Digital Commons Network^™

Positive Interactions Among Foraging Seabirds, Marine Mammals And Fishes And Implications For Their Conservation, Richard R. Veit, Nancy M. Harrison

Publications and Research

There is increasing recognition of the importance of “positive interactions” among species in structuring communities. For seabirds, an important kind of positive interaction is the use of birds of the same species, birds of other species, and other marine predators such as cetaceans, seals and fishes as cues to the presence of prey. The process by which a single bird uses, say, a feeding flock of birds as a cue to the presence of prey is called “local enhancement” or “facilitation.” There are subtly different uses of each of these terms, but the issue we address here is the ubiquity …

Administrative Costs Of Colleges Can Be Controlled, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Higher education is being attacked for many things from many different quarters. From the political spectrum, we hear things that colleges and univer- sities are “too liberal” or teach “useless things.” Those perceptions, paired with increasing calls for accountability, have generated a series of both fed- eral and state laws calling for more oversight of the operations of these institutions, ranging from where students sleep when going off campus on university business to how to assign textbooks to students.

This increased oversight, in turn, has created more administrative burden on colleges and universities, requiring them to spend more time, effort, …

Advocate, Fall 2017, Vol. 29, No. 1, Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Editorial:

- “To Revolution, or not to Revolution.” Bhargav Rani (p. 3)

Features:

- Why de Blasio’s Commission Reviewing NYC’s Monuments Matters. Anthony Ramos (p. 12)

- Boycott the NFL! Shame on Them! Jeff Suttles (p. 16)

- Free the Media! Campaign to Rehire Marisa Holmes. Conor Tomás Reed (p. 20)

CUNY Life:

- Dude, Where’s my Cohort? Sarah Hildebrand (p. 26)

- PSC Rank-and-File Take Independent Action for a $7k Adjunct Minimum Wage. CUNY Struggle (p. 30)

- Practicing Consent in the Classroom. Jenn Polish (p. 34)

Review:

- Up from Below Review of China Mieville’s …

Advocate, Fall 2017, Vol. 29, No. 2, Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Editorial:

- The Rebel’s Time: Remembering Vidrohi’s Poetry of Revolution. Bhargav Rani (p. 3)

Features:

- The Revolutions Should not be Televised: The Oeuvre of Peter Watkins. Curtis Russell (p. 12)

- “The Siege” Comes to NY. Ashley Marinaccio (p. 17)

- Orwell’s Revolution. Harry Blain (p. 22)

CUNY Life:

- Whose Community?: A Scalar Report from Graduate Center Grounds. Angela Dunne and Conor Tomás Reed (p. 28)

100 Years of the Russian Revolution:

- Women and the Russian Revolution. Tatiana Cozzarelli (p. 38)

Review:

- Between Value and Valor: Review of Corey Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind: …

The Varieties Of Place-Based Education, Laureen Park

Publications and Research

Traditionally, the predominant focus of Place-based educational (PBE) theories and practices has been the natural environment. The focus of this chapter will be on urban and digital environments as incubators of the PBE goals of experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, critical thinking, ethical reflection, and other goals. The framework used to interpret and analyze the various senses of place is based on the notions of the lifeworld, personalistic attitude, noesis and noema, all concepts found in Edmund Husserl’s Ideas I and II. Urban and virtual places share the characteristic of being built, which has resonances for the interactivity and engagement …

Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky

Theses and Dissertations

This paper theorizes that authors, in an act I have termed “literary exorcism,” project and expunge parts of their identities that are in conflict with the overriding political agenda of their texts, into the figure of the villain. Drawing upon theories of power put forth by Judith Butler, I argue that this sort of projection arises in reaction to dominant ideas and institutions, but that authors find ways to manipulate this process over time. By examining a broad cross-section of English-language literature over several centuries, this phenomenon and its evolution can be observed, as well as the means by which …

Introduction: History And Conceptual Basis Of Assessment In Higher Education, Peter Ewell, Tammie Cumming

Publications and Research

Assessment and accountability are now inescapable features of the landscape of higher education, and ensuring that these assessments are psychometrically sound has become a high priority for accrediting agencies and therefore also for higher education institutions. Bringing together the higher education assessment literature with the psychometric literature, this book focuses on how to practice sound assessment.

This volume provides comprehensive and detailed descriptions of tools for and approaches to assessing student learning outcomes in higher education. The book is guided by the core purpose of assessment, which is to enable faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals with the information they …

Some Observations And New Discoveries Related To Altar 3, Pacbitun, Belize, Sheldon Skaggs, Christophe Helmke, Jon Spenard, Paul F. Healy, Terry G. Powis

Publications and Research

The Pre-Columbian Maya city of Pacbitun, Belize (Fig. 1) is distinguished by the high number of stone monuments (n- 20) identified during the roughly three decades of archaeological research conducted there (Healy et al. 2004:213). Altar 3, recovered in a cache within the main pyramidal structure of the site in 1986, was one of those monuments, but, unlike most of the others from the site, it is carved and bas a short hieroglyphic text. Yet, similar to several of the others, it had been broken in the past and, its pieces scattered. Archaeological excavations in 2016 recovered another piece of …

Fundamentals Of Biology Research Project [Biology], Ana Lucia Fuentes, Maria Entezari

Open Educational Resources

1. The goal of this initiative is to improve students’ learning of the subject while developing their Inquiry and Problem-Solving competencies as well as their numeracy, written, digital and oral communication abilities.
2. A “flipped-class” approach will be taken to present different topics ahead of the practical laboratory experiences. Topics will be presented with PowerPoints and/or videos posted on Blackboard.
3. Students will be given a “low stakes” quiz at the beginning of each laboratory session to assess their knowledge and understanding of the posted material.
4. A research project, introduced at the beginning of the semester, will be used as the backbone to …

Collaborating Across The Walls: A Community Approach To Parole Justice, Michelle Lewin, Nora Carroll

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Classified Information: The Newsletter Of The Lloyd Sealy Library, Lloyd Sealy Library, Cuny John Jay College Of Criminal Justice

Reports and Publications from John Jay College

Classified Information was a publication that informed the College about Library services, personnel, upcoming events, new technologies, and available resources.

The Role Of Glutamate Neurotransmission In The Ventral Tegmental Area In The Expression Of Conditioned Approach Learning, Priscila Hachimine-Merli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Conditioned stimuli (CSs) come to function as CSs by acquiring the capacity to activate the same mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) neurons activated by primary rewards, producing conditioned activation of these neurons and their associated motivational states. This model stipulates that CSs activate mesocorticolimbic DA systems through the activation of glutamate receptors on DA neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). We tested the hypothesis that glutamate receptor stimulation in the VTA is necessary for the expression of conditioned approach. Rats were tested in a conditioned approach protocol that consisted of 7 consecutive conditioning sessions (light presentations and food were paired), one …

Shame, Darwin, And Other Victorian Writers, Aaron Khai Han Ho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation explores shame and how shame shapes identities in the nineteenth century. While many scholars examine Darwin in terms of narrativity, how he attempts to counter the theological language in Victorian evolutionary discourses, and the influences he has on his contemporary writers, I argue that his writing on shame, which is part of his long argument on evolution, secularizes the concept of shame, opposing the notions of many Victorians that shame is God-given. Both God-given shame and secular shame are rooted in sexuality, as this dissertation will show, and thus shame, sexuality, and identity are interconnected. Using Darwin as …

Cortical Thickness Abnormalities Within The Salience And Reward Networks In Older Depressed Adults With Apathy, Monique A. Pimontel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background and Significance: Apathy is a common comorbidity in late-life depression. Among older depressed adults, apathy is associated with a number of adverse outcomes, including increased disability, comorbid illness, and mortality. The etiological substrates of apathy in late-life depression nonetheless remain poorly understood, and little is known about its optimal treatment. To this end, the aim of the current study was to examine cortical abnormalities within the salience (SN) and reward networks (RN), two brain systems involved in the processing of incentive salience that may underlie the syndrome of apathy in older depressed adults.

Methods: We examined the association between …

Examining The Concurrent And Predictive Relations Of Working Memory In Childhood Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Ashley N. Simone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention and/or hyperactivity/impulsivity which lead to impairment in multiple settings (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Childhood ADHD has been concurrently associated with various neurocognitive deficits and one in particular that has been under examination over the past several years is working memory (WM). WM is a temporary storage system that is responsible for maintenance and/or manipulation of information in order to complete complex cognitive and behavioral tasks. Researchers have postulated that WM is one of several potential endophenotypes of ADHD (Castellanos & Tannock, 2002) and/or that WM is …

Regulation Of The Amyloid Precursor Protein By Prostaglandin J2, A Mediator Of Inflammation: Relevance To Alzheimer’S Disease, Teneka L. Jean-Louis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Inflammation plays a major role in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Investigating how specific mediators of inflammation contribute to neurodegeneration in AD is crucial. Our studies focused on cyclooxygenases, which are key enzymes in inflammation and highly relevant to AD. Cyclooxygenases (COX -1, constitutive; COX-2, inducible) have emerged as important determinants of AD pathogenesis and progression. COX-2 is highly induced in AD, correlating with AD severity, and COX-1 is also involved in AD. Cyclooxygenases are the rate-limiting enzymes that convert arachidonic acid into prostaglandins (PGs), the principal mediators of CNS neuroinflammation.

The overall GOAL of these studies was to address the mechanisms …

Dinosaurs For The Digital Age: Democratic Party Organization In The Twenty-First Century, Aaron B. Shapiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces Democratic Party organization roughly over the Obama era. It conceptualizes the party at the national, state, and local level, with a particular focus on Ohio. This project seeks to reconcile changes in the political environment that incentivize strengthening party structures, with American electoral institutions that complicate party organizational development. I suggest that while demographic change, polarization, and big data are powerful incentives to focus Democratic electoral strategy on an Obama-like organizational model and campaign strategy, institutionalization remains hampered by significant structural impediments. These are institutional as well as coalitional. While party integration has been uneven, I find …

Pharmacological Antagonism And The Olfactory Code, Mihwa Na

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mammals can detect and discriminate uncountable odors through their odorant receptors. To accommodate the countless and diverse odors, exceptionally large numbers of odorant receptor (OR) genes are expressed in mammals. In addition, the mammals utilize a combinatorial code, where an odorant molecule can activate multiple ORs; an OR also responds to a set of multiple odorants. In nature, an odor is often a complex mixture of multiple odorant molecules. The combination of the ORs activated by each constituent generates the unique olfactory code for the particular odor.

Some odorants can antagonize select ORs, as discussed in Chapter 1. An antagonist …

A Conceptualization Of The Body In Psychodynamic And Body-Based Psychotherapies: Areas Of Overlap And Possibilities For Integration, Aleksandra Rayska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The distinction between verbal and nonverbal psychotherapies is clearly visible in theory and clinical practice. Moreover, this duality of approaches promotes a split between the body and the mind, defining them as separate from each other. This dissertation helps bridge the divide between the literature in body-based therapies and verbally-based psychotherapy by (i) exploring the conceptual frame used to understand the body in psychodynamic therapy (ii) identifying the areas of overlap between psychodynamic theory and theories that underlie body-based psychotherapies, and (iii) proposing ways in which psychodynamic and body-based theories can inform one another. A clinical case was used to …

Posthumanist Animals In Art: France And Belgium, 1972-87, Arnaud Gerspacher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the changing role and increased importance of nonhuman animals in art of the 1970s and 80s. Focused largely on artists in France and Belgium, this period stands at the head of a wide-ranging re-conceptualization of animality that continues to unfold today. Pivotal moments in ecology (beginning with the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm), animal ethics and ethology (such as the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights proclaimed in 1978), and philosophy (specifically the biopolitical and deconstructive currents critiquing the centrality of the humanist subject), all converge as stress points along long held anthropocentric …

Women’S Sexual Fantasies In Context: The Emotional Content Of Sexual Fantasies, Psychological And Interpersonal Distress, And Satisfaction In Romantic Relationships, Sarah Constantine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Psychoanalytic thinkers propose that aspects of an individual’s sexual fantasies are related to her psychological and interpersonal functioning. The present study aims to elucidate the significance of sexual fantasies with respect to women’s emotional and interpersonal lives. The study evaluated a model, which hypothesized that internal representations of self and others (e.g. attachment security, maturity of object relations) along with psychological and interpersonal factors would predict both the emotional content (guilt, fear, affection) of written sexual fantasy narratives, and overall romantic satisfaction in heterosexual women. Methods: Five hundred and thirty four women completed self-report questionnaires online. Subsequently, the sexual …

The Role Of Pitx Proteins In Early Xenopus Development, Ye Jin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Embryos of the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis are widely used for the study of early vertebrate development. The cement gland, which secrets mucus to help tadpoles attach to solid supports and live in relative safety, has long been used as a model to study the interplay between cell signaling pathways and transcription factors. It has been proposed that an intermediate level of Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) signaling is essential for cement gland formation. In addition, several transcription factors have been linked to cement gland development. Among them, the homeodomain proteins Pitx1 and the closely related Pitx2c can generate ectopic …

Who Influences Your Outcomes? The Effect Of Culture And Ethnic Origin, Neighborhood And Peers On Personal Income: A Spatial Econometric Analysis Of New York City, Anna Arakelyan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Being a “social animal”, each person is inherently embedded into a complex structure of social relations. He has role models to aspire to, conformity rules to follow, and expectations to meet. This paper explores the different social influences each person experiences in life. Specifically, I consider how a person’s ethnic community, age reference group, occupational and industry group peers, and residential area neighbors affect his total income. I introduce a novel model of multiple social networks and discuss various identification implications. I apply the model empirically to New York City, which naturally is a very favorable environment to test for …

Cellular Mechanisms Of Cortisol-Induced Changes In Mauthner-Cell Excitability In The Startle Circuit Of Goldfish, Daniel R. Bronson, Thomas Preuss

Publications and Research

Predator pressure and olfactory cues (alarm substance) have been shown to modulate Mauthner cell (M-cell) initiated startle escape responses (C-starts) in teleost fish. The regulation of such adaptive responses to potential threats is thought to involve the release of steroid hormones such as cortisol. However, the mechanism by which cortisol may regulate M-cell excitability is not known. Here, we used intrasomatic, in vivo recordings to elucidate the acute effects of cortisol on M-cell membrane properties and sound evoked post-synaptic potentials (PSPs). Cortisol tonically decreased threshold current in the M-cell within 10 min before trending towards baseline excitability over an hour …

Zarnoch Studies The Health Of Our Waters, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Some people look at scientists and think of them as narrowly focused on obscure issues, but that is not the case with Dr. Chester Zarnoch. “You’re not just exploring the biology and the chemistry associated with the problem you’re working on, but also thinking about social implications, about economic implications,” he says.

A native of Manhattan, Zarnoch has studied and worked his entire life in New York, from receiving his bachelor’s degree at Southampton College of Long Island University, his master’s in the philosophy of biology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, a master’s in biology …

Morpho-Phonemic Analysis Boosts Word Reading For Adult Struggling Readers, Susan H. Gray, Linnea C. Ehri, John C. Locke

Publications and Research

A randomized control trial compared the effects of two kinds of vocabulary instruction on component reading skills of adult struggling readers. Participants seeking alternative high school diplomas received 8 h of scripted tutoring to learn forty academic vocabulary words embedded within a civics curriculum. They were matched for language background and reading levels, then randomly assigned to either morpho-phonemic analysis teaching word origins, morpheme and syllable structures, or traditional whole word study teaching multiple sentence contexts, meaningful connections, and spellings. Both groups made comparable gains in learning the target words, but the morpho-phonemic group showed greater gains in reading unfamiliar …

The Ticker, September 18, 2017

The Ticker

The Ticker is the student newspaper of Baruch College. It has been published continuously since 1932, when the Baruch College campus was the School of Business and Civic Administration of the City College of New York.

Can Squirrel Monkeys Learn An Abna Grammar? A Re-Evaluation Of Ravignani Et Al. (2013), Stefano Ghirlanda

Publications and Research

Ravignani et al. (2013) habituated squirrel monkeys to sound sequences conforming to an ABnA grammar (nD1;2;3), then tested them for their reactions to novel gram- matical and non-grammatical sequences. Although they conclude that the monkeys ``consistently recognized and generalized the sequence ABnA,'' I remark that this conclusion is not robust. The statistical significance of results depends on specific choices of data analysis, namely dichotomization of the response variable and omission of specific data points. Additionally, there is little evidence of generalization to novel patterns (n D 4;5), which is important to conclude that the monkeys recognized the ABnA grammar beyond …

Degree Of Twisting And Duration Of Symptoms Are Prognostic Factors Of Testis Salvage During Episodes Of Testicular Torsion, Adam S. Howe, Vinaya Vasudevan, Michael Kongnyuy, Kevin Rychik, Lisa A. Thomas, Maria Matuskova, Steven C. Friedman, Jordan S. Gitlin, Edward F. Reda, Lane S. Palmer

Publications and Research

Background: Testicular torsion is surgical emergency. Prompt diagnosis and treatment of testicular torsion is essential for testicular viability. At surgical exploration, the spermatic cord is seen twisted a variable number of times around its longitudinal axis. There is scant data regarding the degree of twisting and its association with testis outcomes. The purpose of our study is to explore how the degree of torsion factors into testicular outcome using follow-up data.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the records of adolescent males who presented with testicular torsion to our institution, looking at duration of pain symptoms, degree of torsion documented in the …

The Ticker, September 11, 2017

The Ticker

The Ticker is the student newspaper of Baruch College. It has been published continuously since 1932, when the Baruch College campus was the School of Business and Civic Administration of the City College of New York.