Digital Commons Network^™

Rlj Volume 73, Number 1 Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Competencia Bilingüe En La Zona De Tres Fronteras: Un Estudio Sobre El Nivel De Bilingüismo Entre Habitantes De Leticia, Colombia; Tabatinga, Brasil; Y Santa Rosa De Yavarí­, Perú, Thomas A. Robins

Theses and Dissertations

Esta tesis investiga el nivel de competencia bilingüe (la capacidad de un hablante para comprender y producir en dos idiomas) de los habitantes de la región de Tres Fronteras, Sudamérica. Tres Fronteras es el nombre de la zona trifronteriza entre las ciudades de Leticia, Colombia; Tabatinga, Brasil; y Santa Rosa de Yavarí, Perú. En Tres Fronteras, las personas de los tres países pueden cruzar libremente de un país a otro, lo que crea situaciones de contacto lingüístico entre el español y el portugués. Debido a esa situación de contacto lingüístico, muchas personas de las tres ciudades tienen al menos un …

Adolescent's Perceptions Of The Parent's Marital Relationship And The Impact On Their Suicide Risk, Savannah Heaton Hurt

Theses and Dissertations

Suicide risk is rapidly increasing in children and adolescents. It is vital that research explores the causes in child and adolescent suicide risk. Research has failed to identify if the marital relationship may be correlated with this increase in suicide ideation in children. This study set out to determine if a child's perception of their parents' marital conflict impacts the child's suicidal risk. Using the Family Foundations of Youth Development project this study analyzed 1,692 parent and child participants to test if the child's perceptions of the marital conflict impacted their suicide risk and if the parent's own report of …

The Ideal Spanish Candidate: The Effects Of Gender On The Electability Of Religious Candidates, Arabella Smith

Undergraduate Honors Theses

While the existing literature illustrates that voters living in Western countries are likely to elect female candidates and less likely to elect minority non-Christian candidates, literature has not yet addressed how the intersectionality of gender and religion affect voter preference. In this paper, I investigate how a candidate’s gender and religion interact to affect their likelihood of being elected. I use vignettes in a conjoint survey experiment of Spanish voters to show voter preference across two intersecting identities: gender and religion. I find that female Muslim candidates are significantly more electable than male Muslim candidates. This contributes to the body …

Introduction, Liudmila Klimanova Phd

Russian Language Journal

On behalf of the editorial team of the Russian Language Journal, it is with great pleasure that we present Volume 73, Number 1. This issue, available exclusively online, features six articles and two book reviews that span a broad spectrum of topics within Russian language studies. The issue opens with Nadezhda Braun's exploration of how Russian minority languages are minimized through Russian educational policies. Sofya Yunusova investigates the educational potential of literary texts in eliciting affective responses in the language-literature classroom. Joan A. Chevalier's study explores the semantic value of connecting phrases and conjunctions, providing insights into the linguistic …

Nonsolvent-Induced Phase Separation Inside Liquid Droplets, Rami Alhasan, Tanner A. Wilcoxson, Dakota S. Banks, Sion Jung, Douglas R. Tree

Faculty Publications

Nonsolvent-induced phase separation (NIPS) is a popular method for creating polymeric particles with internal microstructure, but many fundamental questions remain surrounding the kinetics of the complex coupled mass transfer and phase separation processes. In this work, we use simulations of a phase-field model to examine how (i) finite domain boundaries of a polymer droplet and (ii) solvent/nonsolvent miscibility affect the NIPS process. To isolate the effects of phase separation kinetics and solvent/nonsolvent mass transfer on the NIPS process, we study two different cases. First, we investigate droplet concentrations that originate inside the two-phase region, where phase separation kinetics alone governs …

The Everydayness Of Instructional Design And The Pursuit Of Quality In Online Courses, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

This article reports research into the everydayness of instructional design (meaning designers’ daily routines, run-of-the-mill interactions with colleagues, and other, prosaic forms of social contact), and how everydayness relates to their pursuit of quality in online course design. These issues were investigated through an ethnographic case study, centered on a team of instructional designers at a university in the United States. Designers were observed spending significant amounts of time engaged in practices of course refinement, meaning mundane, workaday tasks like revising, updating, fine-tuning, or fixing the courses to which they were assigned. Refining practices were interrelated with, but also experienced …

Off The Books: Making A Space For Bipoc Representation In Young Adult Publishing, Elisha Fernandez

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The publishing industry in the United States has long been dominated by white voices, resulting in a significant lack of representation for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in the form of both authors and characters. This project aims to survey young adult BIPOC readers to explore their experiences with representation in the young adult (YA) genre and assess the impact of representation on their consumption of literature. Through assessing quantitative and qualitative answers to an online survey, the results reveal correlations between representation, enjoyment of literature, and the frequency of YA literature consumption among different BIPOC groups. These …

Informal Practices Of Localizing Open Educational Resources In Ghana, Emily Durham Bradshaw, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

Research on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) often notes the potential benefits for users to revise, reuse, and remix OER to localize it for specific learners. However, a gap in the literature exists in terms of research that explores how this localization occurs in practice. This is a significant gap given the current flow of OER from higher-income countries in the Global North to lower-income countries in the Global South (King et al., 2018). This study explores how OER from one area of the world is localized when it is used in a different cultural context.

Findings indicated …

How Female Bipoc Students At A Predominantly White Institution Think About Belonging: A Multiperspective Study, Delirio Juarez

Theses and Dissertations

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) report decreased sense of belonging compared to White students (Hunn, 2014; Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Museus et al., 2018; Strayhorn, 2019). The study aimed to answer, "What are the daily lived experiences of BIPOC students at a PWI?" and "How do BIPOC students at a PWI describe feelings of belonging (if at all)?" The study was conducted at a private, religiously affiliated, PWI, in the Western United States. The University Belonging Questionnaire (Slaten et al., 2018) was used to sort students' feelings of belonging. Female participants who …

"I Think They're Poisoning My Mind": Understanding The Motivations Of People Who Have Voluntarily Adopted Secure Email, Warda Usman

Theses and Dissertations

Secure email systems that use end-to-end encryption are the best method we have for ensuring user privacy and security in email communication. However, the adoption of secure email remains low, with previous studies suggesting mainly that secure email is too complex or inconvenient to use. However, the perspectives of those who have, in fact, chosen to use an encrypted email system are largely overlooked. To understand these perspectives, we conducted a semi-structured interview study that aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the mindsets underlying adoption and use of secure email services. Our participants come from a variety of countries …

A Method Of Reconstructing Historical Destructive Landslides Using Bayesian Inference, Raelynn Wonnacott

Theses and Dissertations

Along with being one of the most populated regions of the world, Indonesia has one of the highest natural disaster rates worldwide. One such natural disaster that Indonesia is particularly prone to are tsunamis. Tsunamis are primarily caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and debris flows. To effectively allocate resources and create emergency plans we need an understanding of the risk factors of the region. Understanding the source events of destructive tsunamis of the past are critical to understanding the these risk factors. We expand upon previous work focusing on earthquake-generated tsunamis to consider landslide-generated tsunamis. Using Bayesian inference and modern …

Recommending Answers To Math Questions Using Kl-Divergence And The Approximate Xml Tree Matching Approach, Siqi Gao

Theses and Dissertations

Mathematics is the science and study of quality, structure, space, and change. It seeks out patterns, formulates new conjectures, and establishes the truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions. The study of mathematics makes a person better at solving problems. It gives someone skills that (s)he can use across other subjects and apply in many different job roles. In the modern world, builders use mathematics every day to do their work, since construction workers add, subtract, divide, multiply, and work with fractions. It is obvious that mathematics is a major contributor to many areas of study. For …

Dd Slug Migration: Mathematical Model And Numerical Results, Joy Song

Theses and Dissertations

Amoebae are commonly studied to understand embryogenesis, and the best-characterized amoebozoan species is Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd). Dd has a very simple life cycle with a range of developmental stages, among which we are most interested in the stage of a migrating slug. It has been observed that different sizes of Dd slugs maintain a proportional distribution of prestalk cells and prespore cells: prestalk cells occupy the anterior 20% of the slug, while prespore cells occupy the posterior 80%. However, it remains unknown how the migrating slug forms and preserves this anterior-posterior proportional pattern under so many different dynamics including cell …

Morphogenetic Engineering Of Synthetic Protocell Systems, Qinyu Zhu

Theses and Dissertations

Observing and studying how life forms behave, i.e., their movement, adaptability, and so on, have enabled human beings to develop new technologies or optimize existing ones. One of the more noticeable phenomena in Nature is morphogenesis. Morphogenetic processes exist in different stages of biological development, from cellular division to tissue and organ formation. It is easy to observe shape development during mophogenesis due to emerging imaging techniques. However, it is hard to understand this process due to its complex organization, and the morphogenetic responses can be induced by a variety of chemicals or mechanical stresses and are subject to the …

Selection-Based Convolution For Irregular Images And Graph Data, David Marvin Hart

Theses and Dissertations

The field of Computer Vision continues to be revolutionized by advances in Convolutional Neural Networks. These networks are well suited for the regular grid structure of image data. However, there are many irregular image types that do not fit within such a framework, such as multi-view images, spherical images, superpixel representations, and texture maps for 3D meshes. These kinds of representations usually have specially designed networks that only operate and train on that unique form of data, thus requiring large datasets for each data domain. This dissertation aims to bridge the gap between standard convolutional networks and specialized ones. It …

Methods For Designing Compact And Deployable Origami-Inspired Flat-Foldable Spacecraft Antennas And Other Systems, Collin Ryan Ynchausti

Theses and Dissertations

There are times when it is desirable for devices to be stowed compactly, ``transported'' to the location of their desired use, and then deployed to another stable shape or configuration to perform their designed function. Origami-based mechanisms are beneficial in these cases due to their compact, folded nature and large deployments. Unlike traditional mechanical design, compliant mechanism and origami-based design approaches inherently have coupled characteristics, creating complex design problems. The research presented here discusses metrics, methods, and designs to aid in the design of origami-adapted and compliant mechanisms, focusing on the design case of deployable space systems. First, the hexagonal …

Investigating Speech Perception In Children With Speech Delay, Dyslexia, And Speech Delay And Dyslexia, Lauren Marie Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

Perceptual deficits related to phonology in children with speech delay (SD) and children with dyslexia have been identified in separate lines of research. However, there has only been a small number of studies that have investigated the perceptual deficits of children with SD and/or dyslexia in the same study to better understand the overlap of their speech perception abilities. Children with SD have previously shown deficits perceiving speech stimuli that is acoustically sparse, particularly when stimuli contain speech sounds they do not produce correctly. Yet in contrast to children with dyslexia, children with SD are better able to recover linguistic …

Making Space Behind The Veil: Black Agency Within A Predominantly White Religion, Michael Wood, Grace Ann Soelberg, Jacob Rugh

Faculty Publications

The work of W.E.B. Du Bois highlights the significance of Christian religion in Black American life. According to Du Bois, the Black Church serves as a site of self-formation and affirmation, and the White Church as a source of racist beliefs and justifications for inequality. In this paper, we expand Du Bois’ inquiry about the influence of religion with a study of Black Americans who belong to a predominantly White religion. For those whose religious experience is almost wholly within the “white world,” what role does religion play in their lives? We analyze a set of 52 public accounts by …

Algorithmic Fidelity And The Use Of Large Language Models In Social Science Research, Christopher Michael Rytting

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we argue that large language models (LLMs) exhibit a considerable amount of \textit{algorithmic fidelity}, a property where they have modeled ideas, behaviors, and attitudes of the population who generated their training data. This has important implications for social science, as this fidelity theoretically allows for the use of LLMs as effective proxies for human beings in experiments and research. We demonstrate this empirically in various social science domains (political partisanship, demographic surveying, voting behavior, hot-button policy issues, news media, populism, congressional summaries), in various applications (replicating social science survey findings, assisting in coding of text datasets, inferring …

Leveraging The Power Of Wikipedia And Wikidata For Your Library, Nicole Lewis, Rachel Helps

Faculty Publications

Wikipedia is one of the most popular sources of information on the internet. As information professionals, we can change information on Wikipedia to be more accurate and complete. By using Wikidata, librarians can affect information searches at a deep, machine-readable level. This session will discuss some ways that librarians can increase the accessibility of the media and information in their libraries and bring their hidden collections to light.

The Criminalization Of Female Genital Mutilation In Ohio: A Social And Political Analysis, Madsyn Selph

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research examines the public attitudes towards the criminalization of female genital mutilation (“FGM”) in Ohio in 2018 with the passage of S.B. 214. Content from The Columbus Dispatch, testimony in favor of the bill, and an oral history with a current Ohio Senator who was a House Representative in 2018 were used as data in this research. Data are examined using group threat theory to better understand the attitudes of the Columbus public towards trends in immigration and FGM. Results find that anti-Islam and anti-African sentiments (and specifically anti-Somali sentiments) were widely found in these data, as well as …

Dead Men Tell No Tales: How The British Empire Destroyed Pirates With Monstrous Legal Rhetoric, Ashley L. Nef

Theses and Dissertations

The state often enacts violence against marginalized groups by rendering them monstrous. The early eighteenth century saw early and stellar instances of this phenomenon in the way the British Empire pursued and executed pirates. These "golden age" pirates represented an extraordinary cross-section of marginalization politically, economically, socially, and otherwise, all of which threatened the political and social mores of Imperial Britain. In order to implement a policy and practice of pirate annihilation, British authorities constructed pirates as monstrous by racializing, dehumanizing, and emphasizing the supernatural quality of pirates. This study analyzes three eighteenth-century piracy trial transcripts--those of William Kidd, Stede …

"What Would It Mean For Us To Seem 'Good' To Each Other?": Contemporary Black Women+ On Fat Phobia And Misogynoir, Devon Ariel Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

White supremacy's impact on Black bodies is well-known. Starting with the enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendants, to Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, the race-based War on Drugs, mass incarceration, police murders--and now, through fat phobia. Fat phobia--the hatred of and discrimination against fatness--is problematic for all bodies because it limits basic opportunities and privileges. However, it becomes particularly dangerous at the intersection of structural racism and misogyny. Francis Beale argues that as both Black people and women+, Black women+ carry a "double strike" against them; consequently, they experience both racism and misogyny, termed "misogynoir" by Moya Bailey. Language …

Developing Genotypic And Phenotypic Systems For Early Analysis Of Drug-Resistant Bacteria, Yesman Akuoko

Theses and Dissertations

Antimicrobial resistance in bacteria is a global health challenge with a projected fallout of 10 million deaths annually and cumulative costs of over 1 trillion dollars by 2050. The currently available tools exploited in the detection of bacteria or their DNA can be expensive, time inefficient, or lack multiplex capabilities among others. The research work highlighted in this dissertation advances techniques employed in the phenotypic or genotypic detection of bacteria and their DNA. In this dissertation, I present polymethyl methacrylate-pressure sensitive adhesive microfluidic platforms developed using a time-efficient, inexpensive fabrication technique. Microfluidic devices were then equipped with functionalized monoliths and …

Thermal Atomization Of Impinging Drops On Superheated Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Eric Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Drop impact on a surface has an effect on nearly every industry and this impact may have adverse effects if not controlled. Superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces have been created with the extreme ability to repel water. These surfaces exist in nature but may also be fabricated using modern techniques. This thesis explores heat transfer from these SH surfaces to drops impacting them. This thesis is devoted to increasing the breadth of knowledge of thermal atomization during drop impingement on superheated SH surfaces. When a water drop impinges vertically on a horizontal superheated surface, intense atomization can occur. The atomization is caused …

Protections And Liabilities: Parental Attributes Of Lynch Victims, Peter Shumway Polhill

Theses and Dissertations

Minimal research has focused on how lynching was not purely an individual-level event but, at times, was a family-level process. Prior research has focused on the economic forces, social factors, and individual level attributes that changed the probability of being lynched. Research studying these topics has identified that marginalization, status, distinctiveness, and the racial threat hypothesis contribute to lynching. However, this research has not studied child victims and how parental level attributes may intersect differently with these theoretical perspectives. Using machine-learning tools, I created census linked data which identifies the families of child lynch victims and other non-victim families in …

Pornography Use Among Young Adults In The United States, Samantha Smith, Jamie Lesueur

Ballard Brief

Pornography exists in many forms across the internet including pictures, videos, audio, written materials, video games, and social media posts. A majority of the US population has intentionally viewed pornography before, with an even larger majority of US young adults viewing pornography regularly. Despite the widespread use of and support for pornography, viewing sexually explicit media can have many negative consequences. For example, pornography use has been shown to correlate with decreased sex-life satisfaction, lack of positive self-image, and increased chances of divorce. Research also shows that both pornography viewers and pornography actors are likely to experience emotional health consequences. …

Water Waste And Mismanagement In Yemen, Haile Terry

Ballard Brief

The water crisis in Yemen is caused by three main factors: the breakdown of the national government due to a civil war, the increasing prevalence of weaponization of water as a war tactic, and the domination of the agricultural sector by a plant, known as qat (which has no nutritional value or export potential, requiring a disproportionate amount of water year-round). The crisis has led to a number of devastating and life-threatening consequences, including poor WASH practices and the worst cholera outbreak in human history; some of the worst malnutrition rates in the world, particularly in children; and a general …

Lack Of Women In Government In The Mena Region, Emma Cummings

Ballard Brief

Only 24.3% of parliament seats globally are held by women, and an even lower 10.4% of parliament seats in the MENA region are held by women. With proper representation in government positions, it can be easier to further political positions such as human rights, education, and the overall development of a country. This is due in part to some of the top government positions in the family, social welfare, and gender equality areas being held by women. There is a lack in the MENA region due to popular social perception, the lack of education and experience, and limited support for …