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In this dissertation I investigate how community context affects Spanish language use and English proficiency among Latina and Latino children in the United States, focusing on the children of immigrants. I view children's language attributes through a sociological perspective that recognizes that children learn and use languages within specific social and cultural contexts, and that these contexts have an important effect on language acquisition and use. This theoretical perspective leads to the hypothesis that children's language skills and language use will be affected by the communities t...

The enhanced access of developing countries to the international financial market since the seventies has been characterized by boom-bust cycles of unfettered external borrowing followed by abrupt financial crises. The first chapter analyzes the macroeconomic effects of volatile capital flows to a developing country. The analysis shows that investment, consumption, and the current account deficit depend positively on the expected availability of external finance. If international investors may unexpectedly decide to reduce their exposure to financial assets issued by the country, the optimal c...

The analysis reported here compares male and female rape reporting behavior. Results from an analysis of National Crime Survey data indicate that the characteristics of rape, and factors that influence a rape reporting decision, differ by sex, and that sex role socialization may largely influence the rape reporting decision for both males and females. Both men and women were more likely to report victimization when there was physical evidence, but only women were affected by such variables as the victim/offender relationship, the age of the offender, and whether or not the victimization was ...

Principals of middle-grade schools in port of entry communities along the Texas-Mexico border were surveyed to learn about the education and preparational experiences these principals believed novice teachers should have before coming to teach in their schools. Demographic data about themselves, teachers, students and middle-grade schools, along with suggestions for improving Texas teacher education programs were also obtained. Mexican Americans were the dominant ethnic group and culture in these schools for principals, teachers and students. Principals were mostly male, well educated, and ...

William James and John Dewey insisted that pragmatic philosophy finds meaning in its struggle to deal with emergent social problems. Ironically, few have attempted to use pragmatism to articulate methods for ameliorating social difficulties. This dissertation attempts to do just that by putting James' and Dewey's philosophy to work on the moral and scientific problems associated with genetic engineering and the Human Genome Project. The intention is to demonstrate the usefulness of a pragmatic approach to applied ethics and philosophy of biology. The work of proponents and critics of genet...

The dissertation presents the results of a multi-epoch very long baseline interferometric study of water masers located in the extended atmospheres of evolved stars. The research was performed using the Very Long Baseline Array and Very Large Array of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Optical monitoring of the stars was provided by the American Association of Variable Star Observers, the Variable Star Network and Dr. Bill Neely of the NF/Observatory. Water masers of found to exist in a region where a population inversion of the rotation transition of 22 GHz can be maintained by collis...

During the adolescent years, young people seek to leave behind childhood and the age of "informed consent"--i.e, the years when adults informed and expected children to consent! Teenagers strive for adult roles and passionately seek ways to prove their maturity to themselves, peers, and adults. This quest for adult roles leads teens through a variety of rites of passage both formal and informal. Some rites of passage which involve youth/adult partnerships delineate the movement from childhood to adulthood in positive ways while young people (psychological orphans) who do not have adult supp...

America is a mobile nation and frequent relocation is a way of life for many corporate families. This qualitative review of literature relating to the sociological impact of relocation on the corporate family appears to show that relocation has short-term and long-term implications for the family system. Relocation is not an isolated event but a process of adjustment over time involving emotional stages similar to the stages of grief and loss. Each family member may experience the relocation differently and progress through the stages at a different rate. This creates a period of disorganiz...

Echocardiography.org is a multimedia publishing company which was founded in 1998 to meet a consumer demand for education in the field of transesophageal echocardiography. Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is an ultrasound diagnostic technique for obtaining real-time images of the heart and great vessels from a transducer positioned within the esophagus. This technique receives widespread application in the perioperative care of critically ill patients. The company has two divisions, namely, a research unit based in New Haven, Connecticut, and a production and distribution unit based i...

The study of Multivariate Time Series has always been more difficult at the modeling stage than the univariate case. Identification of a suitable model, questions of stability, and the difficulties of prediction are well recognised. A variety of methods appear to be worth examining. This thesis is concerned with the proposal of an useful tool which is to apply canonical analysis to a realisation of a Multivariate Time Series and concentrates it's attention on k-variate ARMA(p,q) models. The multivariate series is partitioned into two overlapping or non-overlapping sets of different sizes. The ...