Digital Commons Network^™

Civility And Its Discontents: Subway Etiquette, Civic Values, And Political Subjectivity In Global Taiwan, Anru Lee

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Beyond Bostock: Implications For Lgbtq+ Theory And Practice., Sean Mccandless, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County is a landmark piece of case law that offers fundamental rights to LGBT persons. This essay reflects on how this case arrived at the Supreme Court and its implications for theory and praxis. The overall conclusion is that cautious optimism is warranted.

Musical Borrowings, Copyright, And The Canard Of “Cultural Appropriation", Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

This essay reviews the basic contours of the cultural appropriation controversies as they have been waged in reference to music in both academic and vernacular circles. It discusses some of the debates that have involved white performers’ musical borrowings from African-American culture, and also musical flows outside the Euro-American mainstream. It explores relations of these ethical polemics to notions of copyright and argues that these can provide a moral guide to the propriety of many cultural interactions. It further critiques the terminological and conceptual distortions and obfuscations that have tended to plague discussions, both on scholarly and popular levels. These …

Students And Parents: How Academic Libraries Serve A Growing Population, Marta Bladek

Publications and Research

In recognition of the critical role libraries play in the educational lives of parenting students, there has been a noticeable trend in academic libraries to offer services and spaces for students and their children. This article reviews recent LIS literature on student parent initiatives in academic libraries, with the emphasis on the United States. The purpose of this synthesis is to highlight demographic data, research findings, and case studies that, considered together, may significantly expand the profession’s knowledge about the barriers parenting students face in accessing the library and its services. The first part of the article lays out the …

Gender In Emergency Services: Foundations For Greater Equity In Professional Codes Of Ethics, Sebawit Bishu, Sean Mccandless, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

The lack of gender equity in the public sector is a critical issue, especially for emergency services. We explore the gendered nature of firefighting and policing at both professional and organizational levels. We assess gender equity by asking the following questions: (1) How have understandings of gender in emergency services evolved over time? (2) What are the normative implications of emergency services' lack of gender equity? We draw from feminist literature to critique the lack of progress and examine firefighting and policing histories along with the professional ethics codes of the U.S. Fire Administration and the International Association of Chiefs …

Online Or In-Person? Examining College Decisions To Reopen During The Covid-19 Pandemic In Fall 2020, Jacob Felson, Amy Adamczyk

Publications and Research

When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a major impediment to face-to-face college instruction in spring 2020, most teaching went online. Over the summer, colleges had to make difficult decisions about whether to return to in-person instruction. Although opening campuses could pose a major health risk, keeping instruction online could dissuade students from enrolling. Taking an ecological approach, the authors use mixed modeling techniques and data from 87 percent of two- and four-year public and four-year private U.S. colleges to assess the factors that shaped decisions about fall 2020 instructional modality. Most notably, the authors find that reopening decisions about whether …

Understanding The Role Of Religion In Shaping Cross-National And Domestic Attitudes And Interest In Abortion, Homosexuality, And Pornography Using Traditional And Google Search Data, Amy Adamczyk, Yu-Hsuan Liu, Jacqueline Scott

Publications and Research

Over the last 20 years, internet usage has increased substantially, providing an inexpensive source of data that may be less prone to bias and could provide a greater number of meso and macro units. However, validating big data and their usefulness has been challenging. This study uses established sources to validate Google Trends’ search interest in the “Bible” across US Designated Market Areas and “Ramadan” across nations, establishing a potential new source of religion data. We then use these measures to show that people from religiously conservative US areas and countries are more likely to disapprove of homosexuality, abortion and …

Shifting Religious Influences On Attitudes Towards Same-Sex Behavior And Civil Liberties: A Multilevel Across-Time Analysis, Laura M. Moore, Amy Adamczyk, J. Michael Ryan, Seth Ovadia

Publications and Research

Americans’ acceptance of same-sex sexual relations and their willingness to restrict the civil liberties of sexual minorities vary substantially across both time and place even as overall trends have been towards more liberalizing stances. Yet few quantitative studies have explored both the individual and contextual religious factors shaping Americans’ views and none have applied such an analysis to examining attitudes over time. Using hierarchical ordered logistic modeling and time-year interactions with 1973–2016 General Social Survey data, we examine whether the religious characteristics of residents and the contexts in which they reside moderated Americans’ liberalizing attitudes over time. We find that …

The Uncanny Swipe Drive: The Return Of A Racist Mode Of Algorithmic Thought On Dating Apps, Gregory Narr

Publications and Research

As algorithmic media amplify longstanding social oppression, they also seek to colonize every last bit of sociality where that oppression could be resisted. Swipe apps constitute prototypical examples of this dynamic. By employing protocols that foster absent-minded engagement, they allow unconscious racial preferences to be expressed without troubling users’ perceptions of themselves as non-racist. These preferences are then measured by recommender systems that treat “attractiveness” as a zero-sum game, allocate affective flows according to the winners and losers of those games, and ultimately amplify the salience of race as a factor of success for finding intimacy. In thus priming users …

Sonic Femininity: The Ronettes' Transgressive Gender Performance, Hilarie Ashton

Publications and Research

Iconic sixties girl group the Ronettes are frequently (and justly) celebrated for anchoring the Wall of Sound and inspiring the Beatles, but in their own right, they transgressed social, gendered expectations in revolutionary ways. Framed by a notion I call the sonic feminine, a recuperative theoretical space for the revolutionarily transgressive work of female and femme artists, I argue that the Ronettes, and lead singer Ronnie Spector in particular, enacted a kind of cultural rebellion: they crafted their images to made-up heights that tease the boundaries of drag across the spaces of the stage, the recording studio, the bathroom, and …

O Espaço E O Tempo Do Valor, David Harvey, Artur Renzo

Publications and Research

O artigo discute a lei do valor em Karl Marx como valor em movimento, que se faz valer no espaço e no tempo. Entende-se que o movimento não pode ocorrer no vácuo, sendo necessário abandonar a visão do valor que se move sem estar ancorado em nenhum lugar e passar a enxergá-lo criando geografias de cidades e redes de transportes; formando paisagens agrícolas para a produção de alimentos e matérias-primas; englobando fluxos de pessoas, bens e informações; determinando configurações territoriais de valores fundiários e habilidades de trabalho; organizando espaços de trabalho, estruturas de governo e administração. Conclui-se que há três …

Jlsc Board Editorial 2021, Anne Gilliland, Rebekah Kati, Jennifer Solomon, Dave S. Ghamandi, Jill Cirasella, David Lewis, Dede Dawson

Publications and Research

It hardly needs to be said that 2020 was a difficult year for the world. COVID-19 has infected over 120 million people and killed over 2 million as of March 2021 (Johns Hopkins). At the same time, police violence against people of color continues, even as communities engage in long-overdue reckoning initiatives. Across the globe, researchers, governments, and communities needed quick, open, up-to-date information on testing for, treating, and preventing COVID-19. Our increased dependence on technology during lockdowns provided some with safety and continuity, while others experienced the widening of the digital divide. There is no greater urgency than the …

A Refined Experimentalist Governance Approach To Incremental Policy Change: The Case Of Process-Tracing China’S Central Government Infrastructure Ppp Policies Between 1988 And 2017, Huanming Wang, Bin Chen, Joop Koppenjan

Publications and Research

This article was originally published in Journal of Chinese Governance, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/23812346.2021.1898151

This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Extracellular Vesicles Released By Human Retinal Pigment Epithelium Mediate Increased Polarised Secretion Of Drusen Proteins In Response To Amd Stressors, Miguel Flores-Bellver, Jason Mighty, Silvia Aparicio-Domingo, Kang V. Li, Cui Shi, Jing Zhou, Hannah Cobb, Patrick Mcgrath, German Michelis, Patricia Lenhart, Ganna Bilousova, Søren Heissel, Michael J. Rudy, Christina Coughlan, Andrew E. Goodspeed, S. Patricia Becerra, Stephen Redenti, M. Valeria Canto-Soler

Publications and Research

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Drusen are key contributors to the etiology of AMD and the ability to modulate drusen biogenesis could lead to therapeutic strategies to slow or halt AMD progression. The mechanisms underlying drusen biogenesis, however, remain mostly unknown. Here we demonstrate that under homeostatic conditions extracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted by retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells are enriched in proteins associated with mechanisms involved in AMD pathophysiology, including oxidative stress, immune response, inflammation, complement system and drusen composition. Furthermore, we provide first evidence that drusen-associated proteins are released as cargo of extracellular …

Human Retinal Organoids Release Extracellular Vesicles That Regulate Gene Expression In Target Human Retinal Progenitor Cells, Jing Zhou, Miguel Flores‑Bellver, Jianbo Pan, Alberto Benito‑Martin, Cui Shi, Onyekwere Onwumere, Jason Mighty, Jiang Qian, Xiufeng Zhong, Tasmim Hogue, Baffour Amponsah‑Antwi, Linda Einbond, Rajendra Gharbaran, Hao Wu, Bo‑Juen Chen, Zhiliang Zheng, Tatyana Tchaikovskaya, Xusheng Zhang, Hector Peinado, Maria Valeria Canto‑Soler, Stephen Redenti

Publications and Research

The mechanisms underlying retinal development have not been completely elucidated. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are novel essential mediators of cell‑to‑cell communication with emerging roles in developmental processes. Nevertheless, the identification of EVs in human retinal tissue, characterization of their cargo, and analysis of their potential role in retina development has not been accomplished. Three‑dimensional retinal tissue derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) provide an ideal developmental system to achieve this goal. Here we report that hiPSC‑derived retinal organoids release exosomes and microvesicles with small noncoding RNA cargo. EV miRNA cargo‑predicted targetome correlates with Gene Ontology (GO) pathways involved in …

Detection Of Subsurface, Nanometer-Scale Crystallographic Defects By Nonlinear Light Scattering And Localization, Farbod Shafiei, Tommaso Orzali, Alexey Vert, Mohammad-Ali Miri, Pui Yee Hung, Man Hoi Wong, Andrea Alù, Gennadi Bersuker, Michael C. Downer

Publications and Research

Heteroepitaxial crystalline films underlie many electronic and optical technologies but are prone to forming defects at their heterointerfaces. Atomic-scale defects such as threading dislocations that propagate into a film impede the flow of charge carriers and light degrading electrical/optical performance of devices. Diagnosis of subsurface defects traditionally requires time-consuming invasive techniques such as cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. Using III–V films grown on Si, noninvasive, bench-top diagnosis of subsurface defects have been demonstrated by optical second-harmonic scanning probe microscope. A high-contrast pattern is observed of subwavelength “hot spots” caused by scattering and localization of fundamental light by defect scattering sites. Size …

Framing Inclusion: The Media Treatment Of Irregular Immigrants' Right To Health Care In Spain, Alisa Petroff, Anahí Viladrich, Sònia Parella

Publications and Research

With the passing of Royal Decree-Law 16/2012, Spain’s national health system switched from a model defined by universal and free health care principles, to a private insurance system that excluded large population groups. Based on a qualitative research design, this paper examines the media treatment of undocumented immigrants’ prerogatives to public health care in Spain (2012–2018). The analysis of 234 articles, drawn from three major Spanish newspapers, reveals three frames that underscore the media’s "rhetorics of inclusion," which argue for the extension of free medical services to irregular immigrants a topic traditionally underestimated by the literature. The moralist frame, supported …

The Interface And Instrumentality Of Eurorack Modular Synthesis, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

In this essay, I will examine a couple of aspects of hardware modular synthesizers which, despite not being a “new” morphological form (most commercially sold synthesizers from the 1960s through the early 1970s were modular), experienced an extremely unlikely expansion of interest and activity in the mid-1990s. With a contemporary modular synth, users buy a powered rack that holds modules specific to one of several competing formats. For the two most widely adopted formats, Eurorack (sometimes called 3U in reference to the height of modules, or Doepfer A-100 after the first branded system to adopt this panel height) and MOTM/MU …

Indígenas, Africanos, Roma Y Europeos: Ritmos Transatlánticos En Música, Canto Y Baile, K. Meira Goldberg, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Resumen:

Hace algo más de un año, la Foundation for Iberian Music (The City University of New York), The Center for Iberian and Latin American Music (University of California, Riverside), el Centro de Estudios para la Cultura y la Comunicación (Universidad Veracruzana) y la Universidad Cristóbal Colón convocaron el congreso Indígenas, africanos, roma y europeos: Ritmos transatlánticos en música, canto y baile, el cual tuvo lugar en Centro Veracruzano de las Artes Hugo Argüelles (CEVART) en el Puerto de Veracruz, México del 11 al 13 de abril de 2019. Los artículos que siguen a esta introducción son una selección …

University Music Students’ Choice Of Music Listening Sources: Use Of Library Resources As Compared With Non-Academic Streaming Services, Marianna J. Czeisel, Veronica D. Smith

Publications and Research

The rise of streaming services and decline of analog media have affected academic music libraries in their traditional role as a resource of listening materials. This study examines the listening-source preferences of college-level music students across multiple institutions through a survey in which students compared electronic non-academic streaming services and both electronic and analog library multimedia collections to determine the factors that lead to the use of one source over the other. Findings indicate a strong preference for non-academic streaming services over library materials, emphasizing the importance of convenience. However, the perceived quality of library materials remains high among participants.

Digital Humanities At Cuny. Building Communities Of Practice In The Public University, Stefano Morello

Publications and Research

In this essay, I reflect on my experience working in the field of Digital Humanities at The Graduate Center (GC) of the City University of New York (CUNY) to refute the misconception that the point of intersection of humanities and computation is dependent on robust technological infrastructure and, therefore, outside of the reach of underfunded public institutions. On the contrary, my tenure as a GC Digital Fellow suggests that the development of DH communities of practice can be an especially valuable asset for public universities, due to the waterfall effect they can produce for both the academic and the local …

Enzymatic Analysis Of Yeast Cell Wall-Resident Gapdh And Its Secretion, Michael J. Cohen, Brianne Philippe, Peter N. Lipke

Publications and Research

In yeast, many proteins are found in both the cytoplasmic and extracellu- lar compartments, and consequently it can be difficult to distinguish nonconventional secretion from cellular leakage. Therefore, we monitored the extracellular glyceralde- hyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) activity of intact cells as a specific marker for nonconventional secretion. Extracellular GAPDH activity was proportional to the number of cells assayed, increased with incubation time, and was dependent on added substrates. Preincubation of intact cells with 100mM dithiothreitol increased the reac- tion rate, consistent with increased access of the enzyme after reduction of cell wall di- sulfide cross-links. Such treatment did not increase …

Feasibility Of Continuous Fever Monitoring Using Wearable Devices, Benjamin L. Smarr, Kirstin Aschbacher, Sarah M. Fisher, Anoushka Chowdhary, Stephan Dilchert, Karena Puldon, Adam Rao, Frederick M. Hecht, Ashley E. Mason

Publications and Research

Elevated core temperature constitutes an important biomarker for COVID-19 infection; however, no standards currently exist to monitor fever using wearable peripheral temperature sensors. Evidence that sensors could be used to develop fever monitoring capabilities would enable large-scale health-monitoring research and provide high-temporal resolution data on fever responses across heterogeneous populations. We launched the TemPredict study in March of 2020 to capture continuous physiological data, including peripheral temperature, from a commercially available wearable device during the novel coronavirus pandemic. We coupled these data with symptom reports and COVID-19 diagnosis data. Here we report findings from the first 50 subjects who reported …

Review Of Memory Lab Network Resources, Annie E. Tummino, Tomasz Gubernat, Jeanie Pai

Publications and Research

Review of Memory Lab Network resources for American Archivist Reviews, a portal which highlights websites, digital collections, and technologies that have an impact on the archives profession. The authors review the resources published by the Memory Lab Network and discuss their own work building a Memory Lab at the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library of Queens College, CUNY.

Trypanosoma Cruzi Modulates Piwi-Interacting Rna Expression In Primary Human Cardiac Myocytes During The Early Phase Of Infection, Kayla J. Rayford, Ayorinde Cooley, Ashutosh Arun, Girish Rachakonda, Yulia Kleschenko, Fernando Villalta, Siddharth Pratap, Maria F. Lima, Pius N. Nde

Publications and Research

Trypanosoma cruzi dysregulates the gene expression profile of primary human cardiomyocytes (PHCM) during the early phase of infection through a mechanism which remains to be elucidated. The role that small non-coding RNAs (sncRNA) including PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) play in regulating gene expression during the early phase of infection is unknown. To understand how T. cruzi dysregulate gene expression in the heart, we challenged PHCM with T. cruzi trypomastigotes and analyzed sncRNA, especially piRNA, by RNA-sequencing. The parasite induced significant differential expression of host piRNAs, which can target and regulate the genes which are important during the early infection phase. An …

Pandemic Vibrio Cholerae Shuts Down Site-Specific Recombination To Retain An Interbacterial Defence Mechanism, Francis J. Santoriello, Lina Michel, Daniel Unterweger, Stefan Pukatzki

Publications and Research

Vibrio cholerae is an aquatic microbe that can be divided into three subtypes: harmless environmental strains, localised pathogenic strains, and pandemic strains causing global cholera outbreaks. Each type has a contact-dependent type VI secretion system (T6SS) that kills neighbouring competitors by translocating unique toxic effector proteins. Pandemic isolates possess identical effectors, indicating that T6SS effectors may affect pandemicity. Here, we show that one of the T6SS gene clusters (Aux3) exists in two states: a mobile, prophage-like element in a small subset of environmental strains, and a truncated Aux3 unique to and conserved in pandemic isolates. Environmental Aux3 can be readily …

“How Can We Do Better?”: Empowering Diverse Voices Through An Academic/Public Library Partnership, Annie E. Tummino, Jo-Ann Wong

Publications and Research

Queens Memory is a local community archiving and oral history project, co-administered by Queens Public Library and Queens College, CUNY. During COVID-19, members from both institutions collaborated to create a series of virtual roundtables hosted on Facebook Live, centered on social justice, current events, and creating positive social change. Specific examples include xenophobia and Asian Americans during COVID-19; the Black Lives Matter movement; student activism and political engagement; and equity/inclusion in archives. In selecting these topics and speakers, we made sure that the diversity and lived experiences of our communities were represented, and that speakers included both scholars and students. …

Measuring Influence On Twitter, Daniela B. Martinez

Publications and Research

A survey took in MAT 1372 about students' opinions on Twitter showed that most of them assumed that if a Twitter account has more followers, it will receive more likes or replies. However, accounts can buy followers, and followers do not necessarily mean engagement. In this paper, we used Twitter because it is a significant player in social media, but we can measure influence without using Twitter's follower count. We took a reference from Meeyoung Cha's article "The Million Follower Fallacy," which has demonstrated that the Twitter follower count is a meaningless metric in determining influence. To measure influence, a …

Open Educational Resources: What Do Students Want?, Aneeza Hussain, Joyette K. Noel

Publications and Research

This project aims at identifying the needs and requests of students for Open Educational Resources (OERs) in order to develop rubrics for design, evaluation but also revisions of OERs. For this purpose literature searches on the matter were conducted to determine if information on students’ perspective on OER content and expectations existed. Simultaneously, feedback from fellow City Tech students with experience using OERs has been collected. Our results provide insight on how City Tech students perceive OERs, in comparison with traditional resources. This also pinpoints the key pedagogical features that OERs should offer in order to attract, engage and better …

Testimony To The Cuny Board Of Trustees In Opposition To The Resolution To Approve A Contract With Turnitin For Plagiarism Detection Software, December 14th, 2020 Meeting, Luke Waltzer, Lisa M. Rhody, Roxanne Shirazi

Publications and Research

This statement was drafted in response to the Board of Trustee's consideration of a resolution to approve CUNY's contract renewal with Turnitin in 2020. The authors circulated the petition on December 3, 2020, and submitted the final version -- signed by 1065 members of the CUNY community -- to the Board of Trustees on December 7, 2020 for consideration at their meeting on December 14th, 2020.