Digital Commons Network^™

Hail, Caesar!, Kel R. Karpinski

Publications and Research

This piece looks at queer characters in the Coen Brothers’ film Hail, Caesar! (2016). The film takes place during the heyday of the Hollywood film studio set in 1951 and draws on many films during that time period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Toward Raising The Child And The Village: Analyzing The Barriers To Implementing Community-Based Curriculum In New York City High Schools, Ife Damon

Publications and Research

As automation increases and single-skill set jobs become non-existent, employees can no longer only possess the technical knowledge of their industry but must also be well versed in a variety of essential skills that artificial intelligence cannot acquire. It is evident from the research that the United States’ traditional approach to teaching and learning has not kept up with the demands of the changing labor market because young adults are graduating from high school lacking the 21st-century skills needed for contemporary careers. High school educators can develop these skills within students by implementing community-based learning (CBL) activities into the curriculum. …

Allocative Efficiency Of Grid Farming In Urban Green Built Environments, Aaryan Manoj Nair

Publications and Research

As of a 2019 study conducted by the National Urban Gardening Program (National Urban Gardening Program), urban farming accounts for approximately 19% of the total national farming output and is expected to triple to almost 45% by 2025. There is intensive research being conducted on aspects of reduced recidivism, communal health benefits, natural carbon capture systems, improved urban ecology and the necessity for reducing the carbon footprint of food, (informally dubbed “food miles”) there is little substantive research on optimization, and maximation of crop productivity in hyper-urban areas. The article attempts to study allocative efficiency in hyper urban built environments.

Trapped On The Eve Of War, 1941: Stalin And His Generals Failing Separately And Together, Cynthia A. Roberts

Publications and Research

This chapter examines Soviet military planning and preparedness on the eve of Germany’s June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Drawing on archival evidence and post-Soviet scholarship, it reassesses explanations for the Red Army’s catastrophic initial defeats. It argues that the General Staff’s unrealistic offensive plans and force posture conflicted with Stalin’s political strategy of deterrence and war avoidance. This mismatch, rooted partly in the Soviet military’s organizational preference for offensive operations and flawed assumptions about mobilization and the initial period of war, increased Soviet vulnerability to surprise attack. The chapter considers the development of Soviet war plans in 1940–1941, …

Using Internet-Derived Data To Measure Religion: Understanding How Google Can Provide Insight Into Cross-National Religious Differences, Amy Adamczyk, Jacqueline Scott, Steven Hitlin

Publications and Research

Internet and social media data provide new sources of information for examining social issues, but their potential for scholars interested in religion remains unclear. Focusing on cross-national religion data, we test the validity of measures drawn from Google and Twitter against well-known existing data. We find that Google Trend (GT) searches for the dominant religions’ major holidays, along with “Buddhism,” can be validated against traditional sources. We also find that GT and traditional measures account for similar amounts of variation, and the GT measures do not differ substantially from established ones for explaining several cross-national outcomes (e.g., fertility, circumcision, and …

Assessing Variation And Change In Newspaper Portrayals Of Muslims: The Influence Of The Trump Election And Differences Across The United States In Local And National Papers, Amy Adamczyk, Emily Greene-Colozzi, Senahan Kiyal Keles, Aida Murati

Publications and Research

Since Donald Trump’s political campaign, Americans have appeared increasingly divided over public opinion issues and US policies with the media seemingly reflecting these divisions. One of Trump’s early initiatives was the “Muslim ban,” which restricted visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries. Focusing on the portrayal of Muslims in over 900 hand coded articles, our study uses multilevel modeling techniques to examine how newspapers changed their frames and claimsmakers in discussions about Muslims before and after Trump was elected. After the election, newspapers were more likely to include government claimsmakers and an immigration frame, and were less likely to mention a radical …

La Musique Dans Les Cultures Tech. La Synthèse Modulaire En Temps De Covid-19, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Depuis 1996, la synthèse modulaire matérielle est passée d’une pratique artisanale de fabrication d’instruments de niche soutenue par un petit nombre de musiciens, à un phénomène transnational, une véritable culture tech. Malgré cet engouement, elle n’a pas donné naissance à de nouveaux genres musicaux populaires, et il n’est pas certain que la « musique », quelle que soit sa définition, soit ce qui rassemble les amateurs de synthèse modulaire. Ce texte a deux objectifs : tout d’abord, il présente les résultats d’une recherche en cours menée en ligne et dans plusieurs pays concernant le rôle des objets technologiques dans la …

Factors Associated With Mask Use In New York City Neighborhood Parks During The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Field Audit Study, Lisa Hitch, Marie A. Sillice, Hanish Kodali, Katarzyna E. Wyka, Javier Otero Peña, Terry Tk Huang

Publications and Research

Background: Mask use is a cost-effective measure to decrease COVID-19 transmission. Mask mandates intend to increase mask compliance but are often ambiguous when it comes to public outdoor spaces.

Methods: We used a field audit study to examine mask use in New York City neighborhood parks during COVID-19. 1453 park visitors were observed in 13 parks during July–August 2020 using a modified and validated park use audit tool (System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities) that included items on general and proper mask use (i.e., mask covering both nose and mouth). Generalized estimating equation regression was used to determine …

Philosophy In The Narrative Mode: Alexander The Great As An Ethical Character From Roman To Medieval Islamicate Literature, Anna Ayşe Akasoy

Publications and Research

Histories of Arabic and Islamic philosophy tend to focus on texts which are systematic in nature and conventionally classified as philosophy or related scholarly disciplines. Philosophical principles, however, are also defining features of texts associated with other genres. Within the larger field of philosophy, this might be especially true of ethics and within the larger body of literature this might be especially the case for stories. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the very purpose of storytelling is to reinforce and disseminate moral conventions. Likewise, the moral philosopher can be conceptualized as a homo narrans.

The aim of this …

Open Educational Resources In History: A State-Of-The-Field Essay, Katherine Tsan

Publications and Research

History practitioners are making steady progress adopting, adapting and creating open educational resources. However, most historians do not have a holistic view of the materials that exist in the open sphere due to poor discoverability and professional standards that still hamper their uptake. This state-of-the-field article discusses the challenges and opportunities of engaging with history OERs as divided into three categories: 1) textbooks and teaching modules, 2) informational websites and interactive experiences, and 3) digital tools for collaborative research. The flexibility and adaptability of these resources, afforded by their open licenses, are key points in their prospects for longevity and …

Elevated Growth And Biomass Along Temperate Forest Edges, Luca L. Morreale, Jonathan R. Thompson, Xiaojing Tang, Andrew B. Reinmann, Lucy R. Hutyra

Publications and Research

Fragmentation transforms the environment along forest edges. The prevailing narrative, driven by research in tropical systems, suggests that edge environments increase tree mortality and structural degradation resulting in net decreases in ecosystem productivity. We show that, in contrast to tropical systems, temperate forest edges exhibit increased forest growth and biomass with no change in total mortality relative to the forest interior. We analyze > 48,000 forest inventory plots across the north-eastern US using a quasi- experimental matching design. At forest edges adjacent to anthropogenic land covers, we report increases of 36.3% and 24.1% in forest growth and biomass, respectively. Inclusion of …

Nasa, Boeing, And Defense Activities: For The Use Of Geopolymers For Space Construction, Terrance E. Bisnauth, Julio Martinez, Saim Wasim

Publications and Research

Good day readers. And with the rate at which our planet earth is being destroyed due to climate change and other catastrophe. That has created serious peril. Food shortages would soon be manifested. So it is wise for us being homosapiens occupy other places to live. And for this to be successful materials would play a significant role for housing us. One of which are Geopolymers.

Introduction: From Solidão, To Isolation, To Solidão-Rity, Luciane Ramos Silva, Tanya Saunders, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

Solidão is a concept from Black Brazilian Gender Studies that does not have a US Black feminist or queer of color equivalent, nor does it translate into a single word in the English language. It describes shared isolation as an affective relational phenomenon with meanings as multiple as there are Black women. Solidão is inherent to the experiences of Black women considering the historical, social, and racial vectors that traverse individual experiences.

But how do you frame intersectional theory with Afro-Atlantic and African knowledge production outside of the United States? This is an introduction to the 2021 special issue of …

Shhh-Tereotypes: A Conversation Among Librarians With Hearing Loss, Jill Cirasella, Lee Ann Fullington, Monica Berger, William Gargan

Publications and Research

We are four hard of hearing librarians dependent on hearing aids. Our hearing loss complicates our work, often in ways that are not apparent to colleagues and patrons. In this article, based on our panel at the 2021 LACUNY Institute, we share our experiences, challenges, and self-accommodations, and offer suggestions for supporting and effectively communicating with hard of hearing colleagues.

How Phantom Networks, Provider Qualities, And Poverty Sway Medicaid Dental Care Access: A Geospatial Analysis Of Manhattan, Destiny Kelley, Shipeng Sun

Publications and Research

Access to general dental care is essential for preventing and treating oral diseases. To ensure adequate spatial accessibility for the most vulnerable populations, New York State mandates a ratio of one general dentist to 2000 Medicaid recipients within 30 min of public transportation. This study employed geospatial methods to determine whether the requirement is met in Manhattan by verifying the online directories of ten New York managed care organizations (MCOs), which collectively presented 868 available dentists from 259 facilities. Our survey of 118 dental facilities representing 509 dentists revealed that significantly fewer dentists are available to treat Medicaid recipients compared …

Competition And Geography Underlie Speciation And Morphological Evolution In Indo-Australasian Monitor Lizards, Carlos J. Pavón-Vázquez, Ian G. Brennan, Alexander Skeels, J. Scott Keogh

Publications and Research

How biotic and abiotic factors act together to shape biological diversity is a major question in evolutionary biology. The recent availability of large datasets and development of new methodological approaches provide new tools to evaluate the predicted effects of ecological interactions and geography on lineage diversification and phenotypic evolution. Here, we use a near complete phylogenomic-scale phylogeny and a comprehensive morphological dataset comprising more than a thousand specimens to assess the role of biotic and abiotic processes in the diversification of monitor lizards (Varanidae). This charismatic group of lizards shows striking variation in species richness among its clades and multiple …

We Are Each Other’S Breath: Tracing Interdependency Through Critical Poetic Inquiry, Karen Zaino, Jordan Bell

Publications and Research

In this paper, we utilize poetic methods that seek to surface, but not overdetermine, the unanticipated relational excess produced through literacy practices. Karen, a queer white woman, and Jordan, a cis-gendered heterosexual Black man, wrote a series of letters to one another throughout the Spring 2020 semester. We turned to critical poetic inquiry to analyze the letters, interested in poetry’s capacity to highlight literacy’s critical power and its emergent potential. We found ourselves implicated in each other’s lives in new ways; we found our relationship both strengthened and tested. Such relational indeterminacy creates methodological challenges in literacy research. We found …

Racial And Ethnic Data Reported For Peanut Allergy Epidemiology Do Little To Advance Its Cause, Treatment, Or Prevention, Nigel Mark Thomas

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

A Systematic Review Of Diet Quality Index And Obesity Among Chinese Adults, Isma'il Kadam, Sudeep Neupane, Jingkai Wei, Lee Ann Fullington, Tricia Li, Ruopeng An, Li Zhao, Amy Ellithorpe, Xinyin Jiang, Liang Wang

Publications and Research

Diet quality scores are designed mainly based on Western-style dietary patterns. They were demonstrated to be good indicators of obesity in developed but not developing countries. Several diet quality scores were developed based on the Chinese dietary guidelines, yet no systematic review exists regarding how they were related to obesity. We searched research articles published between 2000 and 2021 in PubMed, CINAHL, and Scopus databases. Both cross-sectional and prospective studies that examined the relationship between a diet quality score and weight, body mass index, obesity, or waist circumference conducted in a Chinese population were selected. From the 602 articles searched, …

Assessment Of The Impacts Of Urbanization On Land-Use And Land-Cover Changes Using Remote Sensing And Python At Gazipur District, Bangladesh, Atika Rahman Akji, Nowshin Ahsan Priyanka, Anwar Zahid, Muhammad Qumrul Hassan, Jowaher Raza, Nazrul I. Khandaker

Publications and Research

Urbanization has been the central demographic trend, not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but also for the entire world. Local geo-mapping is the vital tool for analyses of land-use and land-cover. This study attempts to classify land-use in unsupervised settings and create land-cover map by using open-source Landsat data integrated with GIS technologies and other ancillary resources. This work concentrates on Gazipur Sadar (an upazila or sub-district of the Gazipur District in central Bangladesh, part of the Dhaka Division) and Kaliakair, which are rapidly growing unplanned urban and industrial zones. The usage of python coding greatly assisted accomplishing the post-classification …

The State Of The Unions 2021: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns generated vast job losses across the United States. The New York City metropolitan area, where the pandemic’s impact was felt earlier than elsewhere in the country, suffered severe job losses in 2020. The decline in employment among women workers was greater than among men — in sharp contrast to the Great Recession, which hit men’s employment harder. The State of the Unions 2021, A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, presents data on gender, union membership, and job losses in the COVID-19 economic downturn …

Covid‑19, Race/Ethnicity, And Age: The Role Of Telemedicine To Close The Gaps On Health Disparities, Andreas Kakolyris, Juan J. Delacruz, Christos I. Giannikos

Publications and Research

The novel COVID-19 outbreak is a major public health challenge that quickly turned into an economic recession of great proportions. This pandemic poses a trade-off between health and the economy where social distancing, quarantines, and isolation shut down demand and supply chains across the USA. This paper analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on illness and death among older adults and communities of color with low socioeconomic status in New York City. To achieve this goal, fractional logit models are used to capture changes in the novel virus’ morbidity and mortality rates at the neighborhood level. Median income, race/ethnicity, age, household …

The Influence Of China/Asia On The West, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

This chapter provides a description of cultural communication between China and Europe before 20th century. It discusses the influence of Chinese materials to Western libraries, archives and museums.

Minerva Cuevas: Disidencia, Alaina Claire Feldman, Clayton Press, Solange Farkas, Gabriel Bogossian

Publications and Research

Bilingual catalogue for the exhibition "Minerva Cuevas: Disidencia" presented at Baruch College's Mishkin Gallery.

A Fused Radar–Optical Approach For Mapping Wetlands And Deepwaters Of The Mid–Atlantic And Gulf Coast Regions Of The United States, Brian T. Lamb, Maria A. Tzortziou, Kyle C. Mcdonald

Publications and Research

Tidal wetlands are critically important ecosystems that provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, storm surge mitigation, water filtration, and wildlife habitat provision while supporting high levels of biodiversity. Despite their importance, monitoring these systems over large scales remains challenging due to difficulties in obtaining extensive up-to-date ground surveys and the need for high spatial and temporal resolution satellite imagery for effective space-borne monitoring. In this study, we developed methodologies to advance the monitoring of tidal marshes and adjacent deepwaters in the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coast United States. We combined Sentinel-1 SAR and Landsat 8 optical imagery to classify marshes and …

Area Characteristics And Consumer Nutrition Environments In Restaurants: An Examination Of Hispanic Caribbean Restaurants In New York City, Melissa Fuster, Hanish Kodali, Krishnendu Ray, Brian Elbel, Margaret A. Handley, Terry T. Huang, Glen Johnson

Publications and Research

Hispanics in the USA, particularly those of Caribbean descent, experience high levels of diet-related diseases and dietary risk factors. Restaurants are an increasingly important yet understudied source of food and may present opportunities to positively influence urban food environments. We sought to explore food environments further, by examining the association between neighborhood characteristics and restaurant consumer nutrition environments within New York City’s Hispanic Caribbean (HC) restaurant environments. We applied an adapted version of the Nutrition Environment Measurements Survey for Restaurants (NEMS-R) to evaluate a random sample of HC restaurants (n=89). NEMS-HCR scores (continuous and categorized as low, medium, and high …

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Progress And Prospect For Spatial Demography, Stephen A. Matthews, Laura Stiberman, James Raymer, Tse-Chuan Yang, Ezra Gayawan, Sayambhu Saita, Sai Thein Than Tun, Daniel M. Parker, Deborah Balk, Stefan Leyk, Mark Montgomery, Katherine J. Curtis, David W. S. Wong

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

When Crime Moves Where Does It Go? Analyzing The Spatial Correlates Of Robbery Incidents When Crime Moves Where Does It Go? Analyzing The Spatial Correlates Of Robbery Incidents Displaced By A Place-Based Policing Interventiondisplaced By A Place-Based Policing Intervention, David N. Hatten, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

Objective:

Examine the place-based correlates of robbery incidents displaced by a foot-patrol intervention in Newark, NJ. We use constructs from Crime Pattern and Social Disorganization theories to test hypotheses concerned with associations between the structure of the environment and the displacement of crime.

Method:

Robbery incidents were spatially joined to street segments to study micro-level displacement processes. Predictor variables were operationalized using data from the Newark Police Department and Infogroup USA. Generalized Linear models tested associations between the characteristics of street segments and displaced robbery in the target area as compared to a control.

Results:

Environmental structure is important to …

Downscaling Methodology For Satellite Land Surface Temperatures Over Urban Environments, Naved Khan, Ruben Vecino

Publications and Research

The objective of this study is to develop high spatial and temporal resolution Land Surface Temperature (LST) data using a combination of Landsat 8, infrared satellite sensors such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-16). The Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) provides higher spatial resolution (30 m) estimates of skin temperature every 16 days. MODIS makes daytime and nighttime observations of the Earth’s thermal emission at a coarser spatial resolution (1000 m), while GOES-16, which has lower spatial resolution (2 km), measures the skin temperature at a much higher temporal resolution …