Digital Commons Network^™

Alpha Oscillations And Feedback Processing In Visual Cortex For Conscious Perception, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Variability in perception between individuals may be a consequence of different inherent neural processing speeds. To assess whether alpha oscillations systematically reflect a feedback pacing mechanism for cortical processing during visual perception, comparisons were made between alpha oscillations, visual suppression from TMS, visual evoked responses, and metacontrast masking. Peak alpha oscillation frequencies, measured through scalp EEG recordings, significantly correlated with the optimum latencies for visual suppression from TMS of early visual cortex. Individuals with shorter alpha periods (i.e., higher peak alpha frequencies) processed visual information faster than those with longer alpha periods (i.e., lower peak alpha frequencies). Moreover, peak alpha …

Competitive Frontoparietal Interactions Mediate Implicit Inferences, Martijn E. Wokke, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Frequent experience with regularities in our environment allows us to use predictive information to guide our decision process. However, contingencies in our environment are not always explicitly present and sometimes need to be inferred. Heretofore, it remained unknown how predictive information guides decision-making when explicit knowledge is absent and how the brain shapes such implicit inferences. In the present experiment, 17 human participants (9 females) performed a discrimination task in which a target stimulus was preceded by a predictive cue. Critically, participants had no explicit knowledge that some of the cues signaled an upcoming target, allowing us to investigate how …

Contact Isn’T Enough: Attitudes Towards And Misunderstandings About Undocumented Immigrants Among A Diverse College Population, Sarah C. Bishop, Nicholas David Bowman

Publications and Research

Ample evidence exists of bipartisan positive attitudes towards undocumented immigrants receiving a path to citizenship, and of a lack of US residents’ knowledge about undocumented immigration, but it is not yet clear whether individuals in the same sampling frame may exhibit both favourable attitudes towards and ignorance about undocumented immigrants. We use open- and closed-ended survey questions (N = 231) to probe perceptions of immigrants and knowledge about US immigration procedures in a cohort of demographically and ideologically diverse college students. Our findings confirmed largely favourable attitudes towards undocumented immigrants, but also misconceptions about undocumented immigrants’ rights and options with …

“A” For Effort: Rewarding Effortful Retrieval Attempts Improves Learning From General Knowledge Errors In Women, Damon Abraham, Kateri Mcrae, Jennifer A. Mangels

Publications and Research

Previous research has shown that the prospect of attaining a reward can promote task engagement, up-regulate attention toward reward-relevant information, and facilitate enhanced encoding of new information into declarative memory. However, past research on reward-based enhancement of declarative memory has focused primarily on paradigms in which rewards are contingent upon accurate responses. Yet, findings from test-enhanced learning show that making errors can also be useful for learning if those errors represent effortful retrieval attempts and are followed by corrective feedback. Here, we used a challenging general knowledge task to examine the effects of explicitly rewarding retrieval effort, defined as a …

In Search Of China’S First Library: Materials, Housing And Arrangement, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

Historically, the origin of libraries has an intimate association with written records supporting administrative or ritual functions at the palace or temple. This article attempts to discuss the possibility of the existence of China’s first library in the Shang dynasty (c.1570-1045 BCE) during the beginning of the formative period of Chinese civilization. The article analyzes and synthesizes both paleographical and archaeological evidence from the perspective of available materials, houses, and arrangement, which answers the questions of what the books were made of, where they were stored, and how they were arranged. The article ends with a conclusion that there is …

Transforming School Hallways Through Critical Inquiry: Multimodal Literacies For Civic Engagement, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Christopher Curmi-Hall

Publications and Research

The authors examined the research and activism of 10th graders (ages 15–16) involved in a youth participatory action research project in a course in qualitative research at their small public school in New York City, New York. The authors, a classroom researcher and a high school teacher, looked closely at how the youth researchers used photography, collage, and videography to transform their school hallways into a space for critical conversations about race and gender. The authors examined how the hallways became a civic space shaped by collective youth resistance, multimodal counterstories, and negotiated civic engagement.

Just Culture: It's More Than Policy, Linda Ann Paradiso, Nancy Sweeney

Publications and Research

Any healthcare organization’s top priority is effective and safe care. Despite this, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the US. Hospitals are imperfect systems where nurses have competing demands and are forced to improvise and develop workarounds. Errors rarely occur in a vacuum, rather they’re a sequence of events with multiple opportunities for correction. Clinical nurses can have a significant impact on reducing errors due to their proximity to patients. When errors are identified, the events and impact on safe care need to be shared. Just culture is a safe haven that supports reporting. In a just …

My Preferred Pronoun Is She: Understanding Transgender Identity And Oral Health Care Needs, Diana V. Macri, Kate Wolfe

Publications and Research

This literature review summarizes current research and evidence regarding transgender persons and oral health. Methods: A search of the literature was conducted in the following databases: PubMed, Google Scholar, EBSCO Host, Science Direct, and Wiley Online Library using the keywords "transgender identity, gender non-conforming, discrimination, transition, binary systems, transgender oral cavity, transgender, transgender oral health, transgender dental health." Articles published from 2000 to 2017 in both peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed journals, which reported information regarding the oral health status of transgender populations, were selected for review. Results: The search revealed 18 articles, only 7 of which pertained to the oral …

Mechanisms Of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Progression, Olorunseun O. Ogunwobi, Trisheena Harricharaan, Jeannette Huaman, Anna Galuza, Oluwatoyin Odumuwagun, Yin Tan, Grace X. Ma, Minhhuyen T. Nguyen

Publications and Research

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary malignancy of the liver. It is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with a very poor prognosis. In the United States, there has been only minimal improvement in the prognosis for HCC patients over the past 15 years. Details of the molecular mechanisms and other mechanisms of HCC progression remain unclear. Consequently, there is an urgent need for better understanding of these mechanisms. HCC is often diagnosed at advanced stages, and most patients will therefore need systemic therapy, with sorafenib being the most common at the present time. However, sorafenib …

Researching At The Community-University Borderlands: Using Public Science To Study Policing In The South Bronx, Brett G. Stoudt, María Elena Torre, Paul Bartley, Evan Bissel, Fawn Bracy, Hillary Caldwell, Lauren Dewey, Anthony Downs, Cory Greene, Jan Haldipur, Scott Lizama, Prakriti Hassan, Einat Manoff, Nadine Sheppard, Jacqueline Yates

Publications and Research

This article is a case study of the Morris Justice Project (MJP), a participatory action research (PAR) study in a South Bronx neighborhood of New York City (NYC) designed to understand residents' experiences with and attitudes towards the New York Police Department (NYPD). An illustration of public science, the research was conducted in solidarity with an emerging police reform movement and in response to an ongoing and particularly aggressive set of policing policies that most heavily impacts poor communities and communities of color. The case study describes a set of ongoing participatory, research-action, "sidewalk science" strategies, developed in 42 square …

Collaborative Research For Justice And Multi-Issue Movement Building: Challenging Discriminatory Policing, School Closures, And Youth Unemployment, Ronald David Glass, Brett G. Stoudt

Publications and Research

This special issue engages ethical, epistemic, political, and institutional issues in projects of collaborative research for justice that were designed with movements contesting policing, school closures, and youth disinvestment and unemployment. Three of the articles were collaboratively written by activists and scholars who drew from movements that deployed research for community-driven progressive change. The movements and the research are thus situated at the intersection of struggles against a resurgent anti-immigrant white supremacy, gentrification, a punitive carceral state, low pay and lack of meaningful employment opportunities, and the privatization of the public sector. These articles build upon and are in conversation …

Lessons Of A Failed Study: Lone Research, Media Analysis, And The Limitations Of Bracketing, Katherine Gregory

Publications and Research

Failed research can function as the underbelly of all qualitative research projects that come to fruition. These shadow projects offer invaluable insights to future research and researchers alike. In this article, I trace a failed life history of sex offenders project from its conceptualization to its abandonment, after conducting a series of searches on the online National Sex Offender Registry database. Through the use of preliminary field notes and an analysis of media representations, I examine the role of bracketing of the topic, as a by-product of the phenomenological tradition, and other methodological issues such as physical and emotional vulnerability …

In Search Of Wholeness: A Conversation About Transcending Language(S) And Art Forms, Natasha Lvovich, Olga Mezhibovskaya

Publications and Research

Natasha Lvovich interviews an interdisciplinary artist / designer, educator, and musician / musicologist, the multilingual Olga Mezhibovskaya, who discusses the complex relationship between languages (in this case, Russian and English) and artistic modalities, art forms, and genres. Mezhibovskaya's main scholarly focus (which she studied through music and in Russian) and now in art is wholeness, which could be understood as synthesis of all forms, interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness, what Roman Jakobson termed as "intersemiotic translation." References to Mezhibovskaya's numerous interdisciplinary projects, extremely rich with various intersemiotic connections, are both described and shown as visuals (URLs), videos and illustrations.

Introduction To The Special Issue: Multilingualism, Creativity, And The Arts, Natasha Lvovich, Steven G. Kellman

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Influence Of Sketching Instruction On Elementary Students’ Design Cognition: A Study Of Three Sketching Approaches, Euisuk Sung, Todd R. Kelly, Jung Han

Publications and Research

When teaching engineering design, sketching is a key element of design thinking that facilitates connection of hands and minds. As engineers use various graphical illustrations to conceptualise, communicate, and record design ideas, students make sketches to develop their design ideas. However, sketching instructions in engineering education often highly focus on technical drawing rather than strategic sketching. The study made three observations of sketching instructions from fourth-grade elementary science classrooms with two different sketching strategies and one control. The first group was instructed with effective uses of schematic symbols, the second group was introduced to a 2D template that showed the …

Awareness Of Emotions Leads To Self-Efficacy Among College Students, Amy Lee, Emily M. Delacruz

Publications and Research

Self-efficacy is one’s belief in their own ability to succeed in a particular situation or accomplish a task (Bandura, 1977). Previous research has shown that the effort one puts into achieving goals, coping abilities, and behavior in the face of opposition are all heavily influenced by efficacy beliefs. Self reflection and knowledge of inner feelings, areas in which one excel, areas in which one do poorly, and areas in which one need to improve aid in the establishment of goals (Bandura, 1977 & Cervone, 2004). Inner feelings are bound to occur when one make sense of what one can and …

Making It New And Keeping It Old: Recasting Frameworks And Contexts In Georgia O’Keeffe Studies, Linda M. Grasso

Publications and Research

Three recent Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition catalogues devise new interpretative frameworks and situate O’Keeffe in new contexts that are especially relevant to American Studies scholars interested in visual culture, material culture, gender studies, reception studies, and modernism. One places O’Keeffe in the company of other white women making modernist art in the early decades of the twentieth century; another provides critical interpretations that acknowledge and reject previous views that were skewered by monolithic gender and sexual lenses; and a third moves O’Keeffe into popular culture domains such as fashion, consumerism, and interior design. Raising questions about how curators present and shape …

Effects Of The Kcnq Channel Opener Ezogabine On Functional Connectivity Of The Ventral Striatum And Clinical Symptoms In Patients With Major Depressive Disorder, Aaron Tan, Sara Costi, Laurel S. Morris, Nicholas T. Van Dam, Marin Kautz, Alexis E. Whitton, Allyson K. Friedman, Katherine A. Collins, Gabriella Ahle, Nisha Chadha, Brian Do, Diego A. Pizzagalli, Dan V. Iosifescu, Eric J. Nestler, Ming-Hu Han, James W. Murrough

Publications and Research

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide, yet current treatment strategies remain limited in their mechanistic diversity. Recent evidence has highlighted a promising novel pharmaceutical target—the KCNQ-type potassium channel—for the treatment of depressive disorders, which may exert a therapeutic effect via functional changes within the brain reward system, including the ventral striatum. The current study assessed the effects of the KCNQ channel opener ezogabine (also known as retigabine) on reward circuitry and clinical symptoms in patients with MDD. Eighteen medication-free individuals with MDD currently in a major depressive episode were enrolled in an open-label study and …

A Comparative Study Of Incidence Of Domestic Violence Between Immigrant And Non-Immigrant Women In The United States Of America, Nadia A. Gordon, Urmi Ghosh-Dastidar, Janet Liou-Mark, Shamita Dasgupta

Publications and Research

Immigrant women in the USA come from various socio-economic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Some of these women suffer from domestic violence; however, due to their strict cultural or social structure, they often stay quiet and rarely report these incidents to the authorities. Additionally, since these immigrant women face more challenges than their non-immigrant peers, they are more reluctant or unlikely to leave their abusive partners. An analysis was completed using published data as an attempt to establish if any statistically significant differences exist between reported incidences among immigrant women and non-immigrant women. A chi-square analysis (χ² = 14.53; p-value …

The Impact Of Peer-Led Workshops In An Intermediate Algebra Course For Women, Minorities, And First-Generation College Students, Malika Ikramova

Publications and Research

The implementation of the Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) instructional model have shown to increase student pass rates and decrease failure and withdrawal rates in foundational mathematics courses. New York City College of Technology has implemented mandatory PLTL workshops in selected sections of MAT 1275: Intermediate Algebra and Trigonometry. Students spend an hour working collaboratively with their classmates guided by peer leader. Results from this study showed gender, ethnicity, and first-generation college student differences in their responses on the effectiveness of peer supported groups in this fundamental mathematics course.

Modeling Changes In Cellular Micro-Environment In Mild To Moderate Head Trauma, Xiangfu Zhang, Subhendra N. Sarkar Phd, Rt

Publications and Research

Our work aims to connect and model multiple small, inter-related tissue injuries as a consequence of mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI). It has been shown that frontal and temporal lobes are vulnerable regions for brain traumatic injury. A brain injury from a blow or high-speed impact can cause undersurface of the frontal and temporal lobes to deform against the anterior and cranial fossae. This deformation can often trigger damage to the cerebral vasculature, which is ill-understood and can result in chronic damage to larger vessels over time. These physiological injuries can be manifested psychologically; such as patients’ sleep-wake disturbances. The …

Poetic Representation Of Immigrant Bengali Women From Queens, New York: A Qualitative Exploration Of Narrative In Relation To Physical And Cultural Migration, Tabashshum J. Islam

Publications and Research

Poetic Representation of Immigrant Bengali Women from Queens, New York: A Qualitative Exploration of Narrative in Relation to Physical and Cultural Migration is a qualitative poetic inquiry and collaborative creative writing project. Five participants were interviewed and invited to engage in a collaborative writing process with the themes of immigration, cultural negotiation, and oral family history. All participants identified as college-educated Bengali women with a connection to Queens, New York, as well as being an immigrant or relative of an immigrant in the United States. From transcriptions of one-on-one interviews and personal notes, research-poetry was created to center on the …

Understanding The Impact Of Peer-Led Workshops On Student Learning, Afolabi Ibitoye, Nadia Kennedy, Armando Cosme

Publications and Research

As students we often wonder why some subjects are easy to understand and requires not much effort in terms of re-reading the material, for us to grasp what it entails. One subject seems to remain elusive and uneasy for a vast majority of learners at all levels of education; that subject is Mathematics, it is one subject that most learners finds difficult even after doubling the amount of time spent on studying the material. My intention is to explore ways to make Mathematics easier for other students using feedback from students enrolled in NSF mathematics peer leading workshops, and use …

Neural Indices Of Vowel Discrimination In Monolingual And Bilingual Infants And Children, Yan H. Yu, Carol Tessel, Henry Han, Luca Campanelli, Nancy Vidal, Jennifer Gerometta, Karen Garrido-Nag, Hia Datta, Valerie L. Shafer

Publications and Research

Objectives: To examine maturation of neural discriminative responses to an English vowel contrast from infancy to 4 years of age and to determine how biological factors (age and sex) and an experiential factor (amount of Spanish versus English input) modulate neural discrimination of speech.

Design: Event-related potential (ERP) mismatch responses (MMRs) were used as indices of discrimination of the American English vowels [ε] versus [I] in infants and children between 3 months and 47 months of age. A total of 168 longitudinal and cross-sectional data sets were collected from 98 children (Bilingual Spanish–English: 47 male and 31 female …

The Criminogenic And Psychological Effects Of Police Stops On Adolescent Black And Latino Boys, Juan Del Toro, Tracey Lloyd, Kim S. Buchanan, Summer Joi Robins, Lucy Zhang Bencharit, Meredith Gamson Smiedt, Kavita S. Reddy, Enrique Rodriguez Pouget, Erin M. Kerrison, Philip Atiba Goff

Publications and Research

Proactive policing, the strategic targeting of people or places to prevent crimes,is a well-studied tactic that is ubiquitous in modern law enforcement. A 2017 National Academies of Sciences report reviewed existing literature, entrenched in deterrence theory, and found evidence that proactive policing strategies can reduce crime. The existing literature, however, does not explore what the short and long-term effects of police contact are for young people who are subjected to high rates of contact with law enforcement as a result of proactive policing. Using four waves of longitudinal survey data from a sample of predominantly black and Latino boys in …

Synchronicity: The Role Of Midbrain Dopamine In Whole-Brain Coordination, Jeff A. Beeler, Jakob Kiskye Dreyer

Publications and Research

Midbrain dopamine seems to play an outsized role in motivated behavior and learning. Widely associated with mediating reward-related behavior, decision making, and learning, dopamine continues to generate controversies in the field. While many studies and theories focus on what dopamine cells encode, the question of how the midbrain derives the information it encodes is poorly understood and comparatively less addressed. Recent anatomical studies suggest greater diversity and complexity of afferent inputs than previously appreciated, requiring rethinking of prior models. Here, we elaborate a hypothesis that construes midbrain dopamine as implementing a Bayesian selector in which individual dopamine cells sample afferent …

Why Doula Services Should Become An Essential Health Benefit In New York State, Jalisha Hanshaw, Amy White

Publications and Research

Doulas are birth workers who assist expecting mothers through pregnancy, birth and postpartum using holistic techniques. Techniques include: prenatal yoga, birth affirmations and induction acupuncture. Doulas are underrated healthcare providers who deserve the same respect as clinical and non-clinical providers. Doulas are well-rounded alternative care providers who focus on mental, emotional, and physical well being of mothers. Also, they know special alternative medical techniques that prevent mothers from maternal mortality among other negative health outcomes. The amount of time and effort doulas perform with expecting mothers are equal or more than the average medical healthcare provider and should be a …

The Serial Blocking Effect: A Testbed For The Neural Mechanisms Of Temporal-Difference Learning, Ashraf Mahmud, Petio Petrov, Guillem R. Esber, Mihaela D. Iordanova

Publications and Research

Temporal-difference (TD) learning models afford the neuroscientist a theory-driven roadmap in the quest for the neural mechanisms of reinforcement learning. The application of these models to understanding the role of phasic midbrain dopaminergic responses in reward prediction learning constitutes one of the greatest success stories in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience. Critically, the classic learning paradigms associated with TD are poorly suited to cast light on its neural implementation, thus hampering progress. Here, we present a serial blocking paradigm in rodents that overcomes these limitations and allows for the simultaneous investigation of two cardinal TD tenets; namely, that learning depends on …

National Culture And Influences On Leadership Practices [Power Distance Index – Pdi], Oluremi Alapo

Publications and Research

The presenter will discuss power relations, culture, and human behavior in organizational settings based on previous research results on culture and leadership and provide information on new research being conducted on National Culture and Leadership practices. Previous research was based on Hofstede’s five cross - cultural dimension / framework. This new research will look at PDI – Power Distance Index and how it affects the relationship of subordinates to their leaders in new cross-cultural environments. The presenter will present information from a recent pilot study on Power Distance Index and the extent to which a person’s national culture influences (or …

Racism In Modern Information And Communication Technologies, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

These are the remarks given at a keynote address at the United Nations, before the 10th session of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Geneva, Switzerland.