Digital Commons Network^™

Using Charter Damages To Provide Meaningful Redress And Promote State Accountability: A Re-Examination Of The Omar Khadr Case, Katharine June Fisher

LLM Theses

In July 2017, the Government of Canada reportedly paid Omar Khadr $10.5 million to settle his civil suit. Khadr sought damages under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms resulting from Canada’s active participation in human rights breaches during his imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay. Although the Charter damages remedy serves critically important public law functions, it is not achieving its full potential in many cases. Using Khadr as a case study, I apply the framework developed in Vancouver (City) v Ward to analyze what Khadr’s entitlement to Charter damages might have been if his civil claim had not settled. The …

Current Prospects And Outlook Of Crispr/Cas Technology In Clinical Therapy, James Piper

Theses and Graduate Projects

Gene editing capabilities have expanded enormously since researchers first demonstrated the robust, accurate, and efficient endonuclease activity of the CRISPR/Cas riboprotein enzyme. Since this gene editing technique was first described in 2013, the prospect of gene therapy as a viable clinical tool has improved immensely. CRISPR/Cas techniques and the methods by which they are delivered into cells, have evolved rapidly since the technology􏰿s inception, and successful, intentional genetic alterations of numerous mammalian cell lines have been reported. As a research tool, CRISPR/Cas9 has already proven itself indispensable in a brief period of time. While there are not numerous clinical trials …

Collecting People’S Preferences In Immersive Virtual Reality: A Case Study On Public Spaces In Singapore, Germany, And France, Sebastian Stadler, Henriette Cornet, Fritz Frenkler

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the design of urban public spaces, the inclusion of diverse voices enhances the development of products and services by synchronising designer expertise with people’s preferences. Multiple participatory methods exist, each with their respective benefits and drawbacks in terms of the quality of results, time and cost needed for preparing and conducting studies, and knowledge required for participation. Providing more concrete representations of abstract or intangible design concepts would be beneficial for laypeople unfamiliar with design or the case study. We propose a Virtual Reality (VR) platform to discover subjective preferences on public waiting rooms through immersive design experiences. The …

Battle Of The Buttercups: Investigating Hybrid Zone Dynamics In A Ranunculus Species Complex, Jessica Persinger

Dissertations and Theses

Plants pose a well-known challenge to the biological species concept because hybridization is a common occurrence. Range dynamics have a crucial role in determining whether species are given the opportunity to interbreed or not. Successful hybridization can be of particular concern when considering range-limited species and their persistence. In my thesis research, I examine the apparent hybrid zone between the southern Oregon endemic Ranunculus austro-oreganus, a candidate threatened species due to its limited range, and its widespread congener, Ranunculus occidentalis, whose range spans from California to Alaska. The discovered contact zone was recognized in populations which contained apparent …

Method And System For Terpene Production Platforms In Yeast, Joseph Chappell, Xun Zhuang, Shuiqin Wu

Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Patents

A method is provided for producing modified mutant yeast and the resulting yeast that can be used as a platform for terpene production. The method includes chemical mutagenesis to effect ergosterol dependent growth in yeast. Subsequently, these yeast are subjected to an erg9 knockout mutation to thereby produce ergosterol dependent growth/ erg9 knockout mutation yeast cell lines. The resulting yeast are well suited for use in the production of terpenes.

Characterizing The Epigenetic And Transcriptomic Responses To Perkinsus Marinus Infection In The Eastern Oyster Crassostrea Virginica, Kevin M. Johnson, K. A. Sirovy, Sandra M. Casas, Jerome F. La Peyre, Morgan W. Kelly

Faculty Publications

© Copyright © 2020 Johnson, Sirovy, Casas, La Peyre and Kelly. Eastern oysters in the northern Gulf of Mexico are routinely infected with the protistan parasite Perkinsus marinus, the cause of the disease commonly known as dermo. Recent experimental challenges among Atlantic coast populations have identified both resistant and susceptible genotypes using comparative transcriptomics. While controlled experimental challenges are essential first assessments, expanding this analysis to field reared individuals provides an opportunity to identify key genomic signatures of infection that appear both in the laboratory and in the field. In this study we combined reduced representation bisulfite sequencing with 3′ …

Characterizing The Epigenetic And Transcriptomic Responses To Perkinsus Marinus Infection In The Eastern Oyster Crassostrea Virginica, Kevin M. Johnson, K. A. Sirovy, Sandra M. Casas, Jerome F. La Peyre, Morgan W. Kelly

Faculty Publications

© Copyright © 2020 Johnson, Sirovy, Casas, La Peyre and Kelly. Eastern oysters in the northern Gulf of Mexico are routinely infected with the protistan parasite Perkinsus marinus, the cause of the disease commonly known as dermo. Recent experimental challenges among Atlantic coast populations have identified both resistant and susceptible genotypes using comparative transcriptomics. While controlled experimental challenges are essential first assessments, expanding this analysis to field reared individuals provides an opportunity to identify key genomic signatures of infection that appear both in the laboratory and in the field. In this study we combined reduced representation bisulfite sequencing with 3′ …

Annotated Checklist Of Invertebrate Species Observed At The Gordon Natural Area (West Chester University, Pa) 2007-2020. Version I, Nur Ritter

Gordon Natural Area Biodiversity Studies Documents

Summary Data Number of Taxa: 250 Species, in 170 Genera, 113 Families, and 33 Orders. Description As with some of the other biotic groups, the research pattern for invertebrates at the GNA might best be described as ‘intermittent.’ Former WCU professor Win Fairchild and his students conducted research on aquatic invertebrates in Plum Run, both inside and outside of the boundaries of the GNA. To date, the only data from that work that we’ve been able to obtain are from the 2007 MS thesis of Danielle DiFederico. Since that time, the only ‘directed’ invertebrate research at the GNA has been …

Epic, David Sparenberg

The Mythic Circle

A back-to-the-future Shamanic telling for public recitation Sing in me, Muse, the epic tale of that Earth daughter who shook the foundations of the Dark Towers and challenged in combat the dread lords of tyranny and their master the Patriarch of Death. Before the Book, back in The Dreaming— over eons of Shaman Lore—it is attested that light is restoration for those who are eaten by their own shadows and fire is the bane of phantoms. From somewhere here, Muse, begin.

Read by David Sparenberg

Autophagic Adaptation To Oxidative Stress Alters Peritoneal Residential Macrophage Survival And Ovarian Cancer Metastasis, Houjun Xia, Shasha Li, Xiong Li, Weichao Wang, Yingjie Bian, Shuang Wei, Sara Grove, Weimin Wang, Linda Vatan, J Rebecca Liu, Karen Mclean, Ramandeep Rattan, Adnan R. Munkarah, Jun-Lin Guan, Ilona Kryczek, Weiping Zou

Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women's Health Services Articles

Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) affect cancer progression and therapy. Ovarian carcinoma often metastasizes to the peritoneal cavity. Here, we found two peritoneal macrophage subsets in mice bearing ID8 ovarian cancer based on the Tim-4 (T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain containing 4) expression. Tim-4+ TAMs were embryonically originated and locally sustained while Tim-4- TAMs were replenished from circulating monocytes. Tim-4+ TAMs, but not Tim-4- TAMs, promoted tumor growth in vivo. Relative to Tim-4- TAMs, Tim-4+ TAMs manifested high oxidative phosphorylation and adapted mitophagy to alleviate oxidative stress. High levels of arginase-1 in Tim-4+ TAMs contributed to potent mitophagy activities via weakened mTORC1 …

One-Bead-Two-Compound Macrocyclic Library And Methods Of Preparation And Use, Jianfeng Cai, Yan Shi

USF Patents

A one-bead-two-compound combinatorial synthesis technique provides libraries of macrocyclic peptidomimetic compounds and compositions with use as ligands for the Ephrin type-A receptor 2 (EphA2). The one-bead-two-compound technique and libraries of macrocyclic compounds are useful as research tools in drug discovery and/or to treat or prevent a range of diseases or disorders.

Antimicrobial Analogues Of Gramicidin S, Juan R. Del Valle, Lindsey Shaw

USF Patents

Disclosed herein are N-aminated variants of Gramicidin S and methods of using the same for treating infections in a subject.

Mining Conflict, Indigenous Peoples And Environmental Justice: The Case Of Phulbari Coal Project In Bangladesh, Mohammad Mahmudul Hasan

PhD Dissertations

My doctoral dissertation, an in-depth case study of the Phulbari Coal Project in Bangladesh, accentuates the interests and engagements of Indigenous peoples (Adibasi people) in the decisionmaking process in resource extractive industries through an environmental justice framework. My primary aim is to observe how and to what extent Indigenous peoples’ interests are reflected in official environmental decision-making processes versus how they frame their own claims in a mining conflict situation. I employ extensive qualitative research in the project area to demonstrate how Adibasi communities articulate and implement their claims through raising their voices and ultimately stimulating a movement that stopped …

The Generation Of An Engineered Interleukin-10 Protein With Improved Stability And Biological Function, Faisal Minshawi, Sebastian Lanvermann, Edward Mckenzie, Rebecca Jeffery, Kevin Couper, Stamatia Papoutsopoulou, Axel Roers, Werner Muller

Center for Translational Medicine Faculty Papers

Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is an immunoregulatory cytokine that plays a pivotal role in modulating inflammation. IL-10 has inhibitory effects on proinflammatory cytokine production and function in vitro and in vivo; as such, IL-10 is viewed as a potential treatment for various inflammatory diseases. However, a significant drawback of using IL-10 in clinical application is the fact that the biologically active form of IL-10 is an unstable homodimer, which has a short half-life and is easily degraded in vivo. Consequently, IL-10 therapy using recombinant native IL-10 has had only limited success in the treatment of human disease. To improve the therapeutic potential …

When Theory Meets Users In Co-Design: Four Strategies Towards Synergy Between Bottom-Up And Top-Down Input, Judith Austin, Jelle Van Dijk, Constance Drossaert

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the co-design process, both evidence-based (top-down) and experience-based (bottom-up) input are important, especially in the healthcare context. While the risk of conflict is present, integration of both types of input can lead to synergetic design that encompasses the benefits of both worlds. By building on a case study in which we worked with cancer patients and oncology nurses to co-design an eHealth intervention focused on training self-compassion, this paper contributes to existing literature by exploring practical strategies to merge top-down and bottom-up input in the co-design process. The resulting strategies are: selecting (satisfy one need but not the other), …

Optimizing The Adoption Process In Public Animal Shelters Through Service Design Thinking, Danyang Wang, Chin-Wei Chen, Yen-Ya You, Shin-Chih Tsai, Shih-Min Hong, Shu-Yi Chen, Hsien-Hui Tang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study employs holistic service design thinking to analyze and optimize the existing services of a public animal shelter and improves adoption experiences at the animal shelter using co-creation workshops. The proposed service design will provide adopters with proper assistance while reducing the burden on staff members. The finding of this study including three aspects: first, this study presents critical aspects when optimizing services in public adoption agencies through the case. Second, in service cases with complex stakeholders, co-creation workshops help effectively combine the needs and perspectives of all parties. Finally, service design testing integrated with stakeholders’ opinions helped enhance …

Material Connections In Craft Making: The Case Of Felting, Bilge Merve Aktaş, Maarit Mäkelä, Tarja-Kaarina Laamanen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examined a creative practice, namely felting, to explore the daily practices and encounters of felt makers. The study aimed at understanding the material connections of felt-making that are not limited to the making process. To examine how practices of felt makers emerge in connection to materials, we employed the material engagement theory as our perspective. The data was collected through interviews with eight felt makers and participant observation at two studios in Turkey. The analysis revealed how felt makers think between things, people, space and time and develop their practices accordingly. These findings illuminated a holistic and insightful …

Social Media Research And The Impact Of Graphic Design: A Case Study Examining An Indonesian Political Campaign., Fanny Marcellina Suhendra, Nicole Wragg, Carolyn Barnes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Outside imagery, graphic design is largely invisible to the research fields most interested in communication campaigns, seeing negligible research conducted from a design perspective. In an era of participatory culture, social media analytics offer new ways of quantifying audience engagement, but the blurring of the boundaries between producers, consumption and audiences through the phenomenon of ‘produsage’ offers richer, more contextualised insights into the impact of the designed aspects of campaigns. In examining Berakar Komunikasi’s campaign supporting the 2014 and 2019 election bids of Indonesia’s President Jokowi Widodo, our paper examines how qualitative social media research offers fine-grained insights into the …

A Pilot Study Used To Better Construct A Research Direction To Understand Where Industrial Design Fits Within The 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), Christoph Heinrich Walter Koch, Blair Kuys, Gianni Renda

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The industrial design profession is engaging with a new manufacturing revolution — Industry4.0 (I4.0). This new paradigm presents new opportunities and challenges for industrial designers. However, it is still unclear what knowledge industrial designers can contribute to manufacturers in an emerging I4.0 context. This pilot study serves to determine the current state of practice of industrial design, and to discover areas of improvement as well as strengths to build on. Most importantly, this study functions as the first step to better qualify questions for a subsequent online questionnaire survey, in conjunction with findings from literature. A focus group was conducted …

Instructional Design For Non-Specialist Beginners To Learn Chinese Semantic Radicals, Tian Tian, Maria Dos Santos Lonsdale, Vien Cheung

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The study investigates the effectiveness of instructional design for non-specialist beginners to learn Chinese Semantic Radicals (SRs). A Chinese SR is the smallest semantic component of a Chinese character. Research has shown that learning Chinese SR benefits the learning of Chinese characters by beginners. Research in this area is scarce with only a few studies investigating the application of related images to learn Chinese characters. This research investigates the performance and opinions of non-specialist beginners regarding four types of instructional designs: simply display, colour coding, illustration, and the combination of colour coding and illustration. The results confirmed that the combination …

Why Am I Studying Design?, Ehsan Baha, Maartje Koch, Nick Sturkenboom, Rebecca Price, Dirk Snelders

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Identity development of design students is a dynamic entanglement between personal and professional identities. Yet, literature primarily focuses on professional identity, based on institutionalized definitions of design to which students must conform. In contrast, we explore personal motivations for wanting to become a designer. An instrumental case study explores how an undergraduate design student develops personal principles for good design, and a personal vision for designing. Results show these principles and underlying vision are applied in the student’s design work, leading to development of a holistic identity (personal and professional). Finally, we note this exercise necessitated a plural and dynamic …

Visual Representations Of Taiwanese Endemic Bird Species On Digital Media, Chia-Yin Yu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigated the aptness of digital-media visual representations of Taiwanese endemic bird species. First, expert interviews were conducted to obtain crucial graphic design-related bird features. Second, we applied graphic rendering and overall-conformation extraction to three stylizations—2D design and color block, 2D design and gradation, and stereoscopic effect and gradation. Degrees of similarity were tested, involving 239 participants aged 20–45. The results showed that (1) the crucial features in bird-related graphic design are body-part color, overall tone, the conformation of individual body parts, overall contour and style, and wing color. (2) Graphic designs based on the 2D design and color …

Design Considerations For The Transformative Reuse Of A Japanese Temple, Guy Keulemans, Josh Harle, Kyoko Hashimoto, Liam Mugavin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper concerns the transformative reuse of materials from a derelict Japanese Buddhist temple in a transcultural context. The process of 3D scanning and photogrammetry modelling for a virtual experience of the building and its furnishings is described in reference to the development of a later study: the proposal to test the reuse of materials by international team of designers working remotely with digital models. The capacity for designers using digital data and metadata to inform transformative reuse applied locally in Japan, via either handcraft or robotic fabrication, is discussed as a challenge for virtual embodiment and craft knowledge. The …

Activity Scenario Modelling: An Emerging Method For Examining Human-Artefact Interaction, Miguel Montiel, Ricardo Sosa, Darryl Hocking

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Everyday activities are jointly shaped by people and artefacts. This points to the need for tools that designers can use to examine the joint agency of people and artefacts. This paper reports progress in developing Activity Scenario Modelling (ASM), a design approach that can be used for such purpose. ASM combines techniques of video analysis, discourse analysis and social network analysis. The paper provides an overview of the theoretical foundations of ASM and illustrates it by modelling an activity scenario from an online tutorial on tea-making. The paper also describes a research agenda to apply ASM in design for sustainability …

Supporting People With Dementia- Understanding Their Interactions With Mixed Reality Technologies, Shital Desai, Alethea Blackler, Deborah Fels, Arlene Astell

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Emerging technologies such as Mixed Reality Technologies (MRTs) could offer possibilities to support People with Dementia (PWD). This study examined interactions of PWD with two MRTs - HoloLens and Osmo. Ten participants (MoCA = 18 to 23, Age= 63 to 88 years) played a game of Tangram on Osmo. Six of these participants played Young Conker on HoloLens. The study found that PWD used gestural actions in the physical world more correctly than speech. Audio prompts in human voice were more correctly perceived than visual prompts. Physical affordances, embodied actions and familiarity to verbal instructions contribute to this success. Visual …

Navigating Contemporary Complexities In The Design Of Sexuality Education Materials, Louise Moana Kolff

DRS Biennial Conference Series

More than ever quality comprehensive sexuality education is needed to help children make sense of increasingly complex and fluid notions of sexuality, gender and relationships. Designers of sexuality education are faced with the task of navigating issues such as earlier onset of puberty, changes to normative family structures, changing ways of conceiving and birthing, and the impact of technology and social media. This paper explores how some of these complexities influence the design of sexuality education by analysing the design of three books aimed at younger children, and through interviews with the Australian, Canadian and Danish creators of the books.

Multispecies Cohabitation And Future Design, Stanislav Roudavski

DRS Biennial Conference Series

How should humans live with animals and other forms of life? Could responses to this question improve the health and wellbeing of the biosphere? This paper argues that design researchers ought to engage nonhuman lifeforms as collaborators: informants and co-designers, or clients and users. Inspired by recent design challenges involving birds, bats and trees, this paper positions emancipatory multispecies cohabitation as a goal that can alleviate ongoing biodiversity losses and human-wildlife conflicts, in cities and beyond. It opens an interdisciplinary conversation by translating emerging scholarship in ethics, politics, and aesthetics to a narrative about desirable more-than-human cultures. This discussion has …

Drs2020 Editorial: Theme Co-Creation, Rebecca Cain, Stella Boess

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Co-creation in all its forms – including participatory design, collaborative design, and co- design is continually an enduring theme at recent DRS Conferences, receiving a large number of submissions. Design researchers increasingly collaborate and co-create with other fields such as healthcare, engineering, political science, social sciences and with a wide variety of societal stakeholders and issues such as wellbeing, in addition to addressing developments such as networked, embedded and intelligent technologies. How can design research engage with people, other fields and support new interdisciplinary ways of working?

Improving The Spectator Experience Of Ar Sports Events From A Service Design Perspective – Using Hado As An Example, Pei-Ling Shih, Hsien-Hui Tang, Shu-Yi Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Augmented reality (AR) has been used to improve the spectator experience in traditional sports events. For the first AR sports in the world, Meleap’s HADO, the discussion of spectator experience in watching AR sports is lacking. To understand the problems and flaws in the spectator experience of AR sports events, we have conducted a two-phase investigation into Meleap’s HADO. The first phase investigated HADO’s live sports events, while the second phase examined their online sports events. We used questionnaires and semi-structured interviews and conducted an integrated analysis based on the quantitative and qualitative results to determine how to optimize HADO’s …

Conformationally Altered C-Reactive Protein Capable Of Binding To Atherogenic Lipoproteins Reduces Atherosclerosis, Asmita Pathak, Sanjay K. Singh, Douglas P. Thewke, Alok Agrawal

ETSU Faculty Works

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that C-reactive protein (CRP) protects against the development of atherosclerosis and that a conformational alteration of wild-type CRP is necessary for CRP to do so. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory cardiovascular disease and CRP is a plasma protein produced by the liver in inflammatory states. The co-localization of CRP and low-density lipoproteins (LDL) at atherosclerotic lesions suggests a possible role of CRP in atherosclerosis. CRP binds to phosphocholine-containing molecules but does not interact with LDL unless the phosphocholine groups in LDL are exposed. However, CRP can bind to LDL, without the …