Digital Commons Network^™

Trumppunk Resists Presidential Bunk Or, Updating Obscure Mirrorshades With Revelatory Magnifying Glasses Enhances Seeing The Forces Of Normalcy, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

Trumppunk is a genre that Marleen S. Barr theorizes as a complement to her original fiction published in WHEN TRUMP CHANGED: THE FEMINIST SCIENCE FICTION JUSTICE LEAGUE QUASHES THE ORANGE OUTRAGE PUSSY GRABBER.

Applications Of Complex Network Analysis In Electric Power Systems, Mahmoud Saleh, Yusef Esa, Ahmed Mohamed

Publications and Research

This paper provides a review of the research conducted on complex network analysis (CNA) in electric power systems. Moreover, a new approach is presented to find optimal locations for microgrids (MGs) in electric distribution systems (EDS) utilizing complex network analysis. The optimal placement in this paper points to the location that will result in enhanced grid resilience, reduced power losses and line loading, better voltage stability, and a supply to critical loads during a blackout. The criteria used to point out the optimal placement of the MGs were predicated on the centrality analysis selected from the complex network theory, the …

Gun Violence Is Not An “Inner City” Problem, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Policy debates about gun violence often focus on cities. This data bit showed how 33 states in the U.S. compare regarding gun violence rates, demonstrated how gun violence rates are not an issue exclusive to cities, and tested whether states conform to the conventional narrative of "urban gun violence."

Emerging Themes In Coping With Lifetime Stress And Implication For Stress Management Education, Asrat G. Amnie

Publications and Research

Background: Adults with adverse childhood experiences and exposure to adverse life events experience a diverse array of physical, mental, and social health problems across their lifespan. Adult exposure to emotional trauma, physical injury, or other adverse life events may result in the development of post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder. Understanding individuals’ response to stress and their coping strategies is as important as the stimulus or the causes of the stress for effective stress management interventions.

Methods: This is a mixed quantitative and qualitative online survey study which explores the coping strategies to stress in adults with adverse childhood experiences …

For-Profit Colleges Impact Democracy, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

The for-profit sector of higher education in this country has accumulated a long list of denunciations in its relatively short history. Those admonitions range from low quality education, much higher cost (including when com- pared with private, non-profit schools), generating a long-time debt burden for their users, deceptive advertising, and stigma when trying to get a job while saying that you graduated from one of those schools.

In their defense, these institutions say that they provide opportunities for people who do not havethe minimum qualifications to enter most public institutions or because of their work schedule they can only go …

What We Do Not Know About Fungal Cell Adhesion Molecules, Peter N. Lipke

Publications and Research

There has been extensive research on structure and function of fungal cell adhesion molecules, but the most of the work has been about adhesins in Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These yeasts are members of a single ascomycete order, and adhesion molecules from the six other fungal phyla are only sparsely described in the literature. In these other phyla, most of the research is at the cellular level, rather than at the molecular level, so there has been little characterization of the adhesion molecules themselves. A catalog of known adhesins shows some common features: high Ser/Thr content, tandem repeats, N- …

Use And Awareness Of Library Services Among Faculty At Two Armenian Universities, D. Aram Donabedian, John Carey, Arshak Balayan

Publications and Research

This study surveyed instructional faculty at two Armenian universities to determine use and awareness of academic library services or resources including reference, interlibrary loan, subscription databases, subject liaisons, and more. A minority of respondents reported making frequent use of the services investigated, with usage varying according to such factors as academic rank, length of employment, and full- or part-time status. Many participants also had suggestions for services not available at their libraries. These results help illuminate user preferences among faculty at these universities and could help librarians at similar institutions identify underutilized resources to promote or new services to offer.

Iran Deal Will Impact Higher Ed, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

On May 8, President Donald Trump announced that the United States was pulling out of the 2015 deal with Iran and other countries to limit the Iranian nuclear program. This deal was designed to slow anddelay Iran’s efforts to build anuclear weapon by lifting economic sanctions on that country in exchange for a number of actions aimed at shutting downits uranium enrichment e ortsand related programs.

The decision by the Trump Administration seems to have been prompted more by demagoguery and hatred towards anything President Barack Obama did, than by reason. In fact, America’s European allies tried everything in their …

Addictions, Behavioral Addictions, And Pathological Internet Use As Internet Addiction - A Literature Review, Vy K. Nguyen

Publications and Research

Excessive and pathological uses of the Internet are observed and discussed often in our modern conversations. Access to the Internet has become so convenient that these behaviors can lead to consequences in many areas of our lives from social relationships to academic and professional work performance. A common term that people use to address this pattern of behaviors is “Internet Addiction” or more specific ones, such as “Social Media Addiction” or “Online Gaming Addiction.” However, in clinical psychology, addiction has its own specific definitions. It refers to a category and set of criteria that are distinguished from other mental disorders …

Seid Studies Issues Of Chinese Culture And Gender, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“I am a child of an immigrant from Hong Kong. My grandparents were also Chinese immigrants to the U.S. It is common for the second or third generation to return to the culture, to study the language. I wanted to understand Chinese immigration to the US, and that has always been a very important topic to me as a scholar. Later, I found that I could study literature and media and look at Asian- American representation and at the history of how the Chinese immigrated to the U.S.” That is how Dr. Danielle Seid explains why she has such a …

The Validity Of Open-Source Data When Assessing Jail Suicides, Amanda Thomas, Jacqueline Scott, Jeff Mellow

Publications and Research

Background: The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Deaths in Custody Reporting Program is the primary source for jail suicide research, though the data is restricted from general dissemination. This study is the first to examine whether jail suicide data obtained from publicly available sources can help inform our understanding of this serious public health problem.

Methods: Of the 304 suicides that were reported through the DCRP in 2009, roughly 56 percent (N = 170) of those suicides were identified through the open-source search protocol. Each of the sources was assessed based on how much information was collected on the incident and …

Consistent Passion, Little Fanfare: Rbg, Elizabeth Toohey

Publications and Research

Review of the 2018 documentary RBG

The Moving Collage, Tian Leng

Publications and Research

Video is a medium based on space and time, and its forms and structures change how audience perceives and understand its content. This project will construct the interaction of videos in collage and explore the spiritual side of human experience with urban environment in New York City. Local museums and historical sites will be visited to understand the context of immigration history and culture.

High-definition video will be used to capture the imagery of several performers in field. The collage of shots, rather than the edit of them, provides a new perceptual experience for this medium. The structure of video …

Dextran Hydrogels By Crosslinking With Amino Acid Diamines And Their Viscoelastic Properties, Naphtali O'Connor, Andrei Jitianu, G Nunez, Quentin Picard, Madeline Wong, D Akpatsu, Adam Negrin, Rajendra Ghardbaran, D Lugo, S Shaker, Mihaela Jitianu, Stephen Redenti

Publications and Research

Amine functionalized polysaccharide hydrogels such as those based on chitosan are widely examined as biomaterials. Here we set out to develop a facile procedure for developing such hydrogels by crosslinking dextran with amino acid diamines. The dextran-amino acid gels were formed by the addition of the amino acid diamines to a dextran and epichlorohydrin solution once it became homogeneous. This was demonstrated with three amino acid diamines, lysine, lysine methyl ester, and cystine dimethyl ester. Hydrogel networks with albumin entrapped were also demonstrated. These hydrogels were characterized by FTIR, SEM, rotational rheometry, swelling studies and cell biocompatibility analysis. These hydrogels …

Dextran Hydrogels By Crosslinking With Amino Acid Diamines And Their Viscoelastic Properties, Naphtali A. O’Connor, Mihaela Jitianu, Greisly Nunez, Quentin Picard, Madeline Wong, David Akpatsu, Adam Negrin, Rajendra Gharbaran, Daniel Lugo, Sundus Shaker, Andrei Jitianu, Stephen Redenti

Publications and Research

Amine functionalized polysaccharide hydrogels such as those based on chitosan are widely examined as biomaterials. Here we set out to develop a facile procedure for developing such hydrogels by crosslinking dextran with amino acid diamines. The dextran-amino acid gels were formed by the addition of the amino acid diamines to a dextran and epicholorohydrin solution once it became homogeneous. This was demonstrated with three amino acid diamines, lysine, lysine methyl ester, and cystine dimethyl ester. Hydrogel networks with albumin entrapped were also demonstrated. These hydrogels were characterized by FTIR, SEM, rotational rheometry, swelling studies and cell biocompatibility analysis. These hydrogels …

Online Learning With In-Person Technology: Student & Faculty Experiences In Hybrid/Online Courses At Cuny, Maura A. Smale, Mariana Regalado, Jean Amaral

Publications and Research

Online learning continues to grow throughout higher education, including expansion at urban commuter institutions like the City University of New York (CUNY) that have traditionally focused primarily on in-person courses. Building on research into the scholarly habits of CUNY students, we undertook a qualitative study to explore the lived experiences of CUNY students and faculty using technology in online and hybrid courses. Our research revealed how students and faculty use online tools in support of learning and illuminated a range of experiences determined by differing access to and skills with technology, the usability of required technology platforms, availability of support, …

Comparing Microbiome Sampling Methods In A Wild Mammal: Fecal And Intestinal Samples Record Different Signals Of Host Ecology, Evolution, Melissa R. Ingala, Nancy B. Simmons, Claudia Wultsch, Konstantinos Krampis, Kelly A. Speer, Susan L. Perkins

Publications and Research

Processing of multimodal information is essential for an organism to respond to environmental events. However, how multimodal integration in neurons translates into behavior is far from clear. Here, we investigate integration of biologically relevant visual and auditory information in the goldfish startle escape system in which paired Mauthner-cells (M-cells) initiate the behavior. Sound pips and visual looms as well as multimodal combinations of these stimuli were tested for their effectiveness of evoking the startle response. Results showed that adding a low intensity sound early during a visual loom (low visual effectiveness) produced a supralinear increase in startle responsiveness as compared …

Facebook As A Social Outreach And Advocacy Tool In Intersex/Dsd Groups, Emelie J. Ali Ms

Publications and Research

My project includes a netnography of a Facebook intersex group called Families and Friends of Intersex People. I observed the group’s forms of communication within the group and which topics they discussed. It appears one of the major concerns the group has is the use of nonconsensual, sex assignment surgery on infants to “correct” their body to match a gender identity. I have also discovered a link between being intersex and affiliated with the LGBT+ community. Since the 20th century, intersex people have been stigmatized due to their assumed ability to engage in sexual, same-sex relations. I have concluded that …

The Cultural Cold War And The New Women Of Power. Making A Case Based On The Fulbright And Ford Foundations In Greece, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

When in the 1950s C. Wright Mills was writing about the emergence of the new power elites he paid no attention to the presence of women in its midsts. He was not entirely mistaken. Yet there is a particular intertwining of the ideologies of leadership and masculinity which serves to maintain the status quo, the privilege of an elite and perpetuate preconceptions about political agency and gender. In an attempt to go beyond available models and predominantly masculine images of the postwar America the present article accounts for women’s role in the postwar American efforts for cultural hegemony. It focuses …

Implementing A Multifaceted Approach To Caries Prevention, Diana V. Macri

Publications and Research

ental caries is a transmissible bacterial infection whose prevalence and severity are affected by multiple factors. It occurs on a continuum, with cycles of demineralization and remineralization occurring over years. Much has been written about the effects of fluoride on the caries process, including public health interventions such as community water fluoridation and various types of professional applications. Despite this, caries remains a significant chronic disease. Public health scholars and agencies have recognized the need for multiple interventions in ensuring the adoption of healthier behaviors in populations. For this reason, it is important for oral health professionals to advocate legislatively …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

The Cool Medium. The Global Pedagogy Of Eportfolio In The Foreign Language Classroom, Giulia Guarnieri

Publications and Research

The student-centered and integrative pedagogy of ePortfolio finds perfect applicability in the foreign language classroom. In contrast, textbooks for Italian language elementary courses, for the most part, implement a traditional and grammatical based methodological approach which hiders the process of ePortfolio integration which instead places greater emphasis on global and integrative pedagogy. The study discusses the implications these factors hold in preparing foreign languages instructors to use ePortfolio technology underlining its role as a cool medium which provides meaningful impact on student learning and participation

Promoting Aphasia Awareness, Yvonne M. Faria, Fiona Mcnulty, Veronica C. Gonzalez, Peggy S. Conner

Publications and Research

The National Aphasia Association defines aphasia as an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and ability to write. This communication disorder is typically acquired after a brain injury resulting from an accident or stroke. Nearly 180,000 Americans acquire aphasia each year. Despite efforts to increase awareness about aphasia, via organizations such as the National Aphasia Association, general knowledge is still limited. In 2000 Elman and colleagues collected data on the number of news articles that mentioned the term “aphasia” and compared it to similar health conditions with comparable or lower prevalence rates. They found that these …

The Cost Of Athletics In Higher Ed, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Among the greatest concerns regarding higher education are their budgets. With diminishing appropriations from state governments for public institutions, and decreasing enrollments affecting not only state but also private institutions, we see policies of slash and burn. Entire academic programs have been eliminated, which has oftentimes led to a loss of jobs. Yet a number of other programs that have nothing to do with the main mission of colleges and universities – education – seem to be untouchable. The most prominent example is athletics. It is interesting that big sports programs are a feature unique to the American higher education …

Correlated Network Of Networks Enhances Robustness Against Catastrophic Failures, Byungjoon Min, Muhua Zheng

Publications and Research

Networks in nature rarely function in isolation but instead interact with one another with a form of a network of networks (NoN). A network of networks with interdependency between distinct networks contains instability of abrupt collapse related to the global rule of activation. As a remedy of the collapse instability, here we investigate a model of correlated NoN. We find that the collapse instability can be removed when hubs provide the majority of interconnections and interconnections are convergent between hubs. Thus, our study identifies a stable structure of correlated NoN against catastrophic failures. Our result further suggests a plausible way …

White Women, U.S. Popular Culture, And Narratives Of Addiction, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

The United States war on drugs has, for decades now, systematically targeted communities of color. This sustained attack on people of color is accomplished through the use of whiteness. Recently, mainstream news media and elected officials have called for a “gentler war on drugs” to address the opioid epidemic. While some may see this as a welcome change, we take a more critical view. Specifically, we examine the role of White women in two popular television series that feature narratives of addiction as a gendered instance of “white drug exceptionalism.” To do this, we conducted a systematic analysis of a …

College Students Not Intolerant Of Ideas, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

One of the current urban legends circulating about is that college students are intolerant to a diversity of views and have a selective attitude towards free speech. Epitomized by a few highly publicized cases highlighted in the media, especially conservative ones, the idea of intolerance as a feature at colleges and universities has now become part of the conventional wisdom. But, is it true?

As usually happens with legends, impressions may be just a reflection of a distorted reality.

According to a study carried out last year but published a few weeks ago by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, stu- …

"Homosexuals Are Revolting": Stonewall, 1969, Erin Siodmak

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Expressive Enlightenment: Subjectivity And Solidarity In Daniel Garrison Brinton, Franz Boas, And Carlos Montezuma, R. Arvo Carr

Publications and Research

This chapter explores the expressivism of Franz Boas’s anthropological and linguistic thought, and situates Boas in a late-nineteenth- century cultural and intellectual milieu in which the theory and practice of self-expression took on unprecedented significance. Boas’s expressivism had deep roots in German intellectual culture, but was also influenced in surprising ways by his experiences in the Americas, in particular by the “philosophy of expression” espoused by Daniel Garrison Brinton, to whom Boas paid tribute in a 1899 obituary. Yet the history of Boas’s expressivism goes beyond intellectual history and the transmission of scholarly theories among European and Euro-American academics; for …

How Has Post Colonialism Affected Our Perception In The Novels “No Longer At Ease” By Chinua Achebe And “Samskara” By U.R Ananthamurthy?, Aaryan Manoj Nair

Publications and Research

A study in post-colonialism is a highly enticing endeavor. In the modern society, postcolonial literature is largely underappreciated in contrast to the more opulent reception of the Victorian or Elizabethan era of literature. The truth is, even today, modern perceptions of many colonial nations are largely constructed by their colonial masters. There is certainly a bias due to the influence of Western Hegemony and its monopoly on global media. The Western world still possesses a tendency to discredit anything which does not conform to its democratic liberalist ideals without glancing at other local factors. In the modern world, while the …