Digital Commons Network^™

Black Cosplayers Push For Proper Dark-Skinned Character Representation In Media, Taylor K. Johnson

Capstones

As cosplay continues to rise in popularity at comic conventions, anime conventions and on social media, Black cosplayers push for media companies to invest in adding more dark-skinned characters in their shows and games.

Afghan Refugees Engagement Journalism, Angrej Singh

Capstones

My community of focus is Afghan refugees who came to the U.S. after Aug. 15, 2021. Since mid-Aug. of 2021, nearly 76,000 Afghan refugees came to the U.S. after living across eight U.S. military bases for a few months — with the help of resettlement agencies — they have resettled to 48 states in which they are starting to rebuild their lives. During the uncertainty of their legal status, multiple Afghan led organizations have been calling on Congress to pass an Afghan Adjustment Act. This legislation would create a pathway for permanent status to the thousands that were granted entry …

Back To The Roots: Black Veganism, Kiara R. Thomas

Capstones

Only 3% of Americans in general, but 8% of Black Americans are strict vegan or vegetarian. Whether it’s to reduce animal cruelty, manage a chronic illness, or connect with their heritage and build a social movement, Black people are embracing plant-based diets. https://kiarathomas429.github.io/portfolio/

Scientists And Activists Work To Save The Planet, Myriam G. Vidal Valero

Capstones

Climate change and human intervention in nature are affecting people, ecosystems and ways of living all over the world. This portfolio of environmental pieces showcases the dire consequences of not addressing these issues, how solutions can be reached and the challenges facing those who try to change things.

More Muslim, Salman Ahad Khan

Capstones

More Muslim is a show that explores the Muslim experience, with all its messiness.

Each episode is a narrative, transhistorical journey into one aspect of the Muslim experience that defined or is being defined by the modern world. This capstone forms the first two episodes of the series. Episode 1, "When Memes Meet Sufis," explores the question of how Rumi, a Muslim scholar from the 13th century, became the best-selling poet in the US. Episode 2, "The Halal Meat Conundrum," is a firsthand journey into the American halal meat industry and attempts to understand how halal became a $20 billion …

Wage Theft In Construction Is The Greatest Form Of Theft And We Do Nothing About It, Alexandra B. O'Connor

Capstones

I looked at the construction industry in New York City and state to analyze the prevalence of wage theft. The unaccounted and accounted for wage theft in the industry directly correlates with its low-wage and immigrant workforce.

Representation In Animation — Bringing Diversity Behind The Screen, Elizabeth Short

Capstones

Animation is an extremely popular form of media, particularly for children who grow up with the influence of cartoon television shows and films. As long-standing discussions on representation in media expand, the evolution of diversity in animated characters grows as well. Examining the history of animation as an art form and its changes over the years is important, but it is also essential to ask — does representation on-screen match representation behind the scenes? If not, how does that change?

https://medium.com/@liz.short31/representation-in-animation-bringing-diversity-behind-the-screen-3033f06632b6

An Event-Without-Witness: A Nietzschean Theory Of The Digital Will To Power As The Will To Temporalize, Talha Issevenler

Publications and Research

This article offers a Nietzschean theory of digital will to power to conceptualize the temporality of social media feeds run by algorithms. Stylistic and methodological temporalities of Nietzsche are discussed as well as their influence in subsequent social theory of political technologies. The paradox of heavy investment in both subjective expression and nonhuman temporalization in social media milieus is addressed with the concept of an event-without-witness drawn from Nietzsche’s account of himself as the solitary thinker of catastrophe of nihilism and psychoanalytical and deconstructive literatures on the catastrophes of the 20th century. Nietzsche’s fundamental resistance to and fascination with the …

Digital And Ebook Publishing, Philip M. Rappaport

Open Educational Resources

OER-based syllabus for ENGL 31131 Publishing Certificate Program course at City College, to expose students to career opportunities in New York City's publishing industry.

Children And Technology: Why Technology Is Important For Our Children, Jill Mactiernan

Student Theses

Many people get scared when they hear about how much technology runs the world today. They tend to get frightened when they go to a store and have to use a selfcheckout instead of a cashier. Parents are scared of the dangers of the internet and how it will affect their children, so they tend to try to prevent/limit their children’s usage of the internet and other technologies. However, that may not always be the right move. Technology can not be avoided; it is a part of our everyday lives. With proper guidance and teachings, children can learn how to …

Standard Deviations Of Mr Signal Intensities Show A Consistent Trend During Imaging Follow-Ups For Glioblastoma Patients When Corrected For Non-Biological Heterogeneity Due To Hardware And Software Variation, Subhendra N. Sarkar, Rafael Rojas, Evans Lespinasse, Xiang Fu Zhang, Ruth Zeron

Publications and Research

Introduction: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) has a poor prognosis in spite of advanced MRI guided treatments today. Routine MRI using conventional T1 or advanced permeability based MRI of GBM often does not adequately represent changing tumor phases or overall survival. In this work, region of interest (ROI) based tissue MR standard deviation (SD) is demonstrated as an important MRI variable that could be a potential biomarker of GBM heterogeneity and radioresistance. Materials and methods: MRI characterization is often qualitative and lacks reproducibility. Using standardized MRI phantoms we have normalized retrospective records of 12 radioresistant GBM patients that underwent radiation therapy (RT) …

Digital Humanities At Work In The World, Sarah Ruth Jacobs

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

“Together We Arrived And Together We Shall Leave”: The Gouverneur Parents Association And The Politics Of Race And Disability In Postwar New York, Jorge A. Matos

Publications and Research

This essay documents the history of the Gouverneur Parents Association (GPA), a group of mostly Black and Latinx parents whose disabled children were institutionalized at the Gouverneur Division of the infamous Willowbrook State School in New York City. The GPA, in coalition with Black, Latinx, and White parents and activists, led a campaign during the 1970s and 1980s to close Willowbrook, then part of a national network of sites denounced by disability activists during the heyday of the deinstitutionalization movement. In this essay I argue that the postwar migration of Black and Latinx communities into New York City amid an …

Implementing Oer At Laguardia Community College: Three Case Studies, Ian Mcdermott, Joshua P. Tan, Alioune Khoule, Marta Kowalczyk, Emma Handte, Rena D. Grossman

Publications and Research

LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York (CUNY) began receiving funds from a New York State Open Educational Resources (OER) grant in 2017. Since then, several departments have made significant strides in the implementation of OER. We offer three case studies of putting OER into practice, in math, astronomy, and chemistry. Each case study presents the context for OER conversion, the steps taken, early results from OER implementation, and the main takeaways. A common feature across courses and departments is a process-oriented implementation of OER, namely, one that is constantly improving and moving towards the goal of openness and …

Exploring Dante’S Sources Online: Interactive Reading, Visualizations, And The Study Of Dantean Intertextuality In The Digital Age, Julie Van Peteghem

Publications and Research

Dante’s Commedia is a highly allusive text, and readers throughout time have noted the many parallels between Dante’s verses and those of others. Now that the text of the Commedia and various scholarly and artistic interpretations of the poem (commentaries, translations, illuminated manuscripts) have become accessible online, also the concordance, the lists of parallel passages in Dante’s poem and other works, has become a digital resource. In this essay I explore the study of Dante’s sources in a digital environment mainly through the Intertextual Dante project and its Dante-Ovid edition, published on Digital Dante. Intertextual Dante visualizes moments of …

Essays On Human Resource Management (Hrm), Isory Santana

Publications and Research

Human Resource Management to demonstrate that the department of human resources adds value to the business. Considering the three main components of Human Resource Planning (HRP), the importance of and connections between environmental scanning, cultural audits, strategic planning, job enrichment, the idea of the dynamic process of organizations, and diversity management strategies, and how they relate to creating a competitive organization and how they assist Human Resources (HR) in dealing with its challenges.

Engaging First Year Students In Addressing Global Issues [Business And Technology], Sada Jaman

Open Educational Resources

This assignment is a co-curricular assignment designed as part of LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative (LHI). LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative is an inclusive platform for students, faculty, and staff foregrounding pedagogical inquiry, civic engagement and academic service learning by facilitating a year-long college-wide inquiry of a global issue as addressed by the United Nations. Through partnerships with local and global NGOs, students gain access to career opportunities and professional development workshops. Ultimately students are mentored on how to translate their classroom learning to advocate, educate, and support their communities. This experiential learning assignment required students from a First Year Seminar (FYS) course to …

The Effect On Mood Of Social Media Posting Among People With Mental Illnesses, Andrew Croiter

Student Theses

There are studies that have examined how the use of social media affects people who have been diagnosed with a mental illness. However, studies that focus specifically on changes in mood after posting on social media among people with mental illnesses is absent from the literature. The present study sought to fill that gap in research by surveying 250 participants who have been diagnosed with a mental illness and testing whether there was a change in mood after posting on social media. The results concluded that there was a significant improvement in overall negative mood. There was no significant effect …

Traumatized Defendants, Troubled Attorneys: The Impact Of Vicarious Trauma On The Defense Attorney-Client Relationship, Charise Peters

Student Theses

Approximately 90% of justice-involved youth have experienced some form of trauma by the time they become involved in the justice system, and attorneys report being negatively impacted by their work with trauma-exposed populations generally. Yet, research has not focused on how varying degrees of youth trauma can impact attorney decisions and if that differs based on youth race. This study, therefore, explored vicarious trauma and its impact on juvenile defense attorneys, including how an attorney’s experience of vicarious trauma impacts case handling and perception of their youth client and how that differs based on client race and trauma history. We …

Employment Experiences Of Nigerian Immigrant Women In The United States And Canada, Maryam A. Oguntola

Student Theses

African immigrants come to the United States and Canada for a better life; most come for the sake of job opportunities and professional advancement. Nigerian immigrant women are one of these groups of African immigrants. While it is likely that they experienced discrimination in the workforce in Nigeria, research has shown that African immigrants, African immigrant women, and Nigerian immigrant women, in particular, experience more discrimination in their host countries. Researchers have also shown that these groups may experience discrimination based on national origin, race, gender, educational background, and sometimes even religion. However, there is a gap in the research …

The Cultic Lifecycle: A Thematic Analysis Of Fulfillment And Fear In Cult Membership, Shaelen Grant

Student Theses

Prior research on susceptibility to cult recruitment has focused predominately on psychopathological risk factors, such as a prior personality disorder diagnosis and psychiatric and addictive disorders (Feldman & Johnson, 1995; Rousselet et al., 2017). While such studies contribute valuable information, they also inadvertently pathologize cult members. Furthermore, this focus has led to the overlooking of a more crucial question: what basic human desires does cult membership fulfill that cult leaders and recruiters exploit, to recruit and keep members in cults? To address this dearth, research team members interviewed 52 former cult members (N=52) from a variety of groups (e.g., Christian-based, …

Pretrial Consequences: The Impact Of New York State Bail Reforms On Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Pretrial Outcomes, Esther Laaninen

Student Theses

This study investigates the impact of New York’s 2020 Bail Reforms on racial and ethnic disparities in pretrial outcomes for New York State. 2019, 2020, and 2021 arraignment data from the Office of Court Administration Pretrial Release Datasets are used to determine whether racial and ethnic disparities for White Non Hispanic, Black Non Hispanic, Hispanic, and other race defendants narrowed after the implementation of the new law. The results from descriptive analysis, binary logistic regressions, and ANOVA tests suggest that racial-ethnic disparities have not abated, even though the proportion of defendants required to pay cash bail has sharply declined among …

Perception Of Police And The Mediation Of Memory Distortion Via Trauma: Body Worn Camera Footage Of An Emotional Police-Citizen Encounter, Arlyn Abreu

Student Theses

This present study calls to question the objectivity of police body-worn camera (BWC) footage. Proponents assume that BWCs will be a panacea in a climate of heightened tensions between officers and communities. In spite of this, our findings challenge the rhetoric, and the purpose BWC is intended to serve. We explored its implications on memory distortion by posing two questions (a) can people come to remember BWC footage as more traumatic than they initially experienced (b) to what degree can external information and internal influences impact peoples' judgment about a traumatic event. We addressed both questions in this two-part study, …

Designing Of X-Ray Beams To Assess Mineral Loss In Dehydrated Fruits – Radiology Readiness During Climate Change, Angela Moore, Katie Tam

Publications and Research

Key minerals such as iron, manganese and copper are necessary for optimal health and vitality of human beings. These minerals are within the biomolecules of food, particularly in fruits and are not detectable without destroying their natural biochemical roles. A compilation was done on average mineral compositions for multiple apple varieties from USDA and academic horticulture research labs to design the x-ray beams in the low energy ranges in our mammography system that provide “soft” x-rays for imaging light-weight atoms. In this project homemade external filters like Aluminum sheets, Iodine and Gadolinium contrast media were developed to modify low energy …

Business Information Security Officer (Biso) Responsibilities And Role Development, Kaung Myat Thu, Hudda Siddique

Publications and Research

In today's interconnected world, the success of enterprises heavily relies on network connectivity and technology. To safeguard sensitive information from cyber threats and ensure business success, the role of Information Security has become critical. This research project focuses on the Business Information Security Officer (BISO) role, studying their responsibilities, strategies, and how they handle threats. We explore the knowledge and skills required for BISOs, including certifications such as ISC² CISSP, ISACA CRISC, CISM, and CompTIA Security+. By contributing to the maturity of the BISO role, this study aims to enhance information security in organizations.

Radiobiology & Radiation Benefits In Alzheimer’S From Ct: A Physics Assessment, Lin Mousa, Guito Charles, Subhendra N. Sarkar

Publications and Research

This work is a review and assessment of research literature on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) today which is an irreversible neurological disorder, that continuously decreases the individual’s memory and thinking skills and, suddenly, the ability to carry out the simplest functions of daily living. Although treatment can only help manage the symptoms of AD, there is no cure for the disease. CT imaging is proven to be somewhat helpful in the detection of AD disease similar to MRI, multiple repeat CT seems to show promise in part-reversing the loss (radiation Hormesis). Invivo exposure, spatial distribution, and quantitative characterization could be essential …

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts Econcrete Resource Analysis, Guianina Ferrari, Shervon Stephens, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy impacted 443,000 people and caused nearly $19 billion (about $58 per person in the US) worth of damage within New York City. As part of the New York City infrastructure reparation plan, the Living Breakwaters project in Tottenville addressed coastal resilience, allocating $100M of public funds to a series of artificial breakwaters by the southwest coast of Staten Island. Each breakwater is constructed and designed to mitigate water flow in storm events. ECOncrete, a primary element of the breakwater, is a specialty cast cementitious product that is marine organism-friendly that encourages biocalcification and photosynthesis. …

Editorial: Advances In Phononic And Acoustic Metamaterials, Yu-Gui Peng, Simon Yves, Ying Li

Advanced Science Research Center

The quasi-particle linked to mechanical vibration, namely the phonon, is responsible for everyday sound and heat transmission in air, water and other media. Hence, investigating and controlling the phononic properties of materials provides new opportunities and powerful tools to tailor acoustic wave propagation and heat transport. During the past few decades, there has been considerable interest in studying theoretically and experimentally the acoustic, elastodynamic and thermal properties of artificial media made of small inclusions. These metamaterials are engineered to exhibit exotic properties beyond what naturally occurs in materials, including negative bulk-modulus, zero/negative density and infinite thermal conductivity. Many tantalizing concepts …

Whispering Gallery Modes Of A Triatomic Photonic Molecule, Vladimir Shuvayev, Stanislav Kreps, Tal Carmon, Lev Deych

Publications and Research

In this paper, we present the results of numerical simulations of the optical spectra of a three-sphere photonic molecule. The configuration of the system was continuously modified from linear to triangular, in-plane with the fundamental mode excited in one of the spheres and perpendicular to it. We found the relative insensitivity of the spectra to the in-plane deviation from the linear arrangement up to about 110°. For larger angles, the spectra show significant modification consisting of the major spectral peaks splitting and shifting. On the contrary, the spectra are quite sensitive to out-of-plane molecule deviation, even at small angles. Thus, …

Review Of "The American 'Amigo' Nelson Rockefeller And Brazil" By Antonio Pedro Tota, Lorena B. Ellis

Publications and Research

Book review of "The American 'Amigo', Nelson Rockefeller and Brazil" by Antonio Pedro Tota, translated from Portuguese into English with a brief summary of all chapters and reviewers' comments. It is a great source for students of U.S. relations with Brazil, during and after World War II. Starting in 1945, Nelson Rockefeller used private and public efforts to stimulate Brazilian economic, promote political, and social change, always with idealism, love of art, and humanitarian concerns, especially preventing any Brazilian pursuits of Communism.