The process of protein translation and translocation into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) can often be challenging for introductory college biology students to visualize. To help them understand how proteins become oriented in the ER membrane, I developed a hands-on activity in which students use Play-Doh to simulate the process of protein…

We provide a 5E structured-inquiry lesson so that students can learn more of the mathematics behind the logistic model of population biology. By using models and mathematics, students understand how population dynamics can be influenced by relatively simple changes in the environment.

This article situates the discussion of virtual ethnography within the larger political/economic changes of twenty-first century consumer capitalism and suggests that increasingly our entire social world is a virtual world and that there were very particular utopian and dystopian framings of virtual community growing out of that history. The…

Differential item functioning (DIF) occurs when the probability of responding in a particular category to an item differs for members of different groups who are matched on the construct being measured. The identification of DIF is important for valid measurement. This research evaluates an improved version of Lord's X[superscript 2] Wald test for…

DIMPACK Version 1.0 for assessing test dimensionality based on a nonparametric conditional covariance approach is reviewed. This software was originally distributed by Assessment Systems Corporation and now can be freely accessed online. The software consists of Windows-based interfaces of three components: DIMTEST, DETECT, and CCPROX/HAC, which…

The priming of concepts has been shown to influence peoples' subsequent actions, often unconsciously. We propose 3 mechanisms (psychological, cultural, and biological) as a unified explanation of such effects. (a) Primed concepts influence holistic representations of situations by parallel constraint satisfaction. (b) The constraints among…

An in-depth understanding of all parameters that affect an instrumental analysis method, allowing students to explore how these instruments work so that they are not just a "black box," is key to being able to optimize the technique and obtain the best possible results. It is, however, impractical to provide such in depth coverage of…

With the weakening economy, many nonprofit organizations have cut their budget and are investigating cost cutting expenditures to survive from cutting employees, to cutting services, to cutting business travel. Several industry challenges have resulted in reduced business activity. Increased demands have required practitioners to be innovative in…

In Chapter 1 I consider three separate explanations for how price affects the usage rate of a purchased product: Screening, signaling, and sunk-cost bias. I propose an experimental design that disentangles the three effects. Furthermore, in order to quantify and compare these effects I introduce a simple structural model and show that the…

A key issue of cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) is the correct identification of Q-matrix which indicates the relationship between attributes and test items. Previous CDMs typically assumed a known Q-matrix provided by domain experts such as those who developed the questions. However, misspecifications of Q-matrix had been discovered in the past…

First responders are continuously moving at an incident site and this movement requires them to access Service-Oriented Architecture services, such as a Web Map Service, via mobile wireless networks. First responders from inside a building often have problems in communicating to devices outside that building due to propagation obstacles. Dynamic…

Single-case or single-subject experimental designs (SSED) are used to evaluate the effect of one or more treatments on a single case. Although SSED studies are growing in popularity, the results are in theory case-specific. One systematic and statistical approach for combining single-case data within and across studies is multilevel modeling. The…

When randomized experiments cannot be conducted in practice, propensity score (PS) techniques for matching treated and control units are frequently used for estimating causal treatment effects from observational data. Despite the popularity of PS techniques, they are not yet well studied for matching multilevel data where selection into treatment…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of virtual reality training on the development of cognitive memory and handgun accuracy by law enforcement neophytes. One hundred and six academy students from 6 different academy classes were divided into two groups, experimental and control. The experimental group was exposed to virtual…

This dissertation explores the effects of increased digitization on the evolutionary dynamics of organizational routines. Do routines become more flexible, or more rigid, as the mix of digital technologies and human actors changes? What are the mechanisms that govern the evolution of routines? The dissertation theorizes about the effects of…