Digital Commons Network^™

Timing And Stability Of Uav Operations In Smart City Environments: Experimental Analysis And Design Implications, Rabia Ipek Yasar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the deployment and performance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) within the Virginia Commonwealth University Open Cyber City (OCC) testbed. The study focuses on evaluating real-time indoor positioning performance using the Crazyflie drone platform. High-precision position measurements are obtained using the Vicon motion capture system, enabling analysis of the latency between the drone’s actual position and the system-reported position. In a closed-loop control system, the time difference between the position measurement and the application of the control command is called the system delay. Both stationary (hovering) and trajectory-following experiments are conducted to evaluate system performance. Communication delays in …

Absolute Quantification And Identification Of Rna From Rna-Lipid Nanoparticles Using High Resolution Mass Spectrometry, Jason C. Funderburk, Yasir A. Alshehry, Matthew S. Halquist Phd, Sandro R.P. Da Rocha Phd

Graduate Research Posters

Background

RNA therapeutics are a rising drug category with potential use for a range of conditions encompassing infectious diseases to therapies for cancer, diseases, and genetic disorders. RNA-lipid nanoparticles (RNA-LNPs) are the prominent delivery method for these therapeutics approved products include mRNA vaccines and polyneuropathy treatments. The emergency use authorizations and orphan drug status of current RNA-LNP drugs has allowed approval without finalization of the regulatory analytical procedures for quality monitoring. The objective of the study was to develop an LC-MS assay to simultaneously measure identity and concentration of two therapeutically relevant intact RNA constructs extracted from RNA-LNPs to enhance …

In Search Of The Soul Of Creativity: Authorship, Agency, And Meaning In Refractive Collaboration With Generative Ai, Fatima Nazir

Theses and Dissertations

When images can be generated in seconds, what remains uniquely human in the act of creation? In Search of the Soul of Creativity: Authorship, Agency, and Meaning in Refractive Collaboration with Generative AI investigates where authorship, agency, and meaning reside within design practices mediated by generative AI. Rather than using AI to produce predictable results, this research deliberately relinquishes control to observe how generative systems interpret language through their own learned associations. Through a practice-led investigation across four generative models within the Higgsfield platform, user prompts were progressively shortened from full sentences to single words, revealing recurring patterns and cultural …

Differentiation Of Cell Populations In Saliva-Skin Mixtures Using Autofluorescence Profiling, Kara Fairfax

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

While DNA profiling of sexual assault evidence can identify biological contributors, determining the tissue source of recovered profiles remains a significant challenge, particularly in cases of suspected oral assault involving mixtures of epithelial cells. The initial goal of this study was to identify non-genetic signatures for differentiating two types of epithelial cells relevant to oral assaults, saliva epithelial cells and epidermal skin cells. To develop tissue-specific signatures, reference cell populations from saliva and epidermal skin surfaces were collected from 20 donors and analyzed using full spectrum flow cytometry.

Results from single-source reference samples showed that saliva-derived particle populations exhibited higher …

“I Don’T Always See A Future For Me Here”: Oppressive Political Pressures On Lgbtq+ College Students’ Well-Being, Jodi Linley, Olivia M. Copeland, Kathleen J. Buell, Cindy Ann Kilgo, Megan Pendleton, Alex C. Lange, N F. Tennessen

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

In recent decades, colleges have broadly supported LGBTQ+ students. Now, institutions have shuttered LGBTQ+ initiatives in response to political pressures, with little consideration for the effects on students. This study answers the question, what current policy factors do LGBTQ+ college students describe as affecting their well-being, and in what ways? We analyzed 426 responses from a multi-institution study of LGBTQ+ students. By and large, students feel anxious and fearful as they navigate the current climate. Our analysis illustrated numerous factors, from the President and his administration to states and general emboldened violence, and the real and potential consequences of those …

Bridging Generations Through Art: Community, Creativity, And Wellbeing, Eva V. Coker Phd, Johnson K. Wor

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

Bridging Generations Through Art: Community, Creativity, and Wellbeing

Abstract

This article documents an intergenerational Art Day event that brought together participants of all ages to engage in a shared community art experience. Hosted in a community setting and facilitated by graduate students, the event emphasized intergenerational artmaking as a way to foster connection, creativity, mutual leaning, and wellbeing across generations. Through activities such as mindful pattern-making, montage, linoleum block printing, and weaving, participants collaborated, exchanged skills, and created artworks. Each art station was designed to support personal reflection, exploration, and participants across ages and abilities, and was informed by research …

Community-Based Participatory Sound Play For Critical Holistic Learning, Shannon Perry, Emmie Pierce, Jon Vogt

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This visual essay explores what unfolded during a month-long participatory sonic space in a community art gallery in the southeastern United States. We walk through the multiple sound stations we designed to provoke playful interactions and challenge dominant hierarchical binaries that often persist in gallery and art education space (e.g., artist/audience, instrument/non-instrument object, music/noise, culture/nature). While considering these various spaces we created for nudging visiting audience members to engage with diverse sonorous objects in becoming active musicmakers, thus becoming audience-participants, we also consider the concepts underpinning our design decisions. We conclude by considering how the living sound exhibit and participatory …

Freedom To Create, Freedom To Teach: Lessons From A Liberatory Artmaking Practice, Andrea Allen

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This essay explores the question, “How can a liberatory art practice inform a liberatory art teaching practice?” by examining the artistic process of Iranian artist Mahbube Parnian. Through four key themes (freedom to experiment, learning in community, identity exploration, and art as language) this essay draws parallels between Mahbube’s liberatory artmaking and pedagogical strategies that foster inclusive, student-centered classrooms. Framed within a socio-political climate that increasingly restricts liberatory teaching, this work argues that preserving justice-oriented, creative practices is not only essential to student well-being, but also an act of resistance.

Full Issue

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-11-19

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-11-05

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-10-29

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Italian Mathematics Prison Teachers’ Perspective On The Teaching/Learning Of Mathematics In Prison School, Andrea Maffia, Luca Decembrotto, Chiara Giberti, Federica Mennuni, Gabriella Pocalana, Silvia Regola, Agnese Telloni

Journal of Prison Education Research

Teaching in the prison context is characterized by a high complexity level; it is a multifaced activity influenced by several factors depending on the specific context. We present a preliminary but overall picture of schooling in Italian prisons by considering teachers’ reflections regarding their experiences in teaching mathematics in correctional facilities. To address the gap in the current literature on this issue, we conducted a SWOT analysis on the reflection provided by a group of nine Italian mathematics teachers who teach in different prisons and with different experiences and backgrounds. Their reflection allowed us to identify and describe six theory-driven …

Conjuring Elizabeth Fulhame: Using Ai To Depict The Invisible Woman From The Dawn Of Photography., Yvette Hamilton

Art Inquiries

Histories of the origins of photography are dominated by men, but the lesser-known contributions of women, such as the British chemist Elizabeth Fulhame, were fundamental to its success. Fulhame’s eighteenth-century chemical experiments directly contributed to the birth of photography, however, she is either totally obscured, or only briefly footnoted, in foundational texts on the history of photography. Her obscuration is heightened by the complete absence of any surviving images of her - she is, quite literally, invisible within a medium whose history privileges the visible.

This paper charts my practice-led research that used AI generative imaging to create speculative portraits …

Redefining Gender And Rural Life In The Pampas: Alessandra Sanguinetti’S The Adventures Of Guille And Belinda Series, Alejandra López-Oliveros

Art Inquiries

At the time of Argentina’s independence, the gauchos (nomadic horsemen) had become the symbol of the nation in its purest form. Celebrated as independent, heroic and strong, and usually portrayed as the sole inhabitants of the Pampa, the idealized image of the gaucho has flooded popular culture and art even today, to the detriment of flesh-and-bone wage laborers of all genders. As opposed to this static image, I propose to examine Alessandra Sanguinetti’s photographic series, The Adventures of Guille and Belinda (ongoing since 1999), which focuses on girls and women in the countryside, pointedly highlights their previous absence. By contrasting …

A Formidable Female Network: The Role Of Women In William Henry Fox Talbot’S Establishment Of Early Photography, Rose Teanby Phd

Art Inquiries

This paper explores how women assisted William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) to establish his Photogenic Drawing and Calotype photographic processes in Great Britain and Europe. Utilising preserved contemporary correspondence as a primary source of unedited transcribed conversations, the genesis of photography can be revisited from an alternative viewpoint of extensive familial collaboration. Letters between Talbot and his female relatives exposed a sophisticated network of interconnected mid 19^th century social elite, providing multiple opportunities for informal advocacy and timely dissemination of the new scientific art.

Epistolary exchanges from 1839 to 1858 provide new insights into women’s subtle, less visible influence …

An Early Female Daguerreotypist In Spain: Marie-Agnès-Anastasie Clemandot, Madame Fritz, Maria De Los Santos García Felguera, Gregorio Escalada Sardina

Art Inquiries

Research on women who have worked in the field of photography in Spain is recent and has developed mostly in the 21st century. Still in 2025, we don’t have a book that includes them all. Outside Spain, they are completely unknown.

Here we present, as a case of study, a French woman who doesn’t fit into the rules of her time: Marie-Agnèse-Anastasie Clemandot (Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire, 1807 – Paris, 1876). She was a bookseller in Zurich, a ribbon merchant in Paris, a travelling daguerreotypist in France, Spain and Portugal and seller of leather for surgical instruments. She also had a …

Art Inquiries Volume Xx No 1 2025 - Full Issue, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Review: Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy, Jessica J. Stephenson

Art Inquiries

In 1987, Luna Luna, a fairground/immersive art installation, opened in Hamburg, Germany. A decades-long project in the making, it was conceived and realized by André Heller, a Vienna-based avant-garde artist, musician, film-maker, and author favoring multimedia work including circuses, parades, variety shows, firework displays and poetic gardens. Over the course of three months, about 300,000 attendees traversed Heller’s Luna Luna’s exuberant space with performances, music, and rides on art works that took the form of Ferris wheels, carousals, infinity mirror rooms, puppet shows and other theatrics. The works were created by more than 30 artists including notable 20 …

The Political Construction Of Anti-Transgender Policy: A Critical Policy Analysis Of North Carolina State Legislators' Discursive Strategies, David Osworth, Morgan Edlin

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

In recent year anti-LGBTQ policy has been cropping up at the state level across the United States. While these policies have been described as unprecedented, they signal a period of retrenchment for the rights of queer and transgender individuals in the United States. This critical policy analysis of North Carolina state legislation that is decidedly homophobic and transgender examines the discursive tactics of policy actors (i.e. North Carolina Legislators) as they argue these policies during legislative sessions. Through our analysis of legislators’ commentary during House of Representative sessions we identified discursive formations that were considered allied with the LGBTQ community …

Wayward Joy In Queer Femme-Inist Educational Research, Sarah Stapleton, Lindsay Cavanaugh, Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This article draws on our experiences with “Femme Educational Futurities,” a dream-mapping (Author 2, 2023), critical arts-based, participatory-informed project about softness in K–12 schools, to explore the boundaries of queer, femme-inist research. We trace how our attempts to enact research softly (Schwartz, 2020) led us towards wayward joy (Hartman, 2019): a messy affective terrain marked by connection, vulnerability, shame, and hope. For each author, we identify what Applebaum (1995) calls a “stop” moment and explore within each instance the convergence of softness, radical love (hooks, 2000) and tender failure (Halberstam, 2011), and discuss what joy means to us as a …

The Path Toward Spiritual Activism: Queer Latinx/A/O College Student (Muxerista) Activism As Sites Of Resistance, Hope, Joy, And Futurity, Roberto C. Orozco, J. Audra Williams

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This study examined collaborators’ engagement in activism as sites of resistance, hope, joy, and futurity. We answer the following research question: In what ways do Muxeristas (Revilla, 2012), or queer Latinx/a/o college student activists, envision and act on kinship and liberation in their activism? We conceptualize our response to this question through Anzaldúa’s (2002, 2015) concept of spiritual activism. Our data analysis articulates three main components of a spiritual activism practice for Muxeristas (Revilla, 2012), which include: 1) engaging in forms of resistance through a queer and feminist world-making, 2) centering joy and love with and for each other as …

Commonwealth Times 2025-09-24

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

The Pedagogical Experiences Of Online Correctional Education English Composition Faculty, Candace Chambers

Journal of Prison Education Research

With increasing efforts to expand correctional education college programs, previous research has primarily explored the experiences of instructors teaching in face-to-face settings. However, little is known about the experiences of faculty teaching in online correctional education programs within the United States. This qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study addresses this gap by examining the experiences of five online English composition correctional education instructors. Data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and a focus group. Findings revealed that instructors adapted their teaching practices to accommodate the online format, faced challenges in building relationships with students, and desired more professional development. These insights …

Commonwealth Times 2025-09-10

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-09-03

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

From Student To Teacher: Lgbtq+ Pre-Service Teachers’ Physical Education Experiences, Alexandra L. Stoddart, Niya St. Amant

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

The first phase of an explanatory sequential design explored Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning (LGBTQ+) pre-service teachers’ retrospective experiences from primary and secondary school (K-12) physical education, as well as their physical education experiences in one post-secondary institution. Ahmed’s (2006; 2010) interpretation of orientation was invoked as a conceptual consideration. Quantitative results from the cross-sectional online survey indicated that K-12 physical education remains an unsafe and uncomfortable learning space for many LGBTQ+ students for a myriad of reasons. Conventional qualitative content analysis generated four categories about K-12 class pedagogy and structure, gender and sexuality, change rooms, and the …

Commonwealth Times 2025-08-27

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-08-20

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Trans* Educators In Early Childhood Through Secondary (Pk-12) Schools: An Exhaustive Literature Review, Chris Cyan Divens

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This literature review provides documentation and analysis for 22 years of empirical, English-language research on trans* educators in early childhood through secondary (PK-12) education. A total of 87 publications from six different continents provide a basis for researchers and policymakers interested in better understanding this historically marginalized population. Findings include a diverse array of methodological and theoretical approaches as well as several meta-level findings concerning the varied circumstances of trans* educators. There is a need for additional research to address persistent gaps as well as for sweeping policy change and collective action to improve the unacceptable conditions of trans* educators.