Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between The National Family Caregiver Support Program (Nfcsp) And Help Received By The Elder Population, Symone Biggerstaff

Theses and Dissertations

The rising elder American population is causing an increased demand for elder support. Elder support often comes from informal caregivers. There are economic implications of elder care, such as increased government funding for elder care facilities and economic strain on caregivers and care recipients. The National Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP) was the first federal program, implemented in 2000 under the Older Americans Act re-authorization, designed to unburden caregivers. This paper aims to analyze the connection between NFCSP eligibility and the aid provided to elderly care recipients with ADL and IADL challenges. Using Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data and a …

Tractatus De Herbis, Botanical Guide To The Universe: A Case Study For Morgan Ms M.873, Darya Badikova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the development of the late medieval pharmacopoeial treatise Tractatus de herbis illustrated in M.873, a fourteenth-century manuscript from the collection of the Morgan Library in New York. Particularly, the thesis considers the use and reception of this encyclopedic work by elite contemporary audiences of the Venetian Republic through material and medical history.

124 Notebooks, Andrea Lerner

Theses and Dissertations

124 Notebooks is a documentary about Brazilian architect and urbanist Jaime Lerner.

In 2010, two Brazilians were included in the TIMES Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, the ex and now re-elected president, Luiz Inacio da Silva, known as Lula, and the Architect and Urbanist Jaime Lerner. Lerner was listed among the 25 most influential thinkers for his 40 years working with urban sustainability, starting in the 1970s with his urban revolution of a once obscure city in Brazil, Curitiba. Curitiba is where I am from; Jaime Lerner is my father.

In 124 Notebooks …

Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, Jess Shane

Theses and Dissertations

Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative is a 4-part creative non-fiction podcast that problematizes the use of personal stories in the documentary industry and examines the power dynamics between documentary-makers and their subjects. The series features a story within a story: it follows me, documentarian Jess Shane, as I craft short documentaries about four individuals’ lives— individuals who have applied to participate in my project by responding to an online ad. It also dives into the behind-the-scenes decisions required to tailor individuals’ life experiences to conform to industry standards of what makes a “good story.” In tandem, these two narratives— of me producing …

Diy The Process Of Healing From Trauma Through Woodworking, And Living Off Grid, Rachel A. Pollock

Theses and Dissertations

DIY is a website and short hybrid documentary that explores off-grid living, the longing for authenticity and healing from trauma. It is also about clinging to memories, even ones that may be painful, and the desire to move on. The website, Bare Minimums explores healing through the written word, and the short documentary “Home Is Where You Park It” explores the processing of trauma through video. They are two different approaches that evoke completely different emotions and outcomes. Processing memories and trauma through these mediums shows a kind of nostalgia for what once was, mixed with uncomfortable feelings that anticipate …

Lawn Story Short, Sarah Johnsrude

Theses and Dissertations

Lawn Story Short is a short essay film on lawn culture in a subdivision development outside of Louisville, Kentucky. The film is presented from the point of view of a first person narrator who guides the audience through an inquiry: why are lawns a pervasive icon in the US today?

Edward & Sons: An Improvised Opera, Ian Robles

Theses and Dissertations

A hurricane is coming, but at Edward & Sons Hardware and Plumbing the shelves are bare, the gringo debt collectors are calling and the owners is getting high in the back room. An improvised opera about the demise of the very last family-owned hardware store in Puerto Rico.

Zeus Iv, Lauren Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

How do you survive a pandemic? When you’re trapped inside for weeks? When society’s rules are revealed as largely arbitrary?

You get a dog and bring it to the park.

This play is about a group of devoted dog owners in Boston who stumble on an unexpected community. It's a dog park ballet about the close care of strangers.

Contrafreeloading In The Domestic Dog (Canis Lupus Familiaris), Liza Rothkoff

Theses and Dissertations

Contrafreeloading is the behavior of working for food that requires effort to obtain when also provided with food that does not require effort to obtain. More specifically, contrafreeloading can be defined in multiple ways using various criterion such as 1) an animal’s preference and/or 2) an animal’s willingness to work for food when freely available food is offered. To date, multiple studies have evaluated contrafreeloading in various animal species, identifying that many non-domesticated species (e.g., maned wolves, red jungle fowl) and domesticated species (e.g., pigs, goats) demonstrate a preference and/or a willingness to work for food when readily available food …

I Could Never, Chad Kaydo

Theses and Dissertations

Isn’t it horrible? What she did? Can you even *imagine* doing that? Three women reckon with the dark myths we tell ourselves…while their husbands golf.

Walk Away, Anna May, Kim Diana Ly

Theses and Dissertations

Remember how Anna May Wong was passed over for white actors in yellowface? An emerging Asian American screenwriter moves on a kaleidoscopic journey through the entertainment industry -- from Kabuki to Crazy Rich Asians -- in order to understand why she's even trying to make it in Hollywood.

Impressions Of An Urban Vision: Art Across The Park (1980 And 1982), Marie N. Catalano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Art Across the Park (1980 and 1982), a program of sculpture and performance conceived of by artist David Hammons sited throughout overlooked regions of New York City’s public parks. Amidst debates about the proper use of public space and the role of public art in the early 1980s, Art Across the Park asserted a more culturally expansive model of being in social space, one rooted in strategies of performance as an antidote to lasting effects of social control.

Riverside Drive, Phillip C. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

RIVERSIDE DRIVE: Eugene, a mild-mannered librarian by day and a foul-mouthed comedian by night, uncovers the hidden legacy of his family’s Harlem home which forces him to transform his life.

"Those Common Everyday Things We All Know": Roger Brown's American Art, Jake Brodsky

Theses and Dissertations

Roger Brown (1941–1997) was an American artist associated with the Chicago Imagists. Borrowing elements from American visual culture to construct an idiosyncratic language of motifs, Brown’s paintings demand a mode of attention—of looking, searching, recognizing, identifying—that parallels the structures of feeling that constitute being in America.

Techniques For Tree Species Classification With Hyperspectral Imagery At Neon Science Sites, Anthony T. Albanese

Theses and Dissertations

Studies three sets of techniques for hyperspectral tree species classification at NEON science sites, aiming to work towards producing a general classification model.

L'Impuissance De La Représentation : Sur La Possibilité De La Représentation Du Terrorisme, Youtian Sun

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I attempt to explore the possibility of representing terrorism in literature by analyzing four literary works: Paris (1898), La Condition Humaine (1933), Nada (1973), and Khalil (2018). These four works depict four different stages of the development of terrorism from the late 19th century to the 21st century. I will use these literary works to analyze the relationship between terrorism and capitalist modernity.

Uber, The Gig Economy, And African Americans: Digital Anti-Blackness In The New Technological Age, Bill Kaso

Theses and Dissertations

The digital objects and processes of the new technological age have been found to reproduce anti-Blackness, specifically among African Americans, in the United States. To understand and remedy these trends, this thesis looks at digital technology as the product of anti-Black material culture.

Utilizing Machine Learning Techniques To Predict Credit Card Payment Defaults, Madison Guerra

Theses and Dissertations

The question of accurately predicting credit card defaulters has been explored in numerous studies in the past. In these studies, the researchers utilized various machine learning theories and techniques to make the determination the extent of defaults. Unfortunately, some constraints were encountered, and the limitations that existed from the previous works have been discussed. This project attempted to address these issues with special attention given to more recently available data. Specifically, in this project, we looked at data provided by one Kaggle user, which utilized the data from the American Express credit card competition, which ranges from late March 2018 …

Exploring New Jersey’S Middle And High School Health Educators’ Decision-Making On Sti Content And Instruction: A Qualitative Collective Case Study, Brianne Siderio

Theses and Dissertations

STIs in youth in New Jersey is a growing concern. According to New Jersey’ Public Health Data Resource (2020), the total number of STIs in youth from age 15-24 totals 19,698. The current STIs-related sex education programs vary widely in New Jersey in terms of scope, the accuracy of content, emphasis, and effectiveness (Thrive New Jersey Coalition, 2019). Therefore, students may have quite different levels of awareness on the prevention of STIs. The purpose of this qualitative collective case study was to explore the Θ (theta) (Stake, 1995) of the “why” and “how” of health educators’ decisions in designing STI …

A Mixed Methods Approach To Police Decertification, Lacey Roughton

Theses and Dissertations

The decertification of police officers is an important mechanism for law enforcement accountability for those who engage in misconduct, however, we have limited knowledge on the processes and outcomes of this form of police accountability. By using a convergent mixed methods design, the purpose of this study was to understand the process in which police decertification occurs and factors that influence decertification decisions in a Southern state. The data for this study included decertification case evidence packets, observational data from decertification hearings, and in-depth qualitative interviews with commissioners involved in police officer decertification case decisions. The findings from this study …

An Incremental Based Approach For 3d Multi-Angle Point Cloud Stitching Using Icp And Knn, Pankti K. Patel

Theses and Dissertations

The basic principle of stitching is joining or merging any two materials or objects. 3D point cloud stitching is basically stitching two 3D point cloud together. 3D point cloud stitching is an emerging topic and there are multiple ways to achieve it. There are various methods for stitching which all have changes throughout the time. The existing methods do have shortcomings and have ignored the multiangle stitching of a same model or an object. This shortfall leads to many deficiencies in the ability of a stitching algorithm to maintain accuracy over the period. In this work I have introduced a …

Protections And Liabilities: Parental Attributes Of Lynch Victims, Peter Shumway Polhill

Theses and Dissertations

Minimal research has focused on how lynching was not purely an individual-level event but, at times, was a family-level process. Prior research has focused on the economic forces, social factors, and individual level attributes that changed the probability of being lynched. Research studying these topics has identified that marginalization, status, distinctiveness, and the racial threat hypothesis contribute to lynching. However, this research has not studied child victims and how parental level attributes may intersect differently with these theoretical perspectives. Using machine-learning tools, I created census linked data which identifies the families of child lynch victims and other non-victim families in …

The Influence Of Rejection On Life And Health Outcomes Among Transgender And Gender Non-Conforming Adults In The U.S., Trye Mica Price

Theses and Dissertations

Rejection is a widespread and problematic issue that impacts transgender and gender non-conforming individuals throughout their lives. Transgender people are likely to experience gender-based rejection from their families, at school during their youth, from employers and co-workers, and religious organizations. Past research has shown that rejection from certain people and organizations can influence outcomes such as homelessness, sex work engagement, and issues with psychological distress. For instance, familial rejection has been shown to be a consistent factor associated with homelessness and mental health issues among gender minorities. However, there is limited knowledge on how school, workplace, and religious rejection can …

Student Engagement Through Programming At Four-Year Institutions, Sydney Hartman

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively examine the ways in which student engagement is utilized on the Glassboro campus at Rowan University and how it has impacted the overall development of undergraduate students enrolled in the Fall of 2022 and Spring of 2023. Utilizing Qualtrics, a 14-question survey was distributed to all enrolled students starting in December of 2022 and ending in February of 2023. This survey contained questions that surveyed the population demographically and asked how frequent they attend various programs on-campus. The survey data was then analyzed to better understand students’ perceptions of the current programming …

Not A Monolith: Influence Of Race And Religiosity On Muslim Perceptions Of Police, Arsala Aneeq Khan

Theses and Dissertations

Muslim perceptions of police are not often understood. In order to better understand these attitudes, this dissertation approached Muslim respondents with two main factors in mind: racial identity and religiosity, both identities that often set Muslims apart from other Americans. This dissertation asked respondents four questions about police respect, police importance, police use of force and police defunding. The data for this dissertation was collected by Yaqeen Institute of Islamic Research in summer 2020. In order to compute these questions, a series of structural equation models were run. Findings included Muslim respondents who were aware of discrimination in mosques and …

Human Impacts On Erosion In Starved Rock State Park, Illinois, Usa, Savannah Leigh Thielbar

Theses and Dissertations

State and National parks are some of the most visited wildlife areas within the United States, making local geologic features more susceptible to human-induced change. As more people visit these parks throughout the year, we see major impacts on the interactions between biological and geological processes. This study determines if human activity, through rock carvings, influence erosion within Starved Rock State Park and provides a new perspective on our compounding anthropogenic influence on Earth. Through natural stream and artificial human erosion, the base of the bedrock slope potentially changes at a much faster rate than the upper portion of the …

Lobbying – A Financial Perspective, Sean Byrne

Theses and Dissertations

U.S. based bank holding companies (BHCs) exert influence at every step in the legislative process where financial regulatory reforms are enacted into law, such as the Dodd-Frank Act, to promulgation of regulations. In Chapter II, we maintain that BHCs, upon facing salient regulation, lobby regulators to have their opinions heard with the goal of favorable regulatory change and to increase non-traditional revenues. We undertook a novel collection of political and financial data from 2003 to 2018, matching 180 pairs of parsed proposed and final regulations. BHCs that participated in commenting on proposed rules are highly successful at having their views …

Topic Modeling And Future Prediction Of Aid Data In Development Studies Using Lda And Bert, Uttamasha Anjally Oyshi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a study on topic modeling and future prediction of aid data in development studies using LDA and BERT. The goal of this study is to explore the aid data from four sectors: Government and civil society, Government and civil society general, Conflict prevention and resolution, peace and security, and Women, and to identify the latent topics that are present in the data. The LDA and BERT algorithms were used for the topic modeling, and coherence scores were computed to evaluate the quality of the models. The results of the study show that the LDA and BERT models …

Exploring Self-Authorship Development Among First-Generation Latinx College Undergraduates Who Participate In A Summer Bridge Program, Alexis Manuel Delgado

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research study was to explore self-authorship theory through the insights and experiences of first-generation Latinx undergraduate students who completed a summer bridge program. This qualitative critical single case study focused on participants' unique experiences during a state-funded summer bridge program at a public 4-year institution in New Jersey. This study found how participants summer experiences offered students the opportunity to begin to question, rethink, and reshape their own beliefs, values, or knowledge. Findings from this study suggest that students' experiences during the summer elicited a form of dissonance that helped them develop confidence, empathy, college culture …

"I Am Not An Angel": Contested Identity In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Cynthia Urteaga

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores identity in Charlotte Brontë’s magnum opus, Jane Eyre (1847). Using specific moments in the main character’s life, this thesis will examine the importance of selfdefining truths and identity during a deeply restrictive time. This thesis will also incorporate Helene Cixous’ essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975) to better understand the importance of Brontë writing a female character who avowed her own identity and challenged anyone who imposed their own perception on to her character. This thesis aims to delineate the ways Jane challenges those around her, and even the reader, as she remains loyal to her …