Digital Commons Network^™

Diver Perceived Value And Satisfaction On The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Ka'lon Duncanson

Honors Theses

The Mississippi Gulf Coast is known for its coastal beauty and the tourism that comes from the recreational activities associated with the water. However, there appears to be an underserved segment of the tourism industry. The coast provides opportunities for local scuba divers to take part in a range of diving activities, but there is minimal support for this tourism activity in Mississippi. There is a need for greater understanding about what local divers value in their diving experiences and how this might lead to greater satisfaction with this activity. Along with overall perceived value, the argument is made that …

Decolonial Practices In Higher Education From The Global South: A Systematic Literature Review

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Habitat Heterogeneity In Nebraska Streams And Distribution Prediction For Tier-1 Cyprinids Using Multi-Scale Modeling Of Fluvial And Landscape Features, Connor P. Hart

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Multiscale environmental processes determine in-stream habitat conditions which drive species distributions. Habitat constitutes the physical template upon which ecological processes occur and species conduct life stage activities. Habitat heterogeneity promotes biodiversity of aquatic systems. Stream classification informs freshwater conservation by providing a useful framework to account for habitat heterogeneity, often based on landscape regions of similar environmental processes. A greater understanding of landscape-based classification frameworks as means to classify stream systems may improve understanding of drivers of biodiversity. Using Nebraska as a case study, on a statewide scale, objectives were 1) to characterize habitat availability for several at-risk fish species, …

Fostering Youth-Led Innovations To Accelerate Progress On The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: A Guide For Policy Makers At Cop28, Brock Dickinson, Issa Gonzalez-Peltier Leogal, Radhika Iyengar, Nicholas Palaschuk, Haein Shin, Iveta Silova, Sumie Song, Hana Sahatqija, Valeria Soto, Deepak Sridhar, Wen-Wen Tung, Matthew A. Witenstein, Shriya Iyer, Eshan Akula, Suvid Bordia, Eshaan Jain, Aaryan Jain, Vidya Bindal

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

In today’s world, to address the most pressing global challenges, education must equip all learners with the values, skills, and knowledge that nurture cooperation, resilience, respect for diversity, gender justice, and human rights. This concept is called Global Citizenship Education which is a target of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 – Quality Education.

I commend the Mission 4.7 initiative facilitated by Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development, UNESCO, UN SDSN and the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens, for playing a pivotal role in addressing SDG Target 4.7 and on the release of the “Fostering Youth-led Innovations to Accelerate Progress …

Telehealth In The Wake Of Covid-19: The Impact Of Telehealth Expansion On Healthcare Access, Utilization, And Outcomes, Deirdre Ann Colburn

Doctoral Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented change to the healthcare industry, including a large and rapid shift to providing care through telehealth technologies. Though the expansion of telehealth services was successful in continuing to provide patients with care while preventing the spread of disease, it is less clear how patient sociodemographic characteristics influenced telehealth use during this time. Similarly, less is known about how or if state-level parity laws influenced rates of individual-level telehealth utilization. To address these areas of research, this dissertation does three things. First, I conducted a systematic review of the literature on demographic disparities in telehealth access, …

A Global Gene Expression Approach To Exploring Rock Colonization By Blastococcus Saxobsidens, Ryan Patrick Wilmot

Doctoral Dissertations

Introduction: Blastococcus saxobsidens is an endolithic bacterium associated with biodegradation of stone monuments across the Mediterranean basin. Recently, strains of the bacterium have been isolated from high altitude deserts in Chile, volcanic glass in Iceland, and from masonry of several cultural heritage sites across Europe and the Americas. Blastococcus saxobsidens global dispersion has been linked to patterns of wind distributed dust particles. The physiology that this bacterium uses to colonize a wide range of rock types in such distinct locations has not been previously explored however. This project has established that B. saxobsidens colonizes and respires a variety of chemically …

American And Israeli Students’ Perceptions Of African Emigration To Europe, Boah Kim, Tal Yaar-Waisel

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Unveiling Identity: Exploring Afrofuturism In Ekow Nimako’S Contemporary African Diasporic Sculptural Art, Kandra James

Theses

Identity expressed within African diasporic arts has historically been connected to traditional genres such as portraiture. Over time, contemporary artists have explored identity through genres beyond portraiture and through the use of non-traditional materials. The sculptural practice of Ghanaian Canadian artist Ekow Nimako, a fine arts sculptor based in Toronto, Canada, employs the unconventional material of LEGO® to offer a multi-generational perspective into deep diasporic memory. Examining Nimako’s sculptures through the perspective of colonialism and de-colonialism, materiality, and Afrofuturism, this thesis investigates the artist’s exploration of Black historical pasts to shape identities and construct narratives of Black futures. The monumental …

Post-War Restitution In The Republic Of Croatia: Awareness Of The Komza And Reconciliation Of Moveable Property Through Public Sculpture, Anita Govic

Theses

This project is a public sculpture prototype focused on the need for post-war art restitution in the Republic of Croatia: it will have an impact by enhancing public knowledge of the KOMZA list, which offers legal proof for families to retrieve heirlooms taken during WWII and the wars of secession from Yugoslavia.

The sculpture design includes three pillars, two etched with the 1529 names from the KOMZA list and a third that will be progressively built, brick-by-brick, as artworks are restituted. The nature of viewers’ interaction includes access to QR codes that offer links to the KOMZA list, information about …

The Modern Artist's Psyche: Making Meaning In Art Through History, Jenna Banks

Theses

The Modern Artist’s Psyche: Making Meaning in Art Through History provides a way for students to study and analyze works by Modern artists that explore themes like loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and despair. By studying these artists and their works, students learn about topics like art appreciation and psychoanalysis; specifically, how each artist used their mental state to create their visual products. Students learn about art appreciation through the process of discussing and answering questions about specific art works. Students also study the concept of psychoanalysis, relating to theories and techniques that have been used by Modern artists. This connects to …

Bayesian Learning Of Spatiotemporal Source Distribution For Beached Microplastic In The Gulf Of Mexico, David Pojunas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the last several decades, plastic waste has gradually accumulated while slowly degrading in terrestrial and oceanic environments. Recently, there has been an increased effort to identify the possible sources of plastic to understand how they affect vulnerable beaches. This issue is of particular concern in the Gulf of Mexico due to the presence of oil, natural gas, and plastic production. In this thesis, we expand upon existing Bayesian plastic attribution models and develop a rigorous statistical framework to map observed beached microplastics to their sources. Within this framework, we combine Lagrangian backtracking simulations of floating particles using nurdle beaching …

Online Qualitative Research With Vulnerable Populations In The Philippines: Ethical And Methodological Challenges During Covid-19, Vincen Gregory Yu, Jhaki Mendoza, Gideon Lasco

Development Studies Faculty Publications

Our article draws on two multi-sited studies to present the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting online qualitative research among vulnerable populations in the Philippines—specifically, among people who use drugs—during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the global scholarship has long articulated the difficulties inherent to pursuing research on such populations, we show how the specific milieu of the Philippines in the last three years has created exceptional, structural challenges to the conduct of said research. Besides the inevitable migration to online fieldwork brought about by the pandemic, researchers have had to contend with the continuing sociopolitical and existential threat to vulnerable …

Too Many, Too Late: The Nfl’S Inverse Accessibility Issue And The New Rpo, Scott M. Finney

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Trio Upward Bound: A Mixed Methods Investigation Of Factors That Impact Postsecondary Enrollment And Degree Completion Of First-Generation, Low-Income, And Academically At-Risk Students, Megan Simila

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the factors that influence the college choice process for first-generation, low-income, and academically at-risk students in a TRIO Upward Bound program. The literature review theoretically explores the multi-level factors with Perna’s college choice model, social construction theory, and Bourdieu’s social, cultural, and financial capital definitions. This study hypothesizes students will enroll within 50 miles of home, a Greek and Latin root intervention will improve SAT scores, and GPA and concurrent credit classes are correlated to college enrollment, degree completion, and type of institution attended. This study also proposes that the students who …

The Bronze Harvester: Ravaging And Plundering In Greek Warfare, Nicholas Lindberg

Classics

This article argues that the purpose of ravaging in Greek warfare was not to goad the enemy into fighting or to cause systematic economic harm but to facilitate plundering. The cereal harvest was commonly chosen as a time for invasion, because it maximized the amount of plunder an invading force could expect to find in the enemy countryside. While ravagers were unlikely to cause permanent economic harm to a community as a whole, they could imperil the livelihoods of individual farmers, both directly through theft and destruction and indirectly by preventing farmers from processing the harvest in a timely fashion. …

Systematic Literature Review On Ontology-Based Indonesian Question Answering System, Fadhila Tangguh Admojo, Adidah Lajis, Haidawati Nasir

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Question-Answering (QA) systems at the intersection of natural language processing, information retrieval, and knowledge representation aim to provide efficient responses to natural language queries. These systems have seen extensive development in English and languages like Indonesian present unique challenges and opportunities. This literature review paper delves into the state of ontology-based Indonesian QA systems, highlighting critical challenges. The first challenge lies in sentence understanding, variations, and complexity. Most systems rely on syntactic analysis and struggle to grasp sentence semantics. Complex sentences, especially in Indonesian, pose difficulties in parsing, semantic interpretation, and knowledge extraction. Addressing these linguistic intricacies is pivotal for …

Unraveling Water Quality Issues In The Colorado River Basin: Utilizing Remote Sensing Satellite Images, Statistical, And Machine Learning For Improved Monitoring, Godson Ebenezer Adjovu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research was aimed at exploring innovative and cost-effective tools in understanding the spatiotemporal variability of water quality parameters in the Colorado River Basin (CRB), which includes the Colorado River and major reservoirs and lakes in the USA including Lake Mead. The river which arises in the state of Colorado and empties into the Republic of Mexico at the Gulf of California, is a source of water to seven US states and the Republic of Mexico and provides water to about 40 million people and million acres of farmlands in seven states in the western US and the Republic of …

Understanding Social Vulnerability To Natural Hazards Through Machine Learning And Dynamic Spatiotemporal Analysis, Donglei Wang

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Natural hazards pose significant threats to communities, impacting livelihoods and property. Socially vulnerable communities are disproportionately affected by these hazards, highlighting the importance of considering social vulnerability in hazard risk assessment. Research on multi-hazards risk assessment, and social vulnerability can provide a comprehensive understanding of hazards and local vulnerability to support the reduction of disaster suffering overall. This thesis presents a comprehensive study conducted in Idaho, US, to examine the regional multi-hazards risk and assess the progression of social vulnerability metrics in wildfire-affected areas in a case study.

The first part of the research proposes a multi-hazards risk assessment methodology …

Breaking Boundaries In Wind Engineering: Lsu Wise Open-Jet Facility Revolutionizes Solar Panel And Building Design, Aly Mousaad Aly

Faculty Publications

Featured Application: The Louisiana State University (LSU) Windstorm Impact, Science, and Engineering (WISE) Open-Jet Testing facility is instrumental in enhancing structural resilience under windstorms. The facility represents a Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure to address grand challenges and the need for experimental capabilities in the mid-scale range. Its unique capabilities enable the comprehensive testing and evaluation of critical infrastructure components, encompassing low- and high-rise buildings, photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, wind turbines, bridges, vegetation (nature-based solutions), power transmission lines, and more. Through controlled wind conditions, researchers can gain invaluable insights into the behaviour and performance of these critical infrastructures. The facility is pivotal …

State Constitutional Law:Standing To Litigate Public Rights In Georgia Courts, Randy Beck

Mercer Law Review

State courts interpreting state constitutions face the recurring issue of how much weight to afford Supreme Court of the United States precedent addressing comparable questions under the United States Constitution. At one end of the spectrum, many state courts routinely engage in what federal Judge Jeffrey Sutton calls “lockstepping,” importing federal doctrine wholesale into state decisional law. For a court engaged in lockstepping, concepts like freedom of speech or equal protection of the laws under a state constitution mean whatever the U.S. Supreme Court interprets them to mean under the federal Constitution, even if the state provision differs in potentially …

Initial Insights Into Cefr Adoption At A Language Faculty Of A Public University In Malaysia, Alla Khan, Anne Rowena David, Aizat Hisham Ahmad, Azril Ali, Salasiah Che Lah

PASAA

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages, which was originally meant for the European context is now being widely accepted by many non-European countries. The education system in Malaysia, as outlined in the English Language Education Roadmap for Malaysia (2015-2025), has adopted the framework. Although this has taken place at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, the present study zooms in on the tertiary level only. Specifically, it offers a critical analysis of implementing CEFR at a language faculty of one of the public universities in Malaysia. In doing so, it has drawn on Phillips and Ochs’s (2003) framework …

Usage Statistics: Project Counter R5 Tr_J1 Report Fy2023 - Journal Requests (Excluding Oa_Gold) By Title, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Project COUNTER R5 Report TR_J1 for the University of Rhode Island for the period from July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023. The TR_J1 report is defined as "Journal Requests (Excluding OA_Gold)." This report presents an annual total only and only includes those platforms successfully configured for automated harvesting via SUSHI.

File for download is Excel spreadsheet generated by Alma Analytics.

Results:

Total Item Requests - 836,365

Unique Item Requests - 625,288

Exploring Midwives' Challenges And Strategies To Provide Care In Maternity Settings During Harsh Winter Weather In Northern Areas, Pakistan: A Qualitative Study Protocol, Sana Sultan, Rafat Jan, Marina Baig

Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM)

Background: Midwives play a vital role in enhancing the quality of care and achieving substantial reductions in maternal and newborn mortality rates. However, in the context of Gilgit Baltistan, the harsh winter weather, and frequent heavy snowfall present distinct challenges for midwives providing essential maternal care. These challenges can lead to an increased risk of maternal infections and newborn hypothermia. Consequently, the limited accessibility to healthcare facilities due to frequent harsh winter weather, and resulting scarcity of resources like heating, electricity, and water further exacerbates the situation.
Objective: The objective of the study is to explore the challenges and barriers …

Vol. 46 No. 2 (2023): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 46, No 2-Dec 2023 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Vol. 46 No. 2 (2023): 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, Lā ‘ie, 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, …

Sc-Fuse: A Feature Fusion Approach For Unpaved Road Detection From Remotely Sensed Images, Aniruddh Saxena

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Road network extraction from remote sensing imagery is crucial for numerous applications, ranging from autonomous navigation to urban and rural planning. A particularly challenging aspect is the detection of unpaved roads, often underrepresented in research and data. These roads display variability in texture, width, shape, and surroundings, making their detection quite complex. This thesis addresses these challenges by creating a specialized dataset and introducing the SC-Fuse model.

Our custom dataset comprises high resolution remote sensing imagery which primarily targets unpaved roads of the American Midwest. To capture the diverse seasonal variation and their impact, the dataset includes images from different …

Decades Of Don Quixote: Tracking Social Progression Through Marcela And Grisóstomo, Allison Jackson

Honors Theses

In this essay, I will track the evolution of academic opinions in the late 20th and early 21st century of two main components of the episode: Marcela’s character and what it says about Cervantes’ perception of women’s autonomy, as well as Grisóstomo’s death and the rejection of the notion of suicide by past academics. Marcela’s dramatic rejection of societal demands and Gristósomo’s tragic and confusing death are radically exciting since there is so much left to be assumed about the two main characters that is not explicitly written. The story relies on irony and subversion to enunciate a certain message; …

Autobiographical Traces In Chantal Akerman’S Jeanne Dielman And Meetings With Anna, Stephen Carruthers

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

This article explores two seminal films Akerman wrote and directed early in her career, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (Meetings with Anna) (1978), in the context of her later autobiographical writings, Une famille à Bruxelles (1998) and Ma mère rit (2013) (My Mother Laughs). While scripted many years earlier, the two films address themes later developed in Ma mère rit and Une famille à Bruxelles, notably Akerman’s intense relationship with her mother and the trauma of the Shoah. The article outlines the key elements of the two films and autobiographical works and …

The Impacts Of Gentrification On Physical Activity Within Hispanic Communities, David Canola

University Honors Program Senior Projects

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (2018) underscore the importance of physical activity (PA) for improved health and sleep patterns. However, meeting these guidelines poses challenges for Hispanic/Latino communities due to inadequate resources. Arredondo el al. (2016) reported that only 65.4% of Hispanic/Latinos meet the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines. To shed light on the reasons behind the limited PA in this population, it is crucial to understand the effects of gentrification. Oxford (2023) defines gentrification as the enhancement of an area, attracting a higher social class. This study employs a mixed-method design, incorporating open-ended interviews, informal conversations, and photo voice …

Aurora Borealis — Not Bore-Alis! The Northern Lights’ Ancient Legends And Scientific Wonders, Anadi Purewal-Legha

The Synapse: Intercollegiate science magazine

No abstract provided.