premium on mechanisms that link public funding for research to demonstrations of return on investment in the form of benefitting broader society. This institutional situation presents a philosophical problem warranting professional attention. This project offers a diagnosis of the problem and develops a way forward from it. Drawing from Foucauldian archaeological methods, my analysis focuses on the interplay of institutional structures and intellectual practices. Since the early 20th century, departments of philosophy on college and university campuses have been the center of gravity for professional philosophy in the US. Establishing this institutional ‘home' for philosophers drove the adoption of disciplinary practices, norms, and standards for inquiry. But the metaphilosophical assumptions underpinning disciplinarity have become problematic, I argue: they are poor guides for navigating the situation of higher education in the 21st century. Several movements within the profession of philosophy during the 1960s and 70s sought to reverse philosophers' general retreat from public affairs. Applied philosophy, …

Bulk metallic glasses and multi-principal element alloys represent relatively new classes of multi-component engineering materials designed for satisfying multiple functionalities simultaneously. Correlating the microstructure with mechanical behavior (at the microstructural length-scales) in these materials is key to understanding their performance. In this study, the structure evolution and nano-mechanical behavior of these two classes of materials was investigated with the objective of fundamental scientific understanding of their properties. The structure evolution, high temperature nano-mechanical behavior, and creep of two Zr-based alloys was studied: Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10.0Be22 (Vitreloy1) and Zr52.5Ti5Cu17.9Ni14.6All0 (Vitreloy105). Devitrification was found to proceed via the formation of a metastable icosahedral phase with five-fold symmetry. The deformation mechanism changes from inhomogeneous or serrated flow to homogenous flow near 0.9Tg, where Tg is the glass transition temperature. The creep activation energy for Vitreloy1 and Vitreloy105 were 144 kJ/mol and 125 kJ/mol, respectively in the range of room temperature to 0.75Tg. The apparent activation energy increased drastically to 192 kJ/mol for Vitreloy1 and 215 kJ/mol for Vitreloy105 in the range of 0.9Tg to Tg, indicating a change in creep mechanism. Structure evolution in catalytic amorphous alloys, Pt57.5Cu14.7Ni5.3P22.5 and Pd43Cu27Ni10P20, was studied using 3D atom probe tomography and elemental segregation between different phases and the …

This research seeks to answer why and which Chinese people go to the street to protest. I argue that different sectors of Chinese society differ from each other regarding their tendencies to participate in protest. In addition to their grievances, the incentives to participate in protest and their capacities to overcome the collective action problem all needed to be taken into account. Using individual level data along with ordinary binary logistic regression and multilevel logistic regression models, I first compare the protest participation of workers and peasants and find that workers are more likely than peasants to participate in protests in the context of contemporary China. I further disaggregate the working class into four subtypes according to the ownership of the enterprises they work for. I find that workers of township and village enterprises are more likely than workers of state-owned enterprises to engage in protest activities, while there is no significant difference between the workers of domestic privately owned enterprises and the workers of foreign-owned enterprises regarding their protest participation. Finally, I find that migrant workers, which refers to peasants who move to urban areas in search of jobs, are less likely than urban registered workers to participate in …

It is the teacher's responsibility to guide students in building an effective and injury-free piano technique. Improper technique, poor training and bad posture at the instrument all may cause problems such as lack of muscle control, weakness, or tension in the hands. Many teachers are interested in finding information about specific exercises dealing with finger strengthening, stretching, and warm-up strategies, as well as guidelines for safe practicing. It is therefore important for both teachers and students to understand how to build a technique from the earliest years of instruction. Carl Tausig (1841-1871) and Alfred Cortot (1877-1962) both contributed to the development of piano technique by writing books that include a significant number of exercises and excerpts. Their books incorporate detailed instructions on how to play each exercise effectively and without fatigue. Subsequently, Heinrich Ehrlich (1822-1899) collected and systematically arranged Tausig's notes, complementing them with detailed information on how to play Tausig's exercises without causing injury. This dissertation compares and contrasts the exercises found in Alfred Cortot's book, Rational Principles of Pianoforte Technique, and Carl Tausig's book, Daily Studies for the Pianoforte. The latter is based on the practical guidebook, How to Practise on the Piano: Reflections and Suggestions, written by …