Digital Commons Network^™

Demonizing Sexuality: Dangerous Women In Folklore, Lily E. Nelson

Young Historians Conference

Cross-culturally, women in folklore have been portrayed as dangerous due to their sexuality and influence over men. Clear patterns throughout history emerge through analysis of the following occurrences, which show a link between how sexualized a female figure is and the threat she is considered to pose. The she-demon Lilith in Jewish and Mesopotamian mythology as well as folklore relating to the Scriptures, mermaids in Europe, and fox spirits in East Asia all demonstrate this phenomenon, since they are all overly sexualized and represent broader social norms towards women. These beings all exhibit similarities in being able to exert control …

The Revolutionaries Of Mt. Tabor: Religion, Radicalism, And Propaganda Of The Taborites In Hussite Bohemia, India L. Black-Mitchell

Young Historians Conference

This paper explores the formation of the radical Hussite group, the Taborites, in fifteenth century Bohemia, and their eventual decline and absorption into other religious groups. Tabor was founded in the rural countryside of Bohemia, populated by an impoverished working class, Under the leadership of Jan Zizka, and the influence of Jan Hus and Bishop Nicholas Biskupec of Pelhrimov, Tabor was able to establish itself as a highly successful military and religious force despite the opposition of the powerful Catholic Church. Tabor promoted literacy in the Bible to its working class members, including women, which set them apart from their …

36th Annual Young Historians Conference Program, Portland State University History Department, Portland State University Challenge Program

Young Historians Conference

This is the 2026 Young Historians Conference schedule and abstracts.

Administrative Burdens In Post-Filing Eviction Prevention Programs: Focusing On Oregon's Safe Harbor Policy, Minji Cho

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

This study examines the administrative burdens faced by tenants in post-filing eviction prevention programs, focusing on Oregon’s Safe Harbor Policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Safe Harbor, paired with the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) Program, aimed to prevent tenants from being evicted while waiting for rental assistance applications to be processed and for the monies to be disbursed, by inserting a long pause in the otherwise short eviction process. Despite its novelty, tenants in post-filing eviction stages faced challenges with tight timelines and navigating both eviction proceedings and ERA applications. This study demonstrates the administrative burden tenants experienced when securing Safe …

Key Issues For Speed Safety Cameras: Results From A Semi-Structured Interview Of Agencies In The United States, Sophia Semensky, Miguel Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Speed safety cameras (SSCs) are a recognized countermeasure for targeting speeding-related crashes, injuries, and fatalities. SSCs have been introduced in various cities and are steadily expanding in use both in the U.S. and internationally. The extensive literature review of domestic and international documents and research papers reveals that the U.S. has been comparatively slow to adopt SSCs, with some other countries implementing these systems more extensively and earlier. Many local agencies are eager to learn SSC best practices and implementation lessons within the U.S. context. In this research, key issues related to SSC implementation are explored through semi-structured interviews with …

Detecting Eigenvectors Of An Operator That Are Near A Specified Subspace, David Darrow, Jeffrey S. Ovall

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

In modeling quantum systems or wave phenomena, one is often interested in identifying eigenstates that approximately carry a specified property; scattering states approximately align with incoming and outgoing traveling waves, for instance, and electron states in molecules often approximately align with superpositions of simple atomic orbitals. These examples—and many others—can be formulated as the following eigenproblem: given a selfadjoint operator L on a Hilbert space H and a closed subspace W ⊂ H, can we identify all eigenvectors of L that lie approximately in W? We develop an approach to answer this question efficiently, with a userdefined tolerance and range …

Psychometric Analysis Of The German Version Of The Barriers To Healthcare Checklist-Short Form, Judith Peth, Nicole David, Sophia Duckert, Petia Gewohn, Daniel Schottle, Pascal Rahlff, Alexander Konnopka, Hannah Konig, Kai Vogeley, Christina Nicolaidis, Dora M. Raymaker, Holger Schulz

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Autistic people face multiple barriers to health care. To recognize specific barriers in a standardized way, autistic people, health care providers, and researchers need a suitable measure. The Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education successfully developed the Barriers to Healthcare Checklist— Short Form (BHC-SF). It remains unclear whether (1) a German version of the BHC-SF performs well in terms of psychometric properties and (2) the BHC-SF consists of multiple constructs (i.e., assessing structural validity). Methods: We created a translated and culturally adapted version of the 17-item BHC-SF and used it with 345 autistic people in Germany. Psychometric …

Physiobridge: Physiology-Constrained Self-Supervised Foundation Model For Cross-Device Ecg–Ppg Learning With Conformal Risk Control, Abbas Alzubaidi, Ali Al-Shuwaili, Ali Al-Bayaty

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wearable and bedside sensors continuously generate electrocardiograms (ECG), photoplethysmograms (PPG), and related physiological waveforms that could enable earlier detection of deterioration and more personalized care. However, current deep learning pipelines in biomedical signal processing often remain taskand device-specific, degrade under domain shift (new hospitals, sensors, skin tones, motion), and provide limited uncertainty information for safety-critical decisions. We propose PhysioBridge, a foundation-model approach that learns a shared representation space for ECG and PPG via self-supervised pretraining and explicit physiology constraints, then supports downstream adaptation with distribution-free risk control. PhysioBridge introduces (i) multi-rate patch tokenization that preserves clinically meaningful morphology across heterogeneous …

Improving The Circuit Realization Of Grover’S Quantum Search Algorithm By Replacing Hadamard With √ × Gates, Ali Al-Bayaty, Ali Al-Shuwaili, Abbas Alzubaidi, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Jozsa, Bernstein-Vazirani, and Grover, utilize Hadamard gates to create uniform superposition states for the input qubits of an oracle. However, Hadamard gates are non-native (non-supported) gates in all real quantum computers. For this reason, Hadamard gates are considered cost-expensive gates when realizing (transpiling) such algorithms into a real quantum computer. This paper introduces a new methodology for cost-effective transpilation of Grover’s algorithm into real quantum computers, by replacing all Hadamard gates with √ X gates. In quantum computing, the Hadamard and √ X gates create uniform superposition states of a qubit on the Xaxis and Y-axis of the Bloch sphere, …

When Flood Warnings Fail: Psychological Predictors Of Information Clarity And Evacuation Intention, Katsuya Tanaka, Tadashi Kito, Kohji Tanaka

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Flood warnings are often assumed—particularly within traditional average-effect models—to prompt uniform behavioral responses, yet real-world evidence suggests that message effectiveness varies widely across the population. This study empirically identifies and explains such heterogeneity using a factorial survey experiment (n = 1671) conducted among residents in flood-prone regions of Japan. We estimate finite mixture beta regression models to disentangle the distinct behavioral patterns underlying information clarity and evacuation intention. Results reveal two psychological segments: a Responsive majority, whose decisions are shaped by concrete and credible warning attributes (e.g., specific breach point, forecast basis, large-font display), and a Non-Responsive minority, who remain …

Rethinking College Curricula: Preparing Students With The Skills Needed For Successful Cultural Resource Management (Crm) Careers, Kate Monti Barcalow, Shelby L. R. Anderson

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Postsecondary education is at the forefront of preparing the next generation of cultural resource management (CRM) practitioners for the workforce. We conducted a study from 2022 to 2023 to gain perspective on improving postsecondary CRM curricula in order to better prepare students for careers in CRM. Our research included semi-structured interviews of nine key consultants with careers in CRM, along with a survey of the broader CRM professional community in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Results from the research identified the necessary skills for new college graduates, areas where CRM programs could improve their curricula, and various approaches in and out …

"I Wasn't Broken": Addressing Stigma Associated With Dementia While Walking The Talk For Dementia, Kate Irving, Fernando Aguzzoli Peres, Walter D. Dawson, Jonathan Adrián Zegarra-Valdivia, Lingani Mbakile-Mahlanza, Sherril B. Gelmon

Institute on Aging Publications

INTRODUCTION:Walking the Talk for Dementia (WTD) convenes people from every continent and multiple perspectives, including people with lived experience, in a 40- km walk followed by a 2-day symposium. The aim is collective reflective dialogue about dementia stigma without the burden of professional hierarchies.

METHODS: Qualitative reflections during and immediately following the walk were analyzed using content analysis to identify common themes.

RESULTS: Three themes demonstrate an evolution of perspectives about dementia and stigma: “meeting the person not the label”, “a community in solidarity”, and “I wasn’t treated like I was broken, and I wasn’t broken.”

DISCUSSION: WTD created an …

Otolith Stable Isotopes And Maaori Archaeology: Marine Paleoclimate Data For Northern Aotearoa New Zealand, Reno Nims, Caitlin Smith, Matthew Campbell

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Marine paleoclimate records for the last 1,000 years are scarce in the southwest Pacific, limiting our understanding of complex environmental changes that may have affected Ma ori seascapes and fisheries. We seek to begin filling this knowledge gap by studying stable oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotopes in archaeological and modern otoliths from ta mure (Australasian snapper, Chrysophrys auratus), which provide information about water temperature, salinity, and fish diet and metabolism. Our results show that fourteenth and fifteenth century ta mure otoliths recorded environmental conditions that are comparable to twentieth century temperatures, with some evidence for anomalously warmer seas and/or …

Multiple-Valued Quantum Automata For Robotics, Yuchen Huang

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation introduces a new type of quantum automata, their encoding and circuit realization. I concentrate on possible applications in robotics. Several methods and application of quantum automata and quantum circuit-based controllers for elementary robotic systems, with a focus on humanoid robot motion, emotion, and behavior generation are illustrated in detail. The research introduces several novel methodologies that bridge quantum computing principles with robotic control, aiming to overcome the limitations of classical deterministic and probabilistic approaches.

The dissertation first presents a quantum-circuit-based framework for generating non-repetitive and expressive (e)motions in a humanoid robot actor, using superposition and entanglement to produce …

Goals And Budgets: An Exploratory Study Of Sequencing In Budget Simulation Engagement, Frankline Muthomi

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose:

The purpose of this study is to examine how the sequencing of budget simulations influences the alignment between priority goals and budgetary decisions. Drawing on behavioral perspectives, the study posits that two simulation sequences—goal setting to budgeting (default) and budgeting to goal setting (alternative)—shape individuals' budgetary responses, particularly the proximity between a program's total cost and the corresponding budgetary allocations. Design/methodology/approach This study employs a quasi-experimental research design using Balancing Act modules that enable participants to articulate their priority goals and corresponding resource allocations. Adult Americans (aged 18 and above) were recruited through an online crowdsourcing platform and randomly …

Impact Of Parent Education Programmes On Confidence And Self-Efficacy In Parents Of Preterm Infants: A Systematic Review, Puja Padbidri, Veena Joshi, Hollie Hix-Small, Pooja Bhavarth Dekhane

Educator Licensure Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective:

Families of preterm infants can experience high stress during neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) hospitalisation, which interferes with the development of parenting confidence and self-efficacy through active engagement with their infants. Parent NICU support programmes provide guidance and education to build this connection. This systematic review examined the effects of parent education programmes on confidence and self-efficacy among parents of preterm infants.Design Systematic review in PubMed/Medline, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Google Scholar and Web of Science.Setting NICU.Participants Parents of preterm infants.Intervention Education programmes offered to parents in the NICU.Main outcome measures Quantitative surveys measuring parent confidence or self-efficacy.Results 14 studies met …

Reinvesting In A Lived Experience Workforce: An Exploration Of Why Peer Support Specialists Leave The Field, Morgan Rae Pelot

Dissertations and Theses

Peer support specialists (PSSs) are individuals who use their lived experience of mental health challenges along with formal training to provide peer support to other individuals experiencing similar challenges. PSSs have only become integrated into the mental health care system within the last several decades. Recently, a study reported a trend of PSSs leaving the field of peer support, but there is a gap in the literature exploring factors that may influence this decision. This study examined if self-efficacy, motivations to join the workforce, and negative work experiences were related to workforce retention. A secondary cross-sectional analysis was conducted on …

Relational Histories: Exploring The Transmission Of Ceramic Technology In The Norton Sound Region Through Petrographic Analysis, Laurel Michelle Diciuccio

Dissertations and Theses

Ceramic technology in the Bering Strait region of the North American Arctic dates to approximately 2,500 BP and is broadly divided into two traditions: the Early Arctic (Norton, pre-1,500 BP) and the Late Arctic (Thule, post-1,500 BP). While Arctic ceramic studies have focused on raw material sourcing, vessel use, and cooking performance, this research investigates forming methods and ceramic fabrics to better understand their place in the technological behavioral chain. This approach fills a gap in the literature by centering on vessel construction and offers new insights from Norton Sound sites, including type sites Iyatayet and Nukleet.

Macroscopic and petrographic …

An Applied Anthropological Study Of Conflict Reduction: Fostering A Culture Of Safety At A Homeless Service Organization In Portland, Or, Katelyn Champion

Dissertations and Theses

Hygiene 4 All's (H4A) hub of operation provides hygiene services and resources to houseless individuals in Portland, OR. H4A seeks to foster a culture of safety, sanctuary, and welcome. During an internship that took place between February and December, 2025, I studied the organization's policies and practices, with a focus on how their formal and informal processes worked to lessen moments of social friction, escalations, and violent incidents. I apply theory regarding organizational management, practice theory, design, symbolic interactionism, and trauma-informed care to contextualize the research. I employed ethnographic methods, including participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, to identify themes …

Promoting Methane Reductions Through Behavioural Nudges And Informational Boosts: A Field Choice Experiment In Japanese Rice Farming, Shengyi Du, Katsuya Tanaka, Hiroki Sasaki, Tetsuya Horie, Shinya Horie

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Agricultural methane emissions represent a significant contributor to global climate change, with irrigated rice cultivation beingone of the primary sources. Despite the availability of effective mitigation technologies, their adoption often remains limited dueto behavioural and institutional constraints. Water management practice that extends drainage periods during cultivation cancurb methane emissions from irrigated rice at low cost, yet uptake among Japanese farmers remains modest. We surveyed 2219rice producers in Shiga Prefecture using a labelled choice experiment that embedded two behavioural nudges (social norm andloss aversion) and one informational boost (knowledge enhancement), presented with or without a reminder. Farmers most fa-voured a 7-day …

Pivot: Plan For Institutional Vitality And Organizational Transformation, 2025-2026 Report, Office Of Academic Affairs, Research And Graduate Studies, Richard Tankersley, Shelly Chabon

Office of Academic Affairs Publications

This report documents the conduct and results of PIVOT's first review cycle, from its September 2025 launch through the submission of recommendations to President Ann Cudd on February 23, 2026. Track 1 reviewed 293 academic programs, each by three to five academic leaders, with calibration by the Deans' Council and feedback from units before classifications were finalized. Resulting classifications were 25 Grow, 85 Sustain, 112 Revitalize, and 71 Sunset. Track 2 reviewed 163 units through a Core Review Team, producing 7 Invest, 61 Sustain, 54 Reassess, 28 Restructure/Consolidate, and 13 Phase Out classifications. The report presents financial modeling projecting approximately …

Forest Fires Increase Vulnerability To Midwinter Rain-On-Snow Snowmelt In The Western Oregon Cascades, Sage C. Ebel, Kelly Gleason

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Forest fires and rain-on-snow events in the seasonal snow zone of the Pacific Northwest are increasing in frequency and magnitude, yet the combined impacts of these events on snowpack and water resources remain poorly understood. We show that forest fires doubled midwinter snowmelt proportions in 2023 and 2024 compared to unburned reference sites in the western Oregon Cascades. Data from snow monitoring and micrometeorological stations installed across an elevational gradient revealed increased snowpack vulnerability during midwinter rain-on-snow events, where we observed more snowmelt per rain-on-snow event in the burned forest, indicating higher vulnerability of these snowpacks to rapid melt, increasing …

Collaborating To Create A Research Training Program For Underrepresented Students: Insights And Strategies For Developing And Sustaining A Multi-Institutional Consortium, Mackenzie J. Gray, Dara Shifrer, De’Sha S. Wolf, Olivia M. Ainsworth, Rosemary A. Fama, Roberto P. Anitori, Ernest Blackwell, Tracey K. Burke, Carlos J. Crespo, Derek Helsham, Travis Kibota, Alissa Leavitt, Beylul Solomon, Thomas E. Keller

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Introduction

In 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) invested in the Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) initiative to enhance diversity in the biomedical research workforce. As one of ten grantees nationwide, the BUILD EXITO project at Portland State University established an institutionally and geographically diverse consortium including local community colleges, a research-intensive medical institution, and universities and community colleges around the Pacific Rim. The goal of this collaboration was to support comprehensive research training for undergraduates from backgrounds historically underrepresented in the biomedical workforce. This manuscript aims to provide insights into creating and sustaining a large-scale multi-institutional consortium.MethodsUsing …

"I Know Who I Am": Gender-Creative Children Draw-And-Tell Their Social And Healthcare Experiences, Eline L. Lenne, Ben Anderson-Nathe, Christina J. Sun, Martha Driessnack

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Gender-creative children have an elevated risk of healthcare avoidance and adverse health outcomes related to stigma and discrimination. Despite evidence that family affirmation is protective and pediatric providers influence care outcomes, young children’s perspectives related to their social support and clinical experiences remain underrepresented in health research. Indeed, children’s agency has been historically restricted in healthcare and health research. This community-engaged, artsbased, qualitative study used Draw-and-Tell Conversations—a participatory approach combining drawing, storytelling, and writing—with 12U.S.-based gender-creative children (ages 5–10). Although children’s caregivers completed surveys to contextualize findings, the project highlighted children’s capacity to report on their own experiences. Data were …

Intrusion Detection Latency: The Neglected Metric, Sandhyarani Dash, John M. Acken

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Accuracy remains the dominant evaluation metric in Intrusion Detection System (IDS) research, yet an IDS that detects attacks too late is functionally equivalent to one that fails—particularly in Internet of Things (IoT) environments. In operational settings, the timing of detection shapes both the scope of adversarial activity and the feasibility of effective response. To the best of our knowledge, latency (the speed at which intrusions are identified) has received no systematic attention. Our analysis of published IDS papers reveals that latency is defined inconsistently—often referring to inference, communication, computation time, or combinations of these-leading to incomparable performance claims. To close …

Influence Of Depressive Symptoms On Disease Activity In Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Mediating Effect Of Self-Efficacy, Wen-Wei Lin, Chieh-Tsung Yen, Hua-Lung Huang, Hanoch Livneh, Ming-Chi Lu, Wei-Jen Chen, Tzung-Yi Tsai

Leadership, Learning and Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background and Objectives:

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a lifelong autoimmune disease in which joint inflammation is caused by a dysfunctional immune system. Synchronous depressive symptoms have been identified as determinants of disease progression, especially disease activity as measured using the 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS28). Although growing evidence suggests the interplay between depression and DAS28 in RA, related findings remain inconsistent, implying that a pivotal underlying mechanism is overlooked. Hence, we aimed to examine whether self-efficacy, the belief in one’s ability to manage health, could mediate the association between depressive symptoms and DAS28.

Materials and Methods:

Between January and October …

Pdxscholar Annual Report 2025, Julia Stone, Bertrand Robinson, Stacey Schlatter, Carolee Harrison

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

This PDXScholar Annual Report covers the period between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025. This report demonstrates PDXScholar’s continued impact through readership data, new and growing collections, and comments and feedback from our users.

Carver, Kafka, And Woolf On Re-Enchanting Modernity, Zachary Davis

University Honors Theses

Though removed from the time of the modernists, Raymond Carver shares similar interests with Woolf and Kafka in his late century story "Cathedral," as he investigates art's capacity for creating meaning, or "re-enchanting." While Carver investigates the function of art in a chaotic world, his story does not feature a central artist figure or a hierarchical social structure surrounding the artistic process, but rather an organic artistic experience which creates community among the characters. In this way, "Cathedral" can be seen as a mediation between Woolf's and Kafka's distinct, if not opposing, reactions to Matthew Arnold's prophecy that "most of …

Arid: Agglomerative Regionalization Via Information Divergence, A Novel Clustering Algorithm For Geo-Spatial Data, Joshua David Sills

Dissertations and Theses

Regionalization is a clustering problem that seeks to partition geospatial data into geographically contiguous regions while remaining internally homogeneous in their attributes. It has been successfully applied towards the development of urban planning, natural resource discovery, and ecological analysis. Existing popular approaches optimize homogeneity using Euclidean or variance-based criteria, which ignore distributional differences such as variance shifts, multimodality, and higher-order dependence. This thesis introduces ARID (Agglomerative Regionalization via Information Divergence), a spatially constrained agglomerative clustering framework that replaces distance-based merging with an information-theoretic, Ward-like criterion that utilizes the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. ARID constructs a neighborhood graph from coordinate space and …

Role Congruence Meets Feminist Identity: Disaggregating Causes Of The Double Bind On Women Political Candidates, Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, Melody E. Valdini, Jeanette Morehouse Mendez, Tracy Osborn

Politics and Global Affairs Faculty Publications and Presentations

Studies in social psychology and political science have noted the negative impact of the “double bind” facing women leaders and candidates, which suggests that women must demonstrate both masculine and feminine attributes in order to achieve the same success as men can achieve by demonstrating only masculine attributes. Less attention has focused on how feminist identity conditions these evaluations. We focus on whether individuals’ evaluations of men and women are affected by (1) the gendered attributes associated with a candidate and (2) feminist identity. Using data from an original survey experiment in the US, we investigate the relationship between respondents’ …