The moderate voice of John Sherman and the Republican agenda 1855-1898

Republican John Sherman, United States Congressman, Senator, Treasury Secretary, and Secretary of State had a political career of major importance from 1855 to 1898, yet there have been only casual references by historians and only two biographies of him, with the most recent published in 1902. From a strong Whig Party background, he was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1854; switching to the Republicans that same year. Then elevated to the Senate in 1861, he served in that body throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction when he was the most important voice of party unity and moderation. In 1877, the new President Rutherford Hayes appointed Sherman Secretary of the Treasury. He returned to the Senate after the Hayes administration where he sat for the following 15 years. In this particularly notable period, he not only led the upper house, but he engineered more bills in Congress which bore his name than any other member of either house. These included the critically important Sherman Silver Purchase Act, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and Sherman Inter-State Commerce Act. In 1897 he left the Senate finally when William McKinley appointed him Secretary of State. ^ Through this long, distinguished career, Sherman was involved in all the important legislation that brought the country through the Civil War and Reconstruction and into the post-war world of the Gilded Age of rapid industrialization, and urban growth, Politically, he never strayed far from the nationalistic and economic principles of the Whig Party, and brought both these values to bear in the Republican Party that dominated American political life from 1860 to 1900. Similarly, party loyalty and loyalty to the President always characterized his service. He was indeed, an exemplar of political and statesmanship. ^ While research for this dissertation included review of both journal and monographic literature, its basis lies more critically in primary research in unpublished archival material in repositories from Maine to Ohio, in particular the Library of Congress. ^

Two -way direction of influence in mother-infant interaction as denoted by concurrent reciprocal learning processes

This series of 5 single-subject studies used the operant conditioning paradigm to investigate, within the two-way influence process, how (a) contingent infant attention can reinforce maternal verbal behaviors during a period of mother-infant interaction and under subsequent experimental manipulation. Differential reinforcement was used to determine if it is possible that an infant attending to the mother (denoted by head-turns towards the image of the mother plus eye contact) increases (reinforces) the mother's verbal response (to a cue from the infant) upon which the infant behavior is contingent. There was also (b) an evaluation during the contrived parent-infant interaction for concurrent operant learning of infant vocal behavior via contingent verbal responding (reinforcement) implemented by the mother. Further, it was noted (c) whether or not the mother reported being aware that her responses were influenced by the infant's behavior. Findings showed: the operant conditioning of the maternal verbal behaviors were reinforced by contingent infant attention; and the operant conditioning of infant vocalizations was reinforced by contingent maternal verbal behaviors. No parent reported (1) being aware of the increase in their verbal response reinforced during operant conditioning of parental behavior nor a decrease in those responses during the DRA reversal phase, or (2) noticing a contingency between infant's and mother's response. By binomial 1-tail tests, the verbal-behavior patterns of the 5 mothers were conditioned by infant reinforcement (p < 0.02) and, concurrently, the vocal-response patterns of the 5 infants were conditioned by maternal reinforcement (p < 0.02). A program of systematic empirical research on the determinants of concurrent conditioning within mother-child interaction may provide a way to evaluate the differential effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving parent-child interactions. The work conducted in the present study is one step in this direction. ^

Flanerie: A post -reflexive mode of urban research inquiry

Urban ethnographic studies in social science usually proceed from within a pre-figured research framework that guides field activity and filters what is considered see-worthy and study-worthy to those phenomena which are in some way necessary for the fulfillment of specific research agendas. Reliance on formalized ethnographic research methods to explore the city, and the reflex to intellectualize that which is observed by using them, frequently leads to the neglect of much of what comprises the ethnographic richness of city-life through an overly-contemplative intellectuocentrism. ^ Flânerie, an avocational, proto-sociological ethnographic mode of urban exploration and observation originating in early-nineteenth-century Paris, is representative of an alternate approach to exploration and study of the city—one less subject to a compressed horizon of ethnographic experience. It affords insight into a broad range of phenomena taking place in interstitial urban space and time which often escape the instrumentally overly-determined gaze of professionalist research inquiry. ^ The present work addressed the fact that the concept of flânerie , though occasionally invoked in discussions of methodology in urban sociology and cultural studies, had not been subjected to a systematic attempt to relate it to the research methods of these disciplines. Though as a typological figure the flâneur is thought to have disappeared long ago, practices represented by the concept continue to be engaged in by persons inside and outside of academia who approach city life and social science with a perspective somewhat transcending the reified dichotomies of private-professional and art-and-science. This study transferred aspects of the experience of the city embodied in the flâneur to the realm of ethnographic urban studies and the building of grounded social theory, finding flânerie to be crucial to the development of a refined knowledge of urban life, and an important means by which previously overlooked social phenomena and silenced avenues of research inquiry might be exposed. ^ The conclusions reached found a “flâneuristic” approach to the city as being beneficial to research practice and the vitalization of urban ethnographic inquiry, by affording opportunities for exposure to, and immersion within, an expanded range of quotidian social phenomena that have frequently escaped the academicist gaze. ^

Quality of experience evaluation of voice communication: an affect-based approach

Voice communication systems such as Voice-over IP (VoIP), Public Switched Telephone Networks, and Mobile Telephone Networks, are an integral means of human tele-interaction. These systems pose distinctive challenges due to their unique characteristics such as low volume, burstiness and stringent delay/loss requirements across heterogeneous underlying network technologies. Effective quality evaluation methodologies are important for system development and refinement, particularly by adopting user feedback based measurement. Presently, most of the evaluation models are system-centric (Quality of Service or QoS-based), which questioned us to explore a user-centric (Quality of Experience or QoE-based) approach as a step towards the human-centric paradigm of system design. We research an affect-based QoE evaluation framework which attempts to capture users' perception while they are engaged in voice communication. Our modular approach consists of feature extraction from multiple information sources including various affective cues and different classification procedures such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN). The experimental study is illustrated in depth with detailed analysis of results. The evidences collected provide the potential feasibility of our approach for QoE evaluation and suggest the consideration of human affective attributes in modeling user experience.

The effect of reciprocal mapping on high-risk sixth-grade students' social studies achievement

Reading deficits in students in Grades 4 to 12 are evident in American schools. Informational text is particularly difficult for students. This quasi-experimental study (N=138) investigated sixth-grade students' achievement in social studies using the Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine, compared to sixth-grade students' achievement taught with a traditional approach. The Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine incorporated explicit instruction in text structure using graphic organizers. Students created their own graphic organizers and used them to write about social studies content. The comparison group used a traditional approach, students' reading the textbook and answering questions. Students for this study included sixth-graders in the seven sixth-grade classrooms in two public schools in a small, rural south Florida school district. A focus of this study was to determine the helpfulness of the intervention for at-risk readers. To determine students considered to be at-risk, the researcher used data from the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), 2011-2012, that considers Level 1 and 2 as at-risk readers. The quasi-experimental study used a pretest-posttest control group design, with students assigned to treatment groups by class. Two teachers at the two rural sites were trained on the Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine and taught students in both the experimental and control groups for an equivalent amount of time over a 5-week period. Results of the 3 x 2 factorial ANCOVA found a significant positive difference favoring the experimental group's social studies achievement as compared to that of the comparison group as measured by the pre/post unit test from the social studies series (McGraw-Hill, 2013), when controlling for initial differences in students' reading FCAT scores. Interactions for high-risk struggling readers were investigated using the significance level p < .05. Due to no significant interaction the main effects of treatment were interpreted. The pretest was used as a covariate and the multivariate analysis was found to be significant. Therefore, analysis of covariance was run on each of the dependent variable as a follow-up. Reciprocal Mapping was found to be significant in posttest scores, independent of gender and level of risk, and while holding the pretest scores constant. Findings showed there was a significant difference in the performance of the high-risk reading students taught with the Reciprocal Mapping intervention who scored statistically better than students in the control group. Further study findings showed that teacher fidelity of implementation of the treatment had a statistically significant relationship in predicting posttest scores when controlling for pretest scores. Study results indicated that improving students' use of text structure through the Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine positively supported sixth-grade students' social studies achievement.

One Voice, Two Attitudes: Perceptions of Spanish and English among Cuban Americans in Miami , Lecture by Phillip M. Carter

This flyer promotes the event "One Voice, Two Attitudes: Perceptions of Spanish and English among Cuban Americans in Miami Lecture by Phillip M. Carter" hosted by the Cuban Research Institute.

A recital of selected repertoire for the mezzo-soprano voice

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Buss und Reu, St Matthew Passion Es ist vollbracht, St John Passion FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN O luna lucente, Il Mondo della luna ROBERT SCHUMANN Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart Abschied von Frankreich Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes An die Königin Elisabeth Abschied von der Welt Gebet STEFAN WOLPE Simeini kahotam al libeha, Two Songs for Alto and Piano SRUL IRVING GLICK "...i never saw another butterfly... " To Olga Yes, That's The Way Things Are The Little Mouse On A Sunny Evening Narrative The Butterfly LEILA LUSTIG Wretched Highway WILLIAM BOLCOM The Actor George

Program notes and translations for a graduate voice recital

"Ghi ii sole dal Gange" "O cessate dipiagarmi" "Spesso vibra per suo gioco" Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) "Must the winter come so soon"? from Vanessa Samuel Barber (1910-1981) Two Songs from Mirabai Songs "It's True I Went to the Market" "Don t Go, Don t Go" John Harbison (b.1938) El amor brujo "Cancidn del amor dolido" "Cancidn delfuegofatuo" "Danza del juego del amor" "Las campanas del amanecer " Manuel de Falla (18 76-1946) INTERMISSION "Standchen" from Leise flehen meine Lieder "Du bist die Ruh" D776 "Gretchen am Spinnrade" D257 Franz Schubert (1797-1828) "Una voce pocofa" from Il barbiere di Siviglia Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) La Regata Veneziana - Three songs in Venetian dialect "Anzoleta avanti la regata" "Anzoleta co passa la regata" "Anzoleta dopo la regata"

The bass as a melodic voice in jazz : extended program notes for thesis recital

This thesis discusses the use of the bass as a melodic instrument in jazz. It focuses on seven compositions performed for a Master's recital on March 22, 2010. For each selection, I provide a brief biography of the composer, information about the song and insight on performance practice. I examine the advanced techniques pioneered by innovative bassists and explore ways in which they can be used to further exploit the melodic potential of the bass in a jazz context. A compact disc recording of the recital is included.

A recital of selected repertoire for the soprano voice

Vado, ma dove? W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) Auf dem Strom Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Canciones clásicas españolas Fernando Obradors (1897-1945) Del cabello más sutil La mi sola, Laureola Al amor INTERMISSION Quatre Poémes Hindous Maurice Delage (1879-1961) I. Madras II. Lahore III. Benares IV. Jeypur Wild Swans Ricky Ian Gordon (b. 1956) The Red Dress Once I Was

Hearing the Child's Voice: Their Lived Experience in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Background: More than 200,000 children are admitted annually to Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) in the US. Research has shown young children can provide insight into their hospitalization experiences; child reports rather than parental reports are critical to understanding the child’s experience. Information relating to children’s perceptions while still in the PICU is scarce. Aims: The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate school age children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of PICU while in the PICU; changes in perceptions after transfer to the General Care Unit (GCU); differences in perceptions of school age children/adolescents and those with more invasive procedures. Methods: Interviews were conducted in PICU within 24-48 hours of admission and 24-48 hours after transfer to GCU. Data on demographics, clinical care and number/types of procedures were obtained. Results: Participants were 7 school age children, 13 adolescents; 10 Hispanic; 13 males. Five overarching themes: Coping Strategies, Environmental Factors, Stressors, Procedures/Medications, and Information. Children emphasized the importance of peer support and visitation; adolescents relied strongly on social media and texting. Parent visits sometimes were more stressful than peer visits. Video games, TV, visitors, and eating were diversional activities. In the PICU, they wanted windows to see outside and interesting things to see on the ceiling above them. Children expressed anticipatory fear of shots and procedures, frustration with lab work, and overwhelming PICU equipment. Number of child responses was higher in PICU (927) than GCU (593); the largest difference was in Environmental Factors. Variations between school age children and adolescents were primarily in Coping Strategies, especially in social support. Number of GCU procedures were the same (8 children) or greater (2 children) than PICU procedures. Discussion: Admission to PICU is a very stressful event. Perceptions from children while still in PICU found information not previously found in the literature. Longitudinal studies to identify children’s perceptions regarding PICU hospitalization and post-discharge outcomes are needed.

Giving Voice to Voiceless: Engaging Urban Youth for Possibilities

This symposium will discuss the expansion of The Education Effect – Booker T. Washington, as a university community school partnership designed to engage urban youth for college and career readiness. The partnership is focused on developing collective impact and capacity for academic achievement, social success and college completion. The partnership aligns university expertise, resources and evidenced based strategies to address educational needs through the improvement of teaching and learning; increase graduation rate and parental involvement.