Digital Commons Network^™

Common Challenges Faced By Early-Career Researchers In Latin American And Small U.S. Universities, Daniela Cejas, Fatima Rodriguez Acosta, Juan Rivera-Correa

Publications and Research

Early-career researchers from Spanish-speaking Latin American countries and small U.S. universities are underrepresented in international scientific databases. They have geographical importance, infectious disease endemicity, and exceptional researchers in microbiology, but these factors do not translate to representation in high-impact scientific publications. Many reasons could be involved, including financial burdens such as the inability to pay article processing charges. Additional teaching, institutional, and service responsibilities also highly influence their research productivity. Despite this, they are expected to publish high-impact articles, and their career development highly depends on it. There is an opportunity for global peer collaboration to tackle this inequity and …

In The Quest For New Horizons: Evaluating Novel Therapeutic Approaches For Tuberculosis Treatment, Selassie Mawuko, Aminata Traore, Bibi-Sakeena Khemraj, Anna Steto, Richa Gupta

Publications and Research

Tuberculosis (TB) in humans, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is a significant global health concern, resulting in high disease burden and mortality each year which together make it the world’s topmost infectious killer. The emergence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in recent decades has further exacerbated the present situation and warrants an urgent need to develop and investigate innovative treatment regimes. This study aims to assess the therapeutic potential of newly identified drug candidates, namely Bedaquiline, Delamanid, and Linezolid, in treating MDR-TB. We adopted a consolidated and integrated approach encompassing a thorough literature review, empirical experimental studies, multiple sequence alignments, and …

Empirical Study On The Correlation Between Social Media Usage And Self Esteem, Parbatti Boodhoo

Publications and Research

Social media is a major part of everyday life for most young adults, and its effects on mental health, especially self-esteem, have become a growing area of research. Some studies have found that using platforms like Instagram or TikTok can negatively impact how people see themselves, especially when they compare their lives to others online (Magner, 2018). Others have shown that the way people use social media matters, passively scrolling may lower self-esteem, while interacting positively with others could have the opposite effect (Shashwat & Singh, 2024). On the other hand, social media can also help people feel more connected …

Towards The Performance Characterization Of A Robotic Multimodal Diagnostic Imaging System, George Papaioannou, Christos Mitrogiannis, Mark Schweitzer, Nikolaos Michailidis, Maria Pappa, Pegah Khosravi, Apostolos Karantanas, Sean Starling, Christian Ruberg

Publications and Research

Characterizing imaging performance requires a multidisciplinary approach that evaluates various interconnected parameters, including dosage optimization and dynamic accuracy. Radiation dose and dynamic accuracy are challenged by patient motion that results in poor image quality. These challenges are more prevalent in the brain/cardiac pediatric patient imaging, as they relate to excess radiation dose that may be associated with various complications. Scanning vulnerable pediatric patients ought to eliminate anesthesia due to critical risks associated in some cases with intracranial hemorrhages, brain strokes, and congenital heart disease. Some pediatric imaging, however, requires prolonged scanning under anesthesia. It can often be a laborious, suboptimal …

Investigating Genetic Regulators Of Crystal Cell Development In Drosophila Melanogaster, Anisa Turaeva, Nyla Walbrook, Andrea Feria, Rebecca Spokony

Publications and Research

In Drosophila melanogaster, hematopoiesis produces three types of blood cells (hemocytes): plasmatocytes, lamellocytes, and crystal cells, all of which provide vital immunological activities. Crystal cells have an especially essential role in melanization, a wound reaction mediated by prophenoloxidase enzymes. This study investigates genetic regulators of crystal cell growth by RNAi-mediated knockdown of five potential genes: ACXA, ACXB, Gp210, CG4390, and Cyp4s3. We used the GAL4/UAS system to selectively silence each gene and quantify crystal cell counts in wandering third instar larvae after heat shock-induced melanization. Our findings indicate that knockdown of ACXA and ACXB resulted in higher crystal cell …

All Ego Must Die, Meredith Bakke

Theses and Dissertations

Using plasticity as a central framework, this thesis explores painting as a site for radical transformation of the self. Through symbolic engagement with sadism, ego death, and material play, it investigates how fantasy, fear, and imagination coalesce into a generative force—one that dismantles rigidity and opens space for discovery.

Ontological Exhaustion And Metabolic Affect, Katelyn Reece Farstad

Theses and Dissertations

Ontological Exhaustion and Metabolic Affect explores the artistic practice of Katelyn Reece Farstad through the logic, physiology, and spiritual symbolism of the housefly. This body of work draws from personal experience with neurological trauma, mapping how perception fractures, reorients, and reforms in the wake of psychic rupture. The housefly—erratic, hyper-attuned, maligned—becomes both method and metaphor. Its larval state mirrors the latency of neuroplastic healing; its compound vision reflects perceptual multiplicity; its obsessive return to sites of decay parallels the recursive nature of memory and loss.

Working across sculpture and painting, I metabolize found objects and sensory residues into forms that …

Stitch Theory, Brittany Adeline Adama King

Theses and Dissertations

This paper weaves personal history together using “stitched” citational text, supporting the concept that an archive can function as support, as worn; as garment.

Woe Be Gone, Yuhan Hu

Theses and Dissertations

In Woe be gone, Yuhan Hu explores the porous boundaries between image, memory, perception, and material through a deeply personal and reflective multimedia practice. Drawing on influences from film, literature, and game environments, Yuhan investigates how moments—fleeting or fixed—transform when mediated through photography, digital frames, and sculptural assemblage. Anchored by a series of installations and image-based works, the thesis unpacks the poetics of poor images, the failures and promises of translation, and the emotional residue of digital and physical touch. With a tactile sensitivity to materials like wood, wax, solder, and horsehair, Yuhan contemplates impermanence, miscommunication, and care, embracing …

Card Tables Are A Dime A Dozen, Art Is Rare, Shannon Pritchard

Theses and Dissertations

In this text, through the categories of truth and mimicry, discomfort, repetition, and bureaucracy, Shannon Pritchard dissects her studio practice. With a dedication to high craft, she investigates the world through the lens of the Freudian Uncanny, linking eerie subject matter to conspiracy mindset, mid-century politics, and personal relationships.

The Function Of Art, Magdalen O. M. Pickering

Theses and Dissertations

With the help of machines and the powers of perception, Magdalen Pickering introduces logic to strange and fantastical subjects. The Function of Art explores a hybrid of techniques in painting, screenprinting, and computer generated imagery as Magdalen attempts to use generative printing to obscure art historical consciousness. The installation crosses into virtual reality; reframing textiles, landscapes, and the gallery space through a metaphysical lens.

Folds, Bayan Abukiwan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the fold as an orienting metaphor and material gesture to linger on the minor details of intimacy that are severed by occupation and political violence. Through painting, drawing and ceramics, the work traces the more implicit modes of dehumanization—particularly in relation to Palestine—while engaging the domestic as a site of quiet and complexity. Influenced by artists like Jennifer Packer and Beatriz González, the practice embraces slowness, touch, and opacity to fold the viewer into a haptic encounter with the work.

4 In 10 Tiktok Users Find Their ‘For You’ Page Extremely Or Very Interesting, Aashish Gadani

Theses and Dissertations

Using video supercuts, sculptural forms, and digital prints on textiles in my work, I explore how images/videos can be used to reflect on cultural and personal trends. In this paper, I discuss how the structure of software recommendation systems combines with ideas of the post-internet image and creates unintended cultural consequences.

Fountain, Sadaf Azadehfar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the intersections of water, power, identity, and architecture through the lens of colonial and postcolonial landscapes, focusing particularly on Persian gardens and fountain sculptures. Drawing on historical, cultural, and symbolic frameworks, the study explores how water systems embody both practical and spiritual roles, positioning water as a force of control, resistance, and regeneration. Central to this work are analyses of arches and garden designs, which serve as architectural metaphors for cosmic harmony, community gathering, and contested space. Through a combination of visual analysis, historical research, and personal artistic practice—including ceramic sculptures and multimedia installations—this thesis traces the …

Examining Components Of The Interpersonal Psychological Theory Of Suicide In A Clinical Sample Of Children With Suicidal Thoughts And Behaviors, Alana Brixner Nunes

Theses and Dissertations

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 10- to 14-year-olds. Despite a need to identify risk factors for suicide among children, there is limited research on suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in childhood. The interpersonal psychological theory of suicide (IPTS) suggests that the desire for suicide emerges from perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness and that the transition from suicide ideation (SI) to a suicide attempt (SA) results from an acquired capability for suicide. However, no research has examined whether the IPTS applies to suicidal thoughts and behaviors among children. The present research examined components of the IPTS in …

Unpaired Virtual Histological Staining Of Tissue From Autofluorescence Using Regularized Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks, Zhesi Wen

Theses and Dissertations

We present a regularized CycleGAN with a Dense Residual U-Net to virtually stain autofluorescence images of tissue into H&E-like images. Our method outperforms standard architectures, reduces artifacts, and achieves superior FID scores, enabling efficient, label-free, and accurate digital pathology for unpaired datasets using multi-channel fluorescence inputs.

Inherited Fervor: Maternal Archive, Maria Angela Talavera Tejeda

Theses and Dissertations

Inherited Fervor: Maternal Archive investigates the deconstruction of the non-verbal language of Catholic ecstasy rituals to develop a choreographic language. Through the piece Doves Don’t Fly at Night, it explores the expansion of dancers’ physical range, positioning the body as an archive that embodies memories and mirrors the audience’s humanity.

Moiré And Its Ineffable Liquidity: A Study Of Pictorial Watered Silk In The Works Of Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini And Raphael, Olivia Birkelund

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores pictorial moiré in Renaissance Italian paintings, arguing that its liquid appearance held spiritual and humanist resonances beyond luxury. Through dissemblant facture, artists Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna and Raphael rendered a moiré with overtones of the Incarnation, sacred fluidity, and fertility, creating meditative sites of theological and cultural meaning.

The Past In The Present: Photography, Vietnam War, And Memory, Yuya Kawata

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on three contemporary artists—An-My Lê, Dinh Q. Lê, and Harrell Fletcher—who use photography to explore the contentious memory of the war in Vietnam. Addressing different contexts in which the war is remembered, their works invite careful reflection on how to approach the elusive past.

Raised Spirits The Visceral Journey Of Black Generational Female Trauma And The Transcendent Healing Power Of Spiritual Dance, Wendy Ann Powell

Theses and Dissertations

Black female bodies have endured sustained trauma globally since the transatlantic slave trade, and it continues into 2025. The collective consciousness has carried the generational burden and mobilized it within the womb. Powell uses this intergenerational knowledge to frame the basis for spiritual dance practices as a healing praxis.

Modernism Unwoven: Art Deco, Brasilidade, And The Erasure Of Regina Gomide Graz, Antonia Machado Oliver

Theses and Dissertations

“Modernism Unwoven: Art Deco, Brasilidade, and the Erasure of Regina Gomide Graz” explores the life and practice of the Brazilian artist Regina Gomide Graz, whose textile works contributed to introducing Art Deco to Brazil. Regina is associated with many of the events that marked Brazilian modernism in the 1920s and 1930s and was engaged with the concerns of her milieu, for instance, the synthesis of European artistic developments with themes regional to Brazil and the development of a national aesthetic identity. Despite this, her work has scarcely been studied. This thesis examines the sociocultural, economic, and personal conditions that …

Tears, Blood, And Milk: Frida Kahlo's Depictions Of Maternity, Jenny Mushkin Goldman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Frida Kahlo’s representations of miscarriage, childbirth, and breastfeeding as departures from idealized portrayals of womanhood in post-revolutionary Mexico. Drawing on Catholic and Mesoamerican imagery, Kahlo reframes the maternal body as a site of resistance, engaging mexicanidad (Mexicanness) to counter its patriarchal constructions of national identity and gender.

Apocalypse As Utopia: The Exorcisms And Memorials Of Las Yeguas Del Apocalipsis And Queer Liberation In Chile, 1987-1997, Nicolas Poblete

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of the queer activist-art collective Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis (1987-1997) and their performance-based resistance to the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990), cultural homophobia, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Through art actions blending ritual, protest, and queer poetics, the collective redefined public space and national identity, envisioning a utopian queer apocalypse rooted in memory.

The Imposition Of A Narrative Line: The Bildungsroman As Form In Contemporary Art, Brianne Chapelle

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the work of contemporary American artists and writers Moyra Davey, Chris Kraus, Frances Stark, and Martine Syms within the context of feminist art history, theory, and practice in the post-1970s artworld. While often read as autobiographical or self-referential, their work across media uses personal narrative as a means of engaging broader theoretical and institutional concerns. Through the literary form of the bildungsroman, these artists employ narrative, fiction, and memoir—often through new and time-based media, but also through interdisciplinary modes rooted in writing—to reflect on their ongoing education as artists within an increasingly globalized Euro-American artworld. By …

Island Child: Sound, Memory, And The Diasporic Imagination, Rachel J. Oh

Theses and Dissertations

Island Child is an immersive audiovisual installation that explores how sound-based memory sustains personal and cultural identity. At its core, the piece reflects on the quiet yet shared emotion among those who have left home—the inevitability of departure, and the complex act of holding both loss and love. For many, leaving is not a choice, but a necessity. Yet the act of leaving leaves a permanent mark, etched in memory, time, and body.

This project creates a contemplative space for those silent truths, using sound and image to express the tension between separation and continuity. Traditional Korean lullabies, my grandmother’s …

One Can Only Dream, Sophia V. Yacca

Theses and Dissertations

One Can Only Dream is an interactive installation in which players are invited to navigate a liminal, dream-like game, engage with a branching series of questions, and introspect upon the relationships between unconscious expression, conscious self-perception, and the inherent difficulty of depicting, sharing, and understanding subconscious thought.

Rooted in both my personal experience with a rare neurophysiological condition and in my desire to create, this project examines dreams not only as a medical and cultural phenomenon, but also as a means to form identity, reflect trauma, and inspire creativity. Drawing from modern interactive storytelling and my lived experiences, this work …

Hemispheres Of Faith: Mapping The Global Journey Of An Ivory Rosary Bead At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Mary M. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Hemispheres of Faith reattributes a carved ivory rosary bead in the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Quito School in 18th-century Ecuador. Through examining the trade history of the Manila Galleons, material analysis, and iconographic study, Hemispheres of Faith challenges the bead's European origins and reveals the object as a product of global exchange, devotional practice, and colonial artistic collaboration within the Spanish Empire.

Black America, Ethiopianism And Ethiopians: Tizita (ትዝታ), And The Longing That Binds, David Brunberg

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis maps the concept of Ethiopia within the development of Black American peoplehood and Pan-Africanist thought, while shedding light on the deep influence of an American-inspired Pan-Africanist ethos on the works of two Ethiopian-American bridge artists, Julie Mehretu and Aïda Muluneh specifically, and on art production more generally as expressed within contemporary Ethiopia. They are “bridge” artists because they straddle an international space between Black American and Ethiopian identities. It explores the following questions: How did an American Ethiopianism morph into or become synonymous with Afrocentrism? What crosscurrents can one see in contemporary art production in Ethiopia, and its …

Louis-Léopold Boilly’S Toddler In Mamluk Costume, Circa 1803: Feminism And Orientalism In The Napoléonic Era, Jessie Polk

Theses and Dissertations

Privately held until it came into the Met collection, Toddler in Mamluk Costume by Louis-Léopold Boilly was not widely known and hasn’t been extensively studied. This thesis seeks place it in context and argues that it is likely a portrait of a girl, a niece of Napoléon I, Zénaïde Bonaparte.

Evaluating And Applying Coherence Models: Llms As Coherence Evaluators And Neural Entity Grids As Noun Entity Shift Indicators, Elyas A. Amin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates computational approaches to discourse coherence through two interconnected studies. First, we evaluate the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) as coherence evaluation models across real-world textual data domains. Our experiments with GPT-4o, GPT-3.5, Llama, and Mistral models reveal that while LLMs significantly outperform traditional entity grid methods (55% improvement in F1 scores), their performance varies substantially across domains and coherence levels. Chain-of-thought prompting unexpectedly decreased performance, and fine-tuning experiments demonstrated improved detection of low and high coherence texts but diminished performance on medium coherence cases. In our second study, we explore the practical application of entity grid-based …