Digital Commons Network^™

Converging Space And Producing Place: Social Inequalities And Birth Across Mexico, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications

I combine ethnographic research of the professional midwifery model in Mexico with concepts gleaned from an interdisciplinary literature in order to illustrate how different types of spaces converge in the process of place-making. From October 2010 to November 2013, I conducted twenty-eight months of research, interviewing employees of government bureaus and public health programs, observing how the professional midwifery model unfolds in distinct contexts, performing interviews and participant-observation with casa midwifery students/alumni, and “shadowing” professional midwives and obstetricians as they engage with pregnant women in a hospital setting. Drawing from ethnographic examples, this article points to five different types of …

The Effects Of Ship Wakes In The Venice Lagoon And Implications For The Sustainability Of Shipping In Coastal Waters, Gian Marco Scarpa, Luca Zaggia, Giorgia Manfe, Giuliano Lorenzetti, Kevin E. Parnell, Tarmo Soomere, John Rapaglia, Emanuela Molinaroli

Biology Faculty Publications

We analyse the impact of ship traffic in the vicinity of navigation channels in a wide shallow waterbody. The crucial hydrodynamic driver in this situation is the depression (Bernoulli) wake that may be transferred into a long-living solitary wave of depression over the shoals. The analysis considers navigation channels in the Venice Lagoon using a new large dataset of approximately 600 measured wake events associated to specific ships whose data are provided by the AIS system. Since the development of the modern industrial port and the opening of the Malamocco–Marghera channel in the late 1960s, growing pressure on the lagoon …

Feasibility Analysis Of Adipic Acid Production, Serpil Unlu

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Adipic acid is an essential intermediate chemical feedstock for the production of nylon-6,6; hence it is valuable from an industrial perspective. Currently, commercial adipic acid production includes a combination of two stages. The first stage produces a mixture of cyclohexanone and cyclohexanol called ‘’KA oil” derived from cyclohexane. In the second stage, KA oil is reacted with nitric acid to produce adipic acid. The second stage generates excess N₂O emission, which is considered as 310 times more potent than CO₂. Renewable feedstocks that can be converted to value-added chemicals offer significant potential for the necessary transition …

Genetic Resistance To The Downy Mildew Pathogen And Mapping The Rpf Resistance Loci In Spinach, Gehendra Bhattarai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is an important cool-season leafy vegetable crop in the United States (US). Downy mildew, caused by the obligate oomycete Peronospora effusa, is the most economically important disease of spinach. A total of 17 races of P. effusa have been reported on spinach, and many of these races (>10) have emerged in the last three decades. The new races of the pathogen are continually overcoming the genetic resistances used in the newly released cultivars.

A detached leaf inoculation assay was evaluated, standardized, and validated as a new method to differentiate resistant and susceptible spinach genotypes. Disease response …

Of Promoting Networking And Protecting Privacy: Effects Of Defaults And Regulatory Focus On Social Media Users’ Preference Settings, Hichang Cho, Sungjong Roh, Byungho Park

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Privacyresearch has debated whether privacy decision-making is determined by users'stable preferences (i.e., individual traits), privacy calculus (i.e.,cost-benefit analysis), or “responses on the spot” that vary across contexts.This study focuses on two factors—default setting as a contextual factor andregulatory focus as an individual difference factor—and examines the degree towhich these factors affect social media users' decisionmaking when usingprivacy preference settings in a fictitious social networking site. Theresults, based on two experimental studies (study 1, n = 414; study 2, n =213), show that default settings significantly affect users' privacypreferences, such that users choose the defaults or alternatives proximal tothem. Study 2 …

Leader Mindfulness And Employee Performance: A Sequential Mediation Model Of Lmx Quality, Interpersonal Justice, And Employee Stress, Jochen Reb, Sankalp Chaturvedi, Jayanth Narayanan, Ravi S. Kudesia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the present research, we examine the relation between leader mindfulness and employee performance through the lenses of organizational justice and leader-member relations. We hypothesize that employees of more mindful leaders view their relations as being of higher leader-member exchange (LMX) quality. We further hypothesize two mediating mechanisms of this relation: increased interpersonal justice and reduced employee stress. In other words, we posit that employees of more mindful leaders feel treated with greater respect and experience less stress. Finally, we predict that LMX quality serves as a mediator linking leader mindfulness to employee performance—defined in terms of both in-role and …

Molecular Quantification Of Plasmodium Parasite Density From The Blood Retained In Used Rdts, Ailie Robinson, Annette O. Busula, Julian K. Muwanguzi, Stephen J. Powers, Daniel K. Masiga, Teun Bousema, Willem Takken, Jetske G. De Boer, James G. Logan, Khalid B. Beshir, Colin J. Sutherland

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Most malaria-endemic countries are heavily reliant upon rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) for malaria case identification and treatment. RDT previously used for malaria diagnosis can subsequently be used for molecular assays, including qualitative assessment of parasite species present or the carriage of resistance markers, because parasite DNA can be extracted from the blood inside the RDT which remains preserved on the internal components. However, the quantification of parasite density has not previously been possible from used RDT. In this study, blood samples were collected from school-age children in Western Kenya, in the form of both dried blood spots on Whatman filter …

Crime And Greenspace: Extending The Analysis Across Cities, Samuel Scott Ogletree

All Dissertations

The role of greenspace in urban areas has become a focus of research as municipalities seek to increase the quality of life in cities. Multiple benefits are found to be associated with greenspace, but disservices such as crime are often overlooked. Studies investigating the link between crime and greenspace have revealed mixed results and been limited in geographic scope. This dissertation sought to examine the crime and greenspace relationship, extending the analysis to multiple cities in order to describe how the relationship may vary in different contexts. Additionally, one possible cause of crime, increased temperatures, was investigated to determine how …

Improving Healthcare Readiness To Respond To Human Trafficking: A Case Study, Traci A. Hefner

All Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to assess the readiness of a Department of Emergency Medicine (ED) to respond to human trafficking (HT), using an adapted Transtheoretical Model’s Stage of Change Model as a guide. Content analysis allowed for an assessment of 13 system-wide policies and procedures and 25 hours of on-site observations of patient data collection processes and clinical practices during intake, triage, and the medical screening evaluation at three ED sites. Thematic analysis identified five readiness themes based on semi-structured interviews with 22 healthcare personnel from four ED sties. Results indicated that system-wide policies and procedures …

Educating For Civic-Mindedness: Examining Student Impacts Of Academic Programs Of Community And Civic Engagement In Higher Education, Laura L. Minor

All Dissertations

Within the last decade, colleges and universities in the United States have embraced the “community engagement” model to fulfill their public missions and prepare their students for work within increasingly complex and diverse communities. The number of academic majors and minors in community engagement-related fields has multiplied across the country, yet there is little literature that examines their impact on students, and whether or not they are producing uniquely engaged citizens upon graduation. This quasi-experimental, quantitative study explores the effects of one such program on students at Central Connecticut State University. Graduates who have completed a minor in Community and …

High Dimensional Regression Techniques For Complex Data, Chase Joyner

All Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on developing mixed effects models for large scale and complex data. Our motivating applications involve areas where this data is common, including epidemiological studies, environmental sciences, and genetics. Two key attributes for most of the modeling techniques discussed in this dissertation are that they scale easily to large data and that they achieve full variable selection, which is often a desirable trait in mixed effects models. These attributes are primarily handled in two ways. The first is with carefully constructed latent variables that we introduce to make the posterior distributions more tractable. This allows a Markov chain …

Recommending Privacy Settings For Internet-Of-Things, Yangyang He

All Dissertations

Privacy concerns have been identified as an important barrier to the growth of IoT. These concerns are exacerbated by the complexity of manually setting privacy preferences for numerous different IoT devices. Hence, there is a demand to solve the following, urgent research question: How can we help users simplify the task of managing privacy settings for IoT devices in a user-friendly manner so that they can make good privacy decisions?

To solve this problem in the IoT domain, a more fundamental understanding of the logic behind IoT users’ privacy decisions in different IoT contexts is needed. We, therefore, conducted a …

Systems Engineering Approaches To Minimize The Viral Spread Of Social Media Challenges, Amro Khasawneh

All Dissertations

Recently, adolescents’ and young adults’ use of social media has significantly increased. While this new landscape of cyberspace offers young internet users many benefits, it also exposes them to numerous risks. One such phenomenon receiving limited research attention is the advent and propagation of viral social media challenges. Several of these challenges entail self-harming behavior, which combined with their viral nature, poses physical and psychological risks for the participants and the viewers. One example of these viral social media challenges that could potentially be propagated through social media is the Blue Whale Challenge (BWC). In the initial study we investigate …

The Role Of Out-Of-School Time Programming In Predicting Critical Reflection And Positive Outcomes In Marginalized Youth, Katrina Black Reed

All Dissertations

Background and Purpose. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of critical reflection (CR) in promoting positive outcomes in high achieving marginalized youth in an academic-based out-of-school time (OST) context. Marginalized youth face adverse social conditions in the United States and CR is defined as being able to recognize the perceived structural inequalities in a community by using navigational tools that enable a person to analyze their social surrounding, conditions, and circumstances. There is a lack of understanding of how OST programs promote CR in marginalized youth. This paper intends to explore the relation between OST program …

Conservation, Conflict, And Community Context: Insights From Indian Tiger Reserves, Devyani Singh

All Dissertations

Protected areas across the world have been established to preserve landscapes and conserve biodiversity. However, they also are crucial resources for nearby human populations who depend on them for subsistence and to fulfill social, economic, religious, and cultural needs. The contrasting ideologies of park use and conservation among diverse stakeholders (e.g. managers and local communities) make protected areas spaces of conflict. This mixed methods study aimed to gain a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of these complex conflicts and potential solutions by focusing on the social and ecological landscapes surrounding two Indian protected areas: Dudhwa National Park (DNP in Uttar Pradesh) …

Typhoon Wind Modeling And Flutter Fragility Analysis Of Long-Span Bridges In Coastal Regions Of China, Genshen Fang

All Dissertations

Typhoon or hurricane or tropical cyclone, which is a large-scale air rotating system around a low atmospheric pressure center, frequently causing devastating economic loss and human casualties along coastal regions due to violent winds, heavy rainfall, massive storm surges, flash flooding or even landslides in mountainous areas. The coastal region of China, which is characterized by high population densities and well-developed cities, is always exposed to typhoon threats with 7~8 landfall typhoons every year since Western Pacific Basin is the most active typhoon basin on earth, accounting for almost one-third of global annual storms. With more long-span bridges are being …

The Politics Of Democratizing Finance: A Radical View, Michael A. Mccarthy

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

How can finance be durably democratized? In the centers of financial power in both the United States and the United Kingdom, proposals now circulate to give workers and the public more say over how flows of credit are allocated. This article examines five democratization proposals: credit union franchises, public investment banks, sovereign wealth funds, inclusive ownership funds, and bank nationalization. It considers how these plans might activate worker and public engagement in decision making about finance by focusing on three modes of public participation: representative democracy, direct democracy, and deliberative minipublics. It then considers the degree to which democratization plans …

A Power Man’S Theology: Marvel’S Luke Cage And Black Liberation Theology, Diarron B. Morrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Netflix released Marvel’s Luke Cage in 2016 to critical acclaim. Born from a 1970s comic book, the series features Luke Cage, an African-American superhero. Cage is a big, bald, bulletproof black man. Instead of tights and a cape, Cage wears a hoodie calling the audience to remember Trayvon Martin and other victims of white racism. Theologian James Cone created Black Liberation Theology in the 1970s. As a result of Cone’s work, Black Liberation Theology addresses the issue of white racism from a theological standpoint. In this thesis I present a close reading of Marvel’s Luke Cage using Black Liberation Theology …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

The Cultivation Approach To Place-Based Philanthropy: Evaluation Findings From The Clinton Foundation’S Community Health Transformation Initiative, Douglas Easterling, Sabina Gesell, Laura Mcduffee, Whitney Davis, Tanha Patel

The Foundation Review

Cultivation is a decentralized approach to place-based philanthropy where the foundation seeks to activate local stakeholders and assist them in translating their ideas into action. Rather than convening a strategic planning process, cultivation presumes that the seeds of high-payoff solutions are already circulating somewhere in the community. The foundation’s role is to support local stakeholders in developing and implementing their own ideas in ways that produce meaningful impacts.

This article describes the cultivation approaches taken by the Clinton Foundation, Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, and The Colorado Health Foundation, and presents findings from an evaluation of the Clinton Foundation’s Community …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Moving Upstream: An Intersectoral Collaboration To Build Sustainable Planning Capacity In Rural And Appalachian Communities, Laura Milazzo, Holly Raffle, Matthew Courser

The Foundation Review

As part of an effort to address health inequities in Appalachian and rural Ohio, the state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services developed an upstream intersectoral health innovation that specifically addressed the lack of infrastructure and other capacity issues that create barriers to obtaining federally funded prevention services among communities with the highest need for those services.

The department partnered with two nonprofit organizations and a university to create a performance-based, stepping-stone investment strategy that provided monetary awards to community organizations and included intensive, customized training and technical assistance that promoted capacity- building for data-driven strategic planning.

This article …

Can Coaching Help Community Partnerships Promote Health Equity, Community Engagement, And Policy, Systems, And Environmental Changes? Results From An Evaluation, Jung Y. Kim, Lisa Schottenfeld, Michael Cavanaugh

The Foundation Review

Foundations and other entities have increasingly funded coaching and technical assistance to support multisector community partnerships to promote health and health equity. However, much remains to be learned about how coaching can best support these partnerships.

As part of its efforts to build a culture in which everyone in the United States has a fair opportunity to be healthy, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation partnered with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to provide structured coaching to strengthen the capacities of community partnerships. The foundation contracted with Mathematica to evaluate the coaching program, focusing on whether it had an …

Balancing The Competing Demands Of Strategic Philanthropy: The Case Of The Delaware River Watershed Initiative, Edward W. Wilson, Carol Bromer, David Laroche

The Foundation Review

Strategic philanthropy requires striking a balance between two extremes. On one side is unilateral agenda-setting by the foundation and excessive reliance on its own intellectual frameworks and methods. On the other side is too much deference to competing voices from the field, with the risk that funding will be haphazard and incoherent. This article describes how the Delaware River Watershed Initiative, supported by the William Penn Foundation, has struggled to position itself between these two extremes.

Based on an evaluation conducted during the first four years of the initiative, the article examines four interrelated tensions: upfront planning versus emergent strategy, …

Strengthening The Ecosystem Of Capacity-Building Service Providers: A Case For Why It Matters, Caroline Altman Smith, Carla Taylor

The Foundation Review

Nonprofits frequently find it challenging to find providers best suited to meet their capacity-building needs. This can be especially true when looking for providers to strengthen racial equity capacity. Many nonprofits lack the time, networks, or expertise to identify what’s available and vet various options for cost, relevance, and quality.

When the Kresge Foundation designed a program to build leadership capacity through a racial equity lens among its grantees, it wanted to strengthen the marketplace of offerings as well. Kresge’s Fostering Urban Equitable Leadership program sought to build leadership capacity and add value for grantees by offering a curated menu …

Building Nonprofit Capacity To Achieve Greater Impact: Lessons From The U.S.-Mexico Border, Meg Loomis, Shirly Thomas, Carla Taylor

The Foundation Review

Foundations often rely on strong relationships with grantees doing frontline work in marginalized communities. Yet these nonprofits typically face myriad financial and policy pressures that must be managed amid increasing need for their services. Helping them expand their impact requires funders to invest in their grantees’ organizational health and capacity.

This article discusses the capacity-building funding experiences of Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, which saw firsthand the needs of grantees when it partnered with eight community-health organizations through its Sí Texas initiative and, in response, created a $1.5 million capacity-building program for those organizations.

This article also shares the …

Making Health Equity Real: Implementing A Commitment To Engage The Community Through Fellowships, Saphira M. Baker, Mark D. Constantine

The Foundation Review

Between 2016 and 2019, Richmond Memorial Health Foundation jumpstarted its transformation from a health legacy foundation committed to increasing access to health care to one promoting regional health equity through a racial and ethnic lens. A central component of this new focus was the trustees’ decision to invite community members to inform and advance the health equity strategy through two distinct community fellowship programs — the Equity + Health Fellowships. These programs ultimately provided the foundation with a new language, benchmarks, and structure for welcoming broader community engagement.

This article highlights the outcomes of both programs, how the experience with …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.