Digital Commons Network^™

Search And Rescue Missions On The Rise In U.S. National Parks, Sahalie Donaldson

Capstones

Across the country the number of search and rescue missions in national parks has been creeping up since 2018. While the number of missions being undertaken are up overall, some parks in particular have seen a dramatic spike in the number of people requiring rescue services, straining a patchwork, often volunteer-based search-and-rescue system. Some parks like Maine’s Acadia National Park, Zion National Park in Utah and the Grand Canyon National Park even experienced their busiest years to date in regards to the number of search and rescue calls they received.

Both former and current park rangers who go on search …

Examining The Recovery Of The Mta In Nyc, Angel Adegbesan

Capstones

My capstone project involved writing codes to scrape and analyze data that isn’t readily available in the format we want. I scraped and analyzed turnstile data and metro card data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from the periods of Jan 01, 2021 to April 30, 2021 and Jan 01, 2022 to April 30, 2022. The purpose of the analysis is to determine how public transit ridership has changed in New York City and whether the MTA was on track to pre-pandemic levels. For my capstone, I wrote about my findings from the data analysis and did some interactive work to …

An Industry Under Construction, Hannah Fullmer

Capstones

A growing number of entrepreneurs (often young, frequently queer or people of color) are trying to change a restaurant industry from within by opening up their own businesses. HAGS, an upcoming queer-focused fine-dining restaurant and Daughter, a community-focused cafe in Brooklyn are just the newest of these socially-minded ventures popping up across the country. These spaces are committed to creating equitable spaces, addressing toxic restaurant and workplace cultures and are frequently tied to larger social issues like food insecurity, zero-waste initiatives or in the case of HAGS, queer representation. But these new business owners are fighting an entrenched system and …

New York’S First Supervised Safe Injection Sites Are A First Of Its Kind In The United States, Jason Gonzalez

Capstones

During the 1980s, the HIV epidemic grew worse each year. The virus is easily spread through shared injection needles. In 1985, activists in New York learned of a solution utilized in Amsterdam, where the municipal health system established a needle exchange program that distributed more than 100,000 needles.

Cross-Pollinating Music: The Past, Present And Future Of Genre-Blending Experimental Musicians, Vanessa Ague

Capstones

Recently, experimental music that mixes popular genres with academic styles has skyrocketed into the mainstream. Part of that’s because of the democratizing power of the internet, part of that’s because it’s a style that’s slowly become more prevalent over many years. This essay explores the different ways experimental musicians blend popular genres into their compositions, providing a succinct timeline of the style’s history and a playlist that features musical examples. Link to full capstone project: https://medium.com/@vanessa.ague/cross-pollinating-music-the-past-present-and-future-of-genre-blending-experimental-musicians-83f0d2ba9f2d

Filling Information Gaps In Milwaukee’S Metcalfe Park Neighborhood, Kynala J. Phillips

Capstones

While in the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s Engagement Journalism program, I got the chance to work with residents in Milwaukee’s predominantly Black Metcalfe Park neighborhood and the organizations and people that communicate most frequently with its residents.

During these past 18 months, I have practiced deep listening and slow and engaged journalism to build trust with my community. The goal: to create a product that is useful to the residents of Metcalfe Park.

To accomplish this, I joined a small group of journalists and community leaders to produce a print and SMS neighborhood newsletter titled “North 2 Center” …

Piled Up, Sophia Lebowitz

Capstones

Piled Up is a 10 minute film about Anna Sacks, a dumpster diver in New York City who has recently found viral social media fame for calling out wasteful corporate practices. Meanwhile, the physical build-up of the trash she collects, and the anxiety of the never-ending cycles of waste are weighing her down and keeping her from her goals.

This is a surprising story about a woman who has found overwhelming social media success while simultaneously dealing with the mechanism of that success, waste, building up in her life. Her videos have garnered her thousands of followers and millions of …

Femicides: The Other Growing Epidemic We Don’T Want To See, Natalia Gutierrez

Capstones

This report analyzes how gender-based killings is a growing topic within the feminist community of New York and Mexico City and how the use of the right terminology is essential to understand the scope of the problem. I worked for 18 months with the feminist community in both cities and the term ‘femicide’ came over and over in the interviews Femicide, how it is referred in the rest of the world, is the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female, and it is a growing epidemic in the U.S. and in Mexico. I interviewed more than 40 …

Teens Vulnerable To Online Shopping Scams, Studies Say, John R. Honan

Capstones

This piece looks how one Australian teen used Tik Tok to get her money back after being scammed online.

https://johnhonancapstone.wordpress.com/

Working In New York City With A Disability: Nowhere Near Easy, Milette S. U. Millington

Capstones

This project investigates the common challenges that people with disabilities faced prior to COVID-19 when finding a job and keeping it, and explores how the pandemic may have changed things.

Project link: https://milettem98.wixsite.com/portfolio/capstone

Poetic Self Expression, Impact, And Activism, Mariah Thomas

Capstones

Poetic Self Expression, Impact, and Activism revolves around Black women activists and how they used poetry to fight against racial and social injustice.

Link: https://medium.com/@mariaht/poetic-self-expression-impact-and-activism-a98c7f3385b2

The Healthcare Changemakers Podcast And Existing Conditions .Press, Emily Lowinger

Capstones

A podcast made from live interviews with healthcare changemakers.

http://existingconditions.press/podcast

Nikkei And Chifa: Two Styles Of Peruvian-Asian Fusion, With Two Different Trajectories, Megan Caceres

Capstones

Nikkei and Chifa, two different styles of Peruvian-Asian fusion, have established a foothold in New York and New Jersey, but each style is taking a very different path to growth. Nikkei restaurants, a blend of Japanese and Peruvian ingredients, are booming, especially at the higher-end, while Chifa restaurants, which mix Chinese and Peruvian customs and ingredients, are struggling to gain traction; this reality follows how New Yorkers undervalue restaurant concepts that are not mainstream or exclusive, and this holds implications for spots that depend on word-of-mouth or other patrons to gain buzz and notoriety, since they do not have star …

“The New Pinkertons”: Anti-Union Consultants And Surveillance Tech Thwart Organizing, Jo Constantz

Capstones

In 2020, just 6.3% of U.S. private-sector workers were union members, despite the fact that 68% of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest since 1965, and nearly half of non-union workers say they would join.

After World War II, wage growth kept pace with GDP growth, but then began to diverge in the 1970s, according to a study by the RAND Corporation. After 1975, incomes of the bottom 90% rose more slowly than the economy as a whole, while incomes of the top 10% grew faster. The declining wage growth coincided with and is closely related to a drop-off …

Chosen Family: One Woman’S Fight To Become Her Best Friend’S Next Of Kin, Yessenia M. Moreno

Capstones

Nearly 70,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the state of New York. For the queer community, this time of death and mourning has highlighted how complicated things can get at the end of someone’s life.

This audio documentary, “Chosen Family, ”is the story of one woman’s fight to overcome the legal system and become her best friend’s health care proxy in the final battle of his life .

Link to capstone project: https://medium.com/@yessimoreno/7b3d96691b9f

The Impacts Of Speculative Investments On New York City’S Rent Stabilized Tenants, Olivia J. Bensimon

Capstones

Landlords who bought buildings with rent stabilized apartments for much more than they were worth are now faced with the risk that their investment will not pay off, often at the expense of tenants. https://olivia-bensimon.com/capstone

Improving An Electrocardiogram Competency Assessment Tool For Registered Nurses, Laurel K. Ng

Master's Projects and Capstones

Abstract

Problem: Rapid and accurate interpretation of an EKG rhythm is an advanced-level competency required for all acute care nurses working in a cardiac monitored/telemetry unit. Observational data collected over a 4-month period by the facility clinical nurse educators identified that less than half of the nurses required to take the EKG exam passed on the first attempt.

Context: The education department at the facility onboards approximately 550-600 nurses annually for the 241-bed community hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California, part of a larger healthcare organization.

Interventions: A total of 19 nurses from various …

Examining The Interaction Of Adverse Childhood Events, Dental Issues, Asthma And Autism, Cathy Koetting

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dissertation supervised by Dr. Rebecca Kronk

Purpose: Adverse childhood events (ACEs) have a profound and long-term effect on the health outcomes of many children and adults. However, few studies have focused on specific ACEs and health outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aim of the study was to investigate if ASD moderated the relationship between ACEs and specific health outcomes in children who had been the subject of a child welfare system report.

Design and Methods: Using the second National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II), a secondary analysis was performed on a sample of …

A Bible Study Series: The Family-Centered, Church-Supported Paradigm Shift For Raising Children In The Faith At Salem Lutheran Church, Michael J. Nielsen

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Nielsen, Michael J. “A Bible Study Series: The Family-Centered, Church-Supported Paradigm Shift for Raising Children in The Faith at Salem Lutheran Church.” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2021. 160 pp.

In many Christian churches there is the question: “How do we keep our children after confirmation?” The answer is a simple one: Parents. This MAP examines the relationship of the family and the church when it comes to raising children in the faith. Biblically parents are called to be the primary faith formers in the lives of their children. A multi-part Bible study was created to teach …

Multicultural Music Education: Preparedness, Perceptions, And Practice Among Virginia Elementary Music Educators, Benjamin J. Luna

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Benjamin Joel Luna, M. M.

James Madison University, 2021

Supervisor: Lisa M. Maynard

The purpose of this study was to examine the Multicultural Music Education (MME) practices of established (i.e. more than three years of music teaching experience) Elementary Music Teachers in the state of Virginia by examining their responses to a series of survey questions specific to the topic. Participants (N=18) were all current Elementary Music Teachers in the state of Virginia with more than three years of experience.

Participants were asked to use Likert-scale ratings for the majority of the questions but were also given the …

The Resilience Vaccine, Sara Horton-Deutch T. Duffy

Master's Projects and Capstones

Healthcare workers have been working in unprecedented circumstances since the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Caregivers have been taxed with burnout. A large healthcare organization’s 26-bed, medical-surgical, telemetry, COVID-19 overflow unit was significantly impacted. Many healthcare organizations have adopted advocacy for attaining joy in work as an extra dimension of the Institute for Health Improvement’s Triple Aim. Adding this fourth aim supports averting caregiver burnout (CBO) while promoting joy in work.

This quality improvement project examined nurse leaders’ interventions that address CBO, promote healthy work environments, and promote joy in work. From June through August 2021, an 8-week resilience program …

Specialty Palliative Care: A Quality Improvement Project, Leticia Ries

Master's Projects and Capstones

Abstract

Problem: Patients identified on the regional database as specialty palliative care (SPC) patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) have not been consulted annually, as expected by evidence-based practice.

Context: Twenty-three percent of patients with a life-limiting illness on the SPC registry were seen year to date. Patients with CHF are vulnerable populations who benefit from an SPC consult to address quality of life, frequent admissions, and suffering.

Interventions: A rapid experiment of two interventions was evaluated for a solution approach. An electronic report identifying hospitalized registry patients and a standardized triage process were the critically assessed interventions to mitigate …

Optimizing Interprofessional Rounds To Reduce Extended Length Of Stay In Complex Patients, Christina May P. Santiago

Master's Projects and Capstones

Problem: Organizations have taken measures to reduce the length of stay by addressing logistical issues such as care coordination across the continuum. This becomes especially important for patients being discharged to skilled nursing facilities (SNF), where placement can be impeded due to complex care needs. In March 2021, the facility accounted for 20% of all extended length of stay (ELOS) patients across the organization. The average ELOS was 36 days, with 42% of these patients being discharged to a SNF.

Context: The Extended Length of Stay (ELOS) team functions at a mesosystem level within twenty-one medical centers across Northern …

Improving Patient Hand-Off Communication By Utilizing The Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation (Sbar) Tool Between The Perioperative Services Departments, Maureen Mijares

Master's Projects and Capstones

Problem: The Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation (SBAR) patient handoff communication is required when the patient is transferred from one department/unit to the next phase of care. There is no standard SBAR utilized within the perioperative services departments.

Context: There are three types of patient handoff communication utilized in the perioperative services departments; Electronic Health Record (EHR), paper form, and verbal via phone.

Intervention: A standardized SBAR patient handoff communication tool to provide a framework to improve patient handoff communication between nurses within the perioperative services departments.

Measures: The outcome measure for this process improvement project is defined as the number of patient handoff …

Reducing Hospital Readmission Rate In Chf Patients Through Early Individualized Patient Discharge Education, Anthony Ensah

Master's Projects and Capstones

The term congestive heart failure (CHF) is a chronic condition that occurs in a person when the heart stops doing its normal activity of pumping blood to the rest of the body for the body. Heart failure normally occurs when the heart can no longer pump (systolic) or fills (diastolic) pressure adequately to the body. Because heart failure is one of the leading causes of death in the United States this project was conducted on one of the Northern California San Francisco Bay- Area hospitals to assess patients understanding and knowledge on the presenting signs and symptoms of heart failure …

Motivating Poetry In The Adult Esl Classroom, Lenore Marin Myers

Master's Projects and Capstones

Current research into motivation in second language acquisition, including Dörnyei (2005, 2009, 2015), offers compelling evidence that adult language learners who develop and habitually strengthen a vision of their future, linguistically capable selves using concrete, sensory imagery are more likely to sustain the necessary motivation to achieve their personal language-learning goals. My thesis proposes that poetry writing can be an effective medium for language learners to build facility in developing concrete, sensory imagery (tactile, visual, kinesthetic, olfactory, and auditory), including creating a motivating vision of their future, linguistically capable selves. Because poetry can directly support and build learner motivation, it …

Burnout And Social Support Among Healthcare Workers During Covid-19: Evidence From Italy., Anudari Krystal Amartuvshin

Master's Theses

In this study, I examine the relationship between burnout and social support among healthcare workers in Italy. Burnout has been a serious concern among professions who must work closely and help other individuals. Due to the epidemic of the Covid-19 Pandemic, it has especially been a challenge for healthcare workers in the past few years. A validated Italian version of the MBI scale is conducted from 332 healthcare workers. Burnout scale is measured by its three subscales: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Social support is analyzed from the questionnaires regarding partners or spouses, family, friends, and colleagues. Multiple regression …

Oral Care Experiences Of Palliative Care Patients, Their Relatives/Carers And Healthcare Professionals: A Qualitative Systematic Review, Delgado M Bernardes, Anastasios Plessas, Lorna Burns, Helen Neilens, Sarah Griffiths, Jos Latour

Peninsula Dental School

No abstract provided.

Layered Architecture For Internet Of Things-Based Healthcare System: A Systematic Literature Review, Somayeh Nasiri, Farahnaz Sadoughi, Afsaneh Dehnad, Mohammad Hesam Tadayon, Hossein Ahmadi

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Internet of Things (IoT), known as a new paradigm, has shown to have a significant role in healthcare domains including remote vital sign monitoring systems, physical activity tracking, early disease diagnosis, and prevention of disease risks. Therefore, designing an integrated healthcare system based on Internet of Things is highly dependent on designing a layered architecture pattern. However, there are no comprehensive studies on Internet of Things layered architecture in the healthcare industry. The purpose of this study was to identify and scrutinize different types of layered architecture of Internet of Things in healthcare in terms of functions, and technologies. We …

Distribution, Abundance And Natural Enemies Of The Invasive Tomato Leafminer, Tuta Absoluta (Meyrick) In Kenya, G. Kinyanjui, F. M. Khamis, F. L.O. Ombura, E. U. Kenya, S. Ekesi, S. A. Mohamed

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) has become a serious menace to sustainable production of tomato in Kenya. A survey was conducted between April 2015 and June 2016 to determine its distribution, abundance, infestation, and damage levels on tomato, and associated natural enemies. Trap counts of T. absoluta moths were recorded in all surveyed 29 counties, which indicated its nationwide distribution irrespective of altitude. Tuta absoluta was present in both open fields and greenhouses. The highest moth/trap/day was 115.38 ± 15.90. Highest leaf infestation was 92.22% and the highest number of mines and larvae per leaf were 3.71 ± 0.28 and 2.16 ± …