Digital Commons Network^™

Social Equity Is Key To Sustainable Ocean Governance, Katherine M. Crosman, Edward H. Allison, Yoshitaka Ota, Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor, Gerald G. Singh, Wilf Swartz, Megan Bailey, Kate M. Barclay, Grant Blume, Mathieu Colléter, Michael Fabinyi, Elaine M. Faustman, Russell Fielding, P. Joshua Griffin, Quentin Hanich, Harriet Harden-Davies, Ryan P. Kelly, Tiff Annie Kenny, Terrie Klinger

Honors College Faculty Publications

Calls to address social equity in ocean governance are expanding. Yet ‘equity’ is seldom clearly defined. Here we present a framework to support contextually-informed assessment of equity in ocean governance. Guiding questions include: (1) Where and (2) Why is equity being examined? (3) Equity for or amongst Whom? (4) What is being distributed? (5) When is equity considered? And (6) How do governance structures impact equity? The framework supports consistent operationalization of equity, challenges oversimplification, and allows evaluation of progress. It is a step toward securing the equitable ocean governance already reflected in national and international commitments.

The Development Of Cultural Intelligence (Cq) In The Secondary Social Studies Classroom, Asha Gillette

Senior Honors Theses

Cultural competence is an important skill in our globalized world. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a good metric for cultural competence. CQ is used by businesses to improve cultural competence of their employees. There has been a lot of research on the development of CQ in undergraduate business students. Experiential teaching methods are the most effective in improving students’ CQ. CQ is a valuable skill for high school students to learn. The subject most appropriate to include training in CQ is social studies, and specifically World Geography. Pedagogical methods such as cultural interviews used in undergraduate business courses can also be …

Integrating Narratives With Digital Humanities Tools To Inform Holocaust Education Pedagogies, Beth S. Dotan

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Holocaust educators have a concern regarding how to learn and teach about the Holocaust after survivors and liberators are no longer alive to provide first-hand testimony. In response to this dilemma, I have developed a digital humanities web portal unique to Nebraska to preserve the survivors’ and liberators’ collective and individual memories. The Nebraska Holocaust Survivor & WWII Veteran Network and Educational Portal, the product for this dissertation, integrates local narratives with digital humanities frameworks to establish a dynamic, public platform and provide various educational opportunities. The site encourages engagement with online primary resources of Holocaust survivors and Nazi camp …

以夏變夷 : 晚明“天下全圖”的域外知識來源與製圖觀, Yawei Liu

嶺南學報 Lingnan Journal of Chinese Studies

曹君義《天下九邊分野人跡路程全圖》爲晚明出現的一種複合型“世界地圖”，它以變形南、北美洲大陸爲海島的繪圖方式爲特徵，雖吸收部分西學地理内容，但該圖並非受利瑪竇地圖直接影響。本文通過比對圖中美、歐、非洲的圖像特徵與文字内容，認爲其參考自傳教士艾儒略的《萬國全圖》，而另一種以諸多小島表現域外國家的製圖方式（如梁輈《乾坤萬國全圖古今人物事跡》），則受利瑪竇地圖影響。因此，依照域外知識來源，可將明清流傳的含有職方國與《山海經》神話之國的世界地圖分爲三類：九邊型全圖、四海五洲型全圖、四海島夷型全圖。這些結合中西地理知識、帶有想象色彩的早期世界地圖，反映了晚明地理製圖由關注“九邊”到“以夏變夷”的一種觀念變化。

Cao Junyi’s 曹君義 Tianxia jiubian fenye renji lucheng quantu 天下九邊分野人跡路程全圖 (Complete Map of the Allotted Fields, Human Traces, and Routes within and without the Nine Borders under Heaven) is a composite “world map” in the late Ming dynasty. This map followed Chinese cartographic tradition to place China in the center and represented Southern and Northern Americas as islands. Although it absorbed some knowledge about Western geography, it was not directly influenced by the map made by Matteo Ricci. This article provides comparisons of the map’s visual representations and texts about Americas, Europe, and Africa, and concludes that its major …

Pedagogies And Practices Of Teaching Girlhood Studies, Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez, Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

English Faculty Publications

Girlhood Studies, as an academic discipline, is continually growing. Since some educational institutions include girls’ studies as part of a special curriculum, an academic program, a certificate course, a minor, or as part of Women’s Studies or Gender Studies, Girlhood Studies has a presence in academia although at this stage rarely in an autonomous department. This interest in the pedagogies and practices of teaching Girlhood Studies is an important aspect of its growth as a field of study not only at the university level but also in other academic settings and outside of them, be they workshops, special programs for …

Embedding Sustainability And Experiential Learning To Encourage Student-Led, Climate-Resilient Solutions At Bsu, Diana Fox, Wanchunzi Yu, Robert Hellström, Xiangrong Liu

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

The Right To Transparency And The Right To Opacity: The Works Of Safaa Mazirh And Alia Ali, Katherine Vines

Theses

This research focuses on a study of the photographic works of two contemporary female photographers from the MENA region: Alia Ali and Safaa Mazirh. Rather than trying to define art in the region and its diasporas, this research stresses the distinctiveness of two artists' specific experiences in relation to gender, religion, tradition, and modernity. A common thread is the constant navigation between the artists’ lived experiences of their postcolonial reality and collective memories of the colonial past. When comparing these artists, I argue that viewing their works in conjunction highlights the principle of “the right to opacity” as discussed by …

The Foreboding Campaign System, Michael Fetters

Theses

This project creates a new campaign setting compatible with the Dungeons and Dragons system utilizing the SRD Open Game License content as a starting point. The campaign setting created establishes mechanics allowing for narrative interaction between the past and present timeline of events in the world of Lunaria. This new system, entitled The Foreboding, utilizes a shift mechanic to alter the player characters in several possible ways, ranging from changes in race or character history to interactions with past time periods and events that alter the present timeline of the narrative. New character options for race and class were also …

The Democratization Of Art: Placemaking Initiatives In Rural Spaces, Sarah Leigh Ayers

Theses

Creative placemaking is defined as when artists, arts organizations and community development practitioners deliberately integrate the arts and culture into revitalization work. Examining the historical context and implementation of creative placemaking practices before the coining of the term, the following essay uses Marxist and Post-Modern methodologies to examine the ways in which art can serve as a tool for driving economic growth while exploring the socio. Using examples ranging from politically driven initiative the New Deal to non-profit contemporary art museum La Chinati in Marfa, Texas, I examine the ways that culturally-driven projects have affected the rural communities in which …

University Of Nebraska At Omaha Commencement: December 2022, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Remote Sensing Application For Landslide Detection: Monitoring Along Eastern Lake Michigan (Miami Park, Mi), Guzalay Sataer

Dissertations

I assessed the nature and spatial and temporal patterns of deformation over the Miami Park bluffs on the eastern margin of Lake Michigan and investigated the factors controlling its observed deformation. Our approach involved the following steps: (1) extracting bluff deformation rates (velocities along the line of sight of the satellite) using a stack of Sentinel-1A radar imagery in ascending acquisition geometry acquired between 2017 and 2021 and applying the Intermittent Small Baseline Subset (ISBAS) InSAR time series analysis method; (2) generating high-resolution (5 cm) elevation models and orthophotos from temporal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveys acquired in 2017, 2019, …

Measuring The Economic Impact Of Recurrent Flooding On Workforce Productivity And Property, Joshua G. Behr, Wie Yusuf, George Mcleod, Sarah Stafford, Derek Loftis, Afi Anuar, Rafael Diaz

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

From the Executive Summary:

This research draws upon expertise across multiple disciplines and fields. Leveraged are natural systems data and social-behavioral data. The high-level objective is to advance our understanding of how very recent recurrent flooding has impacted residents within the City of Portsmouth, and then forecast these impacts under projections of sea level rise. While this research draws upon data for the City of Portsmouth, the findings may be generalized to the broader Hampton Roads region.

Underground Man: The Ever -Evolving Existentialist In The Fiction Of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Wright And Ralph Ellison., Joseph Burton

Theses (2016-Present)

Existential philosophers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Jean Paul Sartre sought answers concerning man’s placement and subsequent importance in the universe. From a Eurocentric perspective, western man, his being, position, and influence emanate from the center of thought and existence in the western hemisphere. Dostoevsky’s existential crisis exhibited in the protagonist from his Notes from Underground, and Sartre’s concepts of facticity which gives man a direct philosophical link to his freedom, are two popular viewpoints of contemporary existentialism. However, French West Indian Frantz Fanon, counters the European tenets of existential philosophy as it pertains to black people. The conclusions reached in Black …

Book Review Elizabeth Kolbert, Under A White Sky: The Nature Of The Future (New York: Crown, 2021)., Robert Hellström

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Interview With Olga Sushkova-Hunyadi, Julia Stakhnevich

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Killing An Arab, Khaled A. Beydoun

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Racialized Places: Community Development Within The Historic Westside Of Las Vegas, Camisha Fagan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My paper examines the history of the Historic Westside (HWS) in Las Vegas, Nevada, and how community development decisions made by city officials have led to the marginalization of this area. Specifically, my paper examines the impact of discriminatory policies and practices on the HWS, including inadequate infrastructure, racist housing policies, and economic abandonment. In doing so, I draw on a range of sources, including archival materials, interviews, and secondary literature, to provide a comprehensive analysis of the social, economic, and political factors that have contributed to the marginalization of the HWS. My paper focuses on four key development events …

Activity-Based Intervention And One-To-One Correspondence For Children With Developmental Delays, Cyndy Anang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

PreK children with developmental delays in inclusive classrooms need access to math interventions helps them develop foundational math skills that are needed to succeed during their K-12 education. Research is significantly lacking that addresses increasing math skills for children with disabilities in PreK classrooms. The purpose of this study was to examine how using activity-based intervention (ABI) increases one-to-one correspondence for children with disabilities in an inclusive classroom. A single subject multiple probe design across participants was implemented to embed one-to-one correspondence math goals into daily routines and preferred activities. The participants of the study were two 3–5-year-old children categorized …

Predicting Student Success In A K-12 Online School, Andrea Connolly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Given the rapid growth of K-12 online learning, research is needed in the effective identification of at-risk students so that administrators and teachers can develop appropriate supports and interventions. The purpose of this research was to determine if student success in an online course could be predicted for English Learners (EL) using identifiable student characteristics and traits. This study looked at the student traits of behavior, structure, and demographics to determine if they could be used as predictive variables for successful course completion in a K-12 online course. The behavior characteristics were measured by a survey tool and were identified …

A Systematic Literature Review Of Anti-Discrimination Design Strategies In The Digital Sharing Economy, Miroslav Tushev, Fahimeh Ebrahimi, Anas Mahmoud

Faculty Publications

Applications of the Digital Sharing Economy (DSE), such as Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit, have become a main facilitator of economic growth and shared prosperity in modern-day societies. However, recent research has revealed that the participation of minority groups in DSE activities is often hindered by different forms of bias and discrimination. Evidence of such behavior has been documented across almost all domains of DSE, including ridesharing, lodging, and freelancing. However, little is known about the underlying design decisions of DSE platforms which allow certain demographics of the market to gain unfair advantage over others. To bridge this knowledge gap, in …

Wildfire Spread Prediction Using Attention Mechanisms In U-Net, Kamen Haresh Shah, Kamen Haresh Shah

Master's Theses

An investigation into using attention mechanisms for better feature extraction in wildfire spread prediction models. This research examines the U-net architecture to achieve image segmentation, a process that partitions images by classifying pixels into one of two classes. The deep learning models explored in this research integrate modern deep learning architectures, and techniques used to optimize them. The models are trained on 12 distinct observational variables derived from the Google Earth Engine catalog. Evaluation is conducted with accuracy, Dice coefficient score, ROC-AUC, and F1-score. This research concludes that when augmenting U-net with attention mechanisms, the attention component improves feature suppression …

Ectotherm Thermoregulation At Fine Scales: Novel Methods Reveal A Link Between The Spatial Distribution Of Temperature And Habitat Quality, Ian Axsom

Master's Theses

Investigating ecological questions at the scale of individual organisms is necessary to understand and predict the biological consequences of environmental conditions. For small organisms this can be challenging because we need tools with the appropriate accuracy and resolution to record and quantify their ecological interactions. Unfortunately, many of our existing tools are only appropriate for medium to large organisms or those that are wide ranging, inhibiting our ability to investigate the ecology of small organisms at fine scales.

In Chapter 1, I tested a novel workflow for recording animal movements at very fine spatial and temporal scales. The workflow combined …

Security Implications Of Arctic Climate Change In Russia And The United States, Elaina Meyer

Political Science

Climate change is altering the world in an unprecedented way which brings about difficulties for world leaders. The Arctic is one particular region where major climate change consequences are being felt. As climate change grows more severe in this region not only will accessibility to the Arctic grow, but interest in the Arctic will grow as interest in Arctic resources heighten. As a result of these changes countries with Arctic borders and interests are going to face a variety of economic and security concerns in the region. This paper specifically looks at the way Russia has and is likely to …

Nigeria’S Budding Digital Economy: Coping With Disruptive Technology, Olugbenga Agboola

Economic and Financial Review

For a thriving and inclusive digital economy, African countries such as Nigeria need to build the critical foundations of the digital economy (World Bank Group, 2019). These foundations are interdependent and require public and private sector solutions.

Digital Financial Services And Financial Inclusion In Nigeria: Milestones And New Directions, Chioma G. Nkechika

Economic and Financial Review

Digital Financial Services are ushering in an age of financial innovation and convenience with technology as the driver. It aims at solving several needs of the public, helping the governments tackle newer problems and identify the potentials of new technology that may be conceived in a competitive landscape. The aim of financial inclusion is to bring as many unserved and underserved Nigerians into the formal financial sector. Thus, digital financial services are revealing gaps in the market that will allow the Federal government intervene and cater to more members of the public than ever, using technology.

Vol. 45 No. 2 (2022): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Comparative Genomics Of Five Valsa Species Gives Insights On Their Pathogenicity Evolution, Guangchao Sun, Shichang Xie, Lin Tang, Chao Zhao, Mian Zhang, Lili Huang

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Valsa is a genus of ascomycetes within the Valsaceae family. This family includes many wood destructive pathogens such as the well known Valsa mali and Valsa pyri which cause canker diseases in fruit trees and threaten the global fruit production. Lack of genomic information of this family is impeding our understandings about their evolution and genetic basis of their pathogenicity divergence. Here, we report genome assemblies of Valsa malicola, Valsa persoonii, and Valsa sordida which represent close relatives of Valsa mali and Valsa pyri with different host preferences. Comparative genomics analysis revealed that segmental rearrangements, inversions, and translocations …

Pathways To Equity And Access: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Bipoc Mentoring And Their Use Of Emancipatory Pedagogy To Catalyze Minoritized Learners' Interest In Architecture And Urban Planning, Tameka Pierre-Louis

Education Doctoral

The overarching objective of this study was aimed to examine how BIPOC mentor faculty were able to persevere the challenges they faced during their post-secondary academic experiences to become licensed architects and urban planners, as well as to identify the motivating factors that contributed to them committing their time to mentoring students of color in NOMA's Project Pipeline bridge program. This study also looked at how their lived experiences shaped their approach to teaching the design justice principles within the NOMA’s Project Pipeline curriculum to help stimulate URMs' interest in pursuing post-secondary study in architecture or design. The hypothesis proposed …

Conservation Genomics: Utilizing Genetic And Transcriptomic Sequencing For Effective Conservation Management Of Astragalus Osterhoutii, Christine Mowad

Master's Theses

Astragalus osterhoutii M.E. Jones (Fabaceae) is a federally listed, rare, endemic species restricted to seleniferous soils in Grand County, CO (Anderson, 1989). This research utilized both RADseq and RNAseq to generate neutral and adaptive genomic datasets. Neutral data analysis aimed to determine i) the genetic diversity of A. osterhoutii and each of its populations level, ii) how genetic structure is partitioned across the species range, and iii) the closest relative to A. osterhoutii. Analysis of adaptive, RNAseq data aimed to identify i) differentially expressed genes, ii) if patterns of expression are similar to neutral data, and iii) differences in Se …

La Casita Center: An Accompaniment Based Approach To Social Justice And Social Service., Ben Harlan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Casita Center is a Louisville based nonprofit organization that accompanies Latinx immigrants in the Louisville Metro area. and that is led and staffed by Latina immigrants. In this thesis, I investigate how employees of this Latinx-immigrant led nonprofit organization, navigate challenges to both administer service and build community using the model of accompaniment. Organizations like La Casita are critically important for Latinx newcomer communities in the United States and as neoliberal and nativist-inspired policiescontinue to oppress and marginalize, La Casita provides a model for what it means to center inclusion, belonging, community, and solidarity. In a global landscape of …