Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Utilitarian Public Policies On Minority Communities: A Comparison Of New York City And New South Wales, Australia., Nicholas Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to highlight and critique the ways in which utilitarianism manifests itself in comparative public policy. While public policy studies tend to focus on national levels, cities, and states can also be major sites of theoretical and policy formulation that are adopted globally. The moral ethics that are involved in public policy are especially important because these policies have a direct impact on society. Utilitarianism encompasses the logic of utility maximization: the ends justify the means and the idea that the moral ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the …

The Effect Of Race On Housing Stratification Among Latinos, Julia T. Gomez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Housing discrimination has been an ethical, social, and economic blight on the American society. Among the negative outcomes of this practice are higher crime rates, lower educational attainment, and concentrated poverty. Beyond the moral injustice of this practice, housing discrimination adversely affects the socio-economic mobility of those victimized and this extends across generations. The research on the intersection of race and Latino identity demonstrates the complexity of the issue and suggests that an examination such as done in this study can add to the current knowledge. The purpose of this study was to determine what, if any, association race has …

Incarceration-Related Stigma And Caring Self-Efficacy Among Long-Term Care Nurses, Sandra D. Langston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: A silver tsunami is occurring in U.S. prisons because of an unprecedented increase in the older population. Prisons are structurally ill-suited to care for this population and financially burdened with providing the necessary medical and nursing care. States have enacted legislation to afford justice-involved persons parole to manage chronic conditions in community-based long-term care (LTC) facilities. Changes in Medicaid regulations provide a seamless transition from prison to community long-term care for this population. However, it is not known if the stigma of justice involvement impacts the perception of long-term nurses concerning this population.

Aims/Purpose: This study examined the effects …

Confusion Of Tongues: Translation And Transfers Of Attachment In A Post-Monolingual Condition, Hiji Nam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Confusion of Tongues” proposes an intersubjective, dialogic approach to translation, psycholinguistics, and patient and clinicians’ relationships to the “mother tongue” and secondary languages. By tuning in to linguistic and translational shifts, stutters, and gaps, the study presents a consideration of the challenges and rewards presented by what I call a “post-monolingual clinical condition.” An individual’s self-state in a specific language will be shadowed by the emotional history and associations one brings to that language, which will also ripple into the counter-transferential matrix—we might call this the “transference to language,” or attachment styles that manifest and repeat an individual’s forgotten libidinal …

“Tell Them About The Dream Martin!”: The Retelling, Reframing, And Re-Examination Of The Civil Rights Movement Through A Black Feminist And Postmodern Lens, Damele Elliott-Hubbard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research seeks to explore the intersectionality of race, gender, and class that existed during the Civil Rights Movement, and the tensions that were a result of that intersectionality. This is accomplished through a re-examination of The Movement through a post-modern and Black feminist lens. Post-modern theorist Jean Francois Lyotard proposes the necessity of throwing off the grand narratives or metanarratives of well-known historical events, with the intention of creating micronarratives that depend heavily on the experiences of those who lived during those times. The aim of this research is to conduct a gendered study of the CRM, while investigating …

Essays On Entrepreneurship, Yoshiko Oka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the determinants of successful entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial entry. It consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1 estimates the effect of regional concentrations of related industrial firms and business owners' cognitive and non-cognitive traits on their business survival. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the County Business Patterns, I find that incorporated businesses that operate in a location where similar businesses are clustered together have a significantly higher chance of survival. However, the effect of location appears to be insignificant for unincorporated businesses. On the other hand, the results show that businesses that are …

Higher Law And Lincoln's Antislavery Constitutionalism: What It Means To Say The Civil War Was Fought Over Slavery, Joel A. Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The US Civil War was fought over slavery. But what do we really mean when we say that? This paper examines that question, first by exploring the idea of “higher law,” which gained tremendous traction in American society starting around 1850. Proponents of the idea claimed that laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act are immoral; that the immorality of such laws is self-evident, and that such immoral laws should be resisted—sometimes even with violence. Meanwhile, opponents of the idea of higher law were not necessarily in favor of slavery, but they opposed the use of extra-Constitutional means to bring …

Genetic Determinants Involved In Acquisition Of Iron In The Opportunistic Pathogen Mycobacterium Abscessus, Manal F. Farhat

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The opportunistic pathogen Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. abscessus (Mab) has become an emerging public health threat due to the increasing number of Mab-associated chronic pulmonary disease cases. Infection cure rates are only 50% due to the complex resistance of Mab to most antimicrobial drugs and chemotherapy.

Deeper knowledge of Mab biology is needed to illuminate potential candidates for development of improved therapeutics against Mab infections. The ESX-3 type VII protein secretion system of Mab plays an important role in host inflammatory and pathological responses during infection.

In this study, we demonstrate a functional link between the ESX-3 secretion …

Language Of The Enemy: Impacts Of The 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War On Linguistic And National Identity Paradigms In Ukraine, Julia Panter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, attempts at nation-building in newly independent Ukraine were stymied by disagreements over two competing narratives of national identity. Both the Eastern Slavic and ethnic Ukrainian national identity complexes evolved over the course of centuries of Russian subjugation of ethnic Ukrainians through imperial control, cultural erasure, and linguistic russification and standardization. This master’s thesis examines the oppositional complexes that have long defined conceptions of Ukrainian nationhood and examines how they developed in response to nationality policies imposed by Russian imperial rulers, and evaluates the glottopolitical dimension of recent events, focusing on the …

Design And Applications Of Fmoc-Histidine And Aspartic Acid Tripeptides As Proton Conductive Materials, Shejla S. Pollozi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The increasing demand for clean and sustainable energy has driven forward rapid improvements in polymer-electrolyte fuel cells and the use of ion-conducting polymers (ionomers) as proton exchange membranes and catalyst binders. While perfluorinated electrolytes have been commercially used as conductive membranes for nearly four decades, a new class of sustainable, conductive materials has emerged, inspired by the efficiency of charge transport processes in biological systems. These molecules, knows as peptide amphiphiles (PAs), have gained popularity as building blocks for the bottom-up fabrication of nanomaterials through supramolecular self-assembly. Supramolecular nanostructures, often in the form of hydrogels, are held together via non-covalent …

Using Bayesian Generalized Structural Equation Modeling To Analyze Latent Agreement, Sydne T. Mccluskey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rater comparison analysis is commonly necessary in the social sciences. Conventional approaches to the problem generally focus on calculation of agreement statistics, which provide useful but incomplete information about rater agreement. Importantly, one-number agreement statistics give no indication regarding the nature of disagreements, nor do they distinguish between agreement on presence versus absence of a state or trait. Latent variable models can address both problems, as well as overcoming other well-documented limitations of agreement statistics (e.g., sample dependence, inappropriate population assumptions). Whether raters exactly agree is usually not the question of interest – researchers almost never care whether the difference …

Balancing Inference And Prediction In Institutional Research: A Practical Comparison Of Logistic Regression With Machine Learning Techniques In Modeling Student Persistence, Alison Weingarten

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In higher education research, causal inference has traditionally been the focus over predictive power, with statistical models designed to understand and explain the relationships between variables. In the field of institutional research in particular, there is a growing need to not only understand these causal relationships, but also predict what is likely to occur in the future (Which students are most likely to succeed at our college, and who should we admit? Which students are we most likely to lose to attrition, and how can we engage them? Which students are most likely to struggle academically, and what interventions can …

How The U.S. Mainstream Media Perpetuates Cis White Masculine Hegemony, Yelena Dzhanova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The news is important because it helps individuals understand their place in the world and make the best decisions for themselves. Throughout its strong history and presence in the United States, the journalism industry has prided itself on delivering fact-based news using an objective framework, meaning that there is an expectation that journalists communicate the news impartially and without bias. Through an examination of gendered language and visual representations published in and by recent mainstream U.S. digital and print media outlets, this paper explains how the media plays a major role in the perpetuation of cis white masculinity. This paper …

Social Identity, Scientific Practice, And The Production Of Social Knowledge: An Ethnographic Investigation Of American Social Psychology Laboratories, Donald V. Brown Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social identity has the ability to permeate a multitude of domains in everyday life. Therefore, the science of social psychology—influential due to its impact in education, social and public policy, and the law—rightfully foregrounds the presence of social identity categories in the theorizing and empirical work of the discipline. Many researchers consider social identities such as race and gender to be socially constructed categories. This allows researchers to understand these identities in light of their history, complexity, and relationships to each other. However, the practical application and use of social identities as socially constructed “objects of study” is uncommon in …

The Politics Of Open Access And The Decolonization Of Knowledge, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Bibliodiversity is a critical concept in mitigating epistemic injustice and coloniality. Scholarly communities must determine their own agendas in order to create diverse pathways for varied knowledge circuits across local, regional, and international boundaries. Virtue epistemology, epistemic injustice, epistemic coloniality, and scholarly communications share some common ground, albeit utilizing very different rhetoric and discourse. Epistemic injustice and coloniality, in particular, align with concerns related to scholarly communications. Subsequently, I will provide an overview of open access, addressing its history and how current conditions that have resulted in the domination of the author pays model and marginalization of Southern authors. The …

Muon-Electron Scattering At Nnlo, A. Broggio, T. Engel, Andrea Ferroglia, M. K. Mandal, P. Mastrolia, M. Rocco, J. Ronca, A. Signer, W. J. Torres Bobadilla, Y. Ulrich, M. Zoller

Publications and Research

We present the first calculation of the complete set of NNLO QED corrections for muon-electron scattering. This includes leptonic, non-perturbative hadronic, and photonic contributions. All fermionic corrections as well as the photonic subset that only corrects the electron or the muon line are included with full mass dependence. The genuine four-point two-loop topologies are computed as an expansion in the small electron mass, taking into account both, logarithmically enhanced as well as constant mass effects using massification. A fast and stable implementation of the numerically delicate real-virtual contribution is achieved by combining OPENLOOPS with next-to-soft stabilisation. All matrix elements are …

Portals To Learning: Threshold Concepts In Art History Teaching And Learning, Rhonda L. Reymond

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

Threshold concepts are conceived of as portals to learning that open previously inaccessible ways of thinking. They encompass specific ideas within a discipline that must be mastered before the learner can progress. The process of identifying threshold concepts can reveal hidden or unacknowledged fundamental disciplinary beliefs and epistemology. Integrating a threshold concepts framework into the scholarship of teaching and learning in art history (SoTL-AH) can help faculty diagnose and anticipate when students are likely to encounter troublesome knowledge within an art history course. Distinguishing these thresholds can aid instructors in designing courses that prepare for specific stages that present conceptual …

The Water, Ji Kim

Open Educational Resources

Water is everywhere, thus, we tend to take it for granted. However, access to clean water has been inequitable; climate change is threatening the sea water level, causing the acidification of ocean water. In this project, we will investigate the environmental and social issues related to clean water and its impacts on our life by reading articles, watching videos, and exploring activities.

Investigation Of The Effect Of Senescence On Daily Activity Patterns In Male Octopus Insularis, Mariam Steinblatt

Theses and Dissertations

Senescent male octopuses often show comparatively increased activity. We observed daily activity for an adult male Octopus insularis. The subject's diurnal behavior was marked movement or stationary to observe differences. Movement increased over 26 days, but the difference was non-significant. The observation period was likely short, and the subject already senescent.

“This Little Patch Of Earth Is Inexhaustible”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner And The Outdoors Movements, Erica Evans

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the influence of reform movements and hiking and mountaineering organizations on the life and work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. I explore how principles of these outdoors movements, including a healthy mind/body connection and rustic lifestyle, inform Kirchner’s works created while living in Davos, Switzerland.

Towards An Unsupervised Bayesian Network Pipeline For Explainable Prediction, Decision Making And Discovery, Daniel Mallia

Theses and Dissertations

An unsupervised learning pipeline for discrete Bayesian networks is proposed to facilitate prediction, decision making, discovery of patterns, and transparency in challenging real-world AI applications, and contend with data limitations. We explore methods for discretizing data, and notably apply the pipeline to prediction and prevention of preterm birth.

Revolutionary Women, Fredgy Noël

Theses and Dissertations

Revolutionary Women is a five screen video installation that honors five women leaders of the Haitian Revolution that lasted from August 22, 1791- January 1, 1804. Women revolutionaries are almost non-existent in its historical documentation in spite of their important roles as fighters, military leaders, and spiritual guides. Revolutionary Women aims to fill this gap. It re-inserts these erased women into the history of the Revolution through telling the stories of Cécile Fatiman, Dédée Bazile, Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière, Victoria "Abdaraya Toya" Montou, and Sanite Bélair. The video installation takes an experimental mixed-media approach to tell their dynamic stories. The five screens …

The Case Of The Disappearing Owner: Do Dogs Show Behavioral Evidence Of Violation Of Expectation?, Rita Kanagat

Theses and Dissertations

The What the Fluff challenge became a series of viral YouTube videos that started in 2018. In the videos, a person stood behind a blanket in a doorway in front of their dog and lifted and lowered the blanket revealing and obscuring themselves, and finally disappearing with a final blanket drop. The dogs’ reactions were varied but were suggestive of a violation of expectation response. We conducted a community science study that employed methodologies consistent with the What the Fluff Challenge paradigm that were conducted in the owners’ homes with their dogs. Each owner was required to run a control …

Emotional Landscapes, Jin Young Jeong

Theses and Dissertations

“Emotional Landscape” delivers a sense of gravity, openness, and breathing space through oil paintings on linen of abstracted bodily forms. The imagery in the works generates an atmosphere where one can feel rooted and anxiety-free. The paintings invite a close read of the complexities of compounded affects.

Evidence Of Mirror Self-Recognition In Beluga Whales, Alexander Mildener

Theses and Dissertations

Four beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) were tested for mirror self-recognition at the New York Aquarium. The whales were exposed to a mirror and a non-reflective plexiglass control. Two whales, Natasha and Maris, demonstrated self-directed behavior and Natasha passed one mark-test. Two whales demonstrated compelling evidence for MSR.

Impairment Of Attention Network Function In Posterior Circulation Ischemia-Evidence From The Attention Network Test, Na Li, Chuanjin Li, Xiaohui Xie, Gang Liu, Wendong Zhang, Jin Fan

Publications and Research

Objective:

This study aimed to investigate the effect of posterior circulation ischemia (PCI) on attention network function and to determine whether PCI is holistic or selective attention network deficit and which attention network is affected.

Methods:

Thirty-six PCI patients aged 30 to 75 were assessed using the Attention Network Test and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). There were no significant differences in age, sex, and education between PCI group and the control group (n = 32). All data were statistically analyzed by SPSS 23.0 software.

Result:

There were no significant difference in the MMSE scores between the two groups. …

Csc 71010/Csci 77100: Programming Languages/Software Engineering, Raffi Khatchadourian

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Raffi Khatchadourian

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Wala Quick Start, Raffi Khatchadourian

Open Educational Resources

Setting up and trying the TJ Watson Library for Analysis (WALA).

Incision Precision: Engaging Students During Dissection Labs, Azure N. Faucette

Publications and Research

Active learning tools, such as gamification, have facilitated teamwork and improved decision-making skills in Anatomy and Physiology classes. However, most Anatomy and Physiology labs currently contain dissection activities where students are not likely to engage in inquiry, critical thinking, or problem-solving. Usually, the instructor gives a brief lecture on the topic, and students are left to dissect without understanding how the lecture relates to what is in front of them, which is frustrating. Coupled with the frustration, some students have adverse opinions on dissecting specimens, including hesitation to dissect the specimen and religious or ethical concerns with dissection. Utilizing similar …