Digital Commons Network^™

A Rhetorical Analysis Of 13 Going On 30, Brynn Olverson

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

The film 13 Going on 30 is an iconic and nostalgic film for many, but more specifically for young women emerging into adulthood. This film is best classified as a coming-of-age film. Thirteen-year-old Jenna goes through the process of turning thirteen years old and emerging into middle school. Jenna craves to be accepted by the cool girls and is blinded by the idea of popularity which in turn ruins her lifelong friendship with her neighbor and best friend Matt. Jenna’s life was turned upside down when she woke up thirty years old, living in her thirty-year-old body, and working her …

Where Does The Church Stand In Today’S Mental Health Landscape?, Noah T. Mursu

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

Religious involvement in care for those living with mental illness has been going on for centuries, and perspectives on it have changed throughout the years. This literature review evaluates the place of religious groups, mainly Christian churches, in today's mental health situation by considering past and present involvement. It incorporates sources regarding different eras of mental hospital reform, modern perspectives of mental health clinicians and clergy, and the current gaps in mental health support among a variety of groups, including veterans, African Americans, and people in developing countries. This review then considers potential future involvement, especially considering how these gaps …

Can The Data Output Of Cyberrat Pass A “Turing Test”?, Danielle M. Seljeskog

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

There are benefits from laboratory experiences, like increased student engagement (Ra’anon, 2005) and preparation for graduate school (McDonough, n.d.). Specifically, there are benefits from working in a live animal laboratory using operant chambers. It is not feasible for many universities to have live animal laboratories due to factors such as cost of animal care, maintenance, and ethical concerns, so many students have no laboratory experience. The current study sought to evaluate the CyberRat (Ray, 2019) software as an alternative to live rat laboratories. The variability of CyberRat was assessed via a Turing test, thus determining how realistic CyberRat is. To …

Biodegradable Nanoparticles Targeting Circulating Immune Cells Reduce Central And Peripheral Sensitization To Alleviate Neuropathic Pain Following Spinal Cord Injury., Michael N. Saunders, Kate V. Griffin, Irina Kalashnikova, Daniel Kolpek, Dominique R. Smith, Eiji Saito, Brian J. Cummings, Aileen J. Anderson, Lonnie D. Shea, Jonghyuck Park

Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

Neuropathic pain is a critical source of comorbidity following spinal cord injury (SCI) that can be exacerbated by immune-mediated pathologies in the central and peripheral nervous systems. In this article, we investigate whether drug-free, biodegradable, poly(lactide- co -glycolide) (PLG) nanoparticle treatment mitigates the development of post-SCI neuropathic pain in female mice. Our results show that acute treatment with PLG nanoparticles following thoracic SCI significantly reduces tactile and cold hypersensitivity scores in a durable fashion. Nanoparticles primarily reduce peripheral immune-mediated mechanisms of neuropathic pain, including neuropathic pain-associated gene transcript frequency, transient receptor potential ankyrin 1 nociceptor expression, and MCP-1 (CCL2) chemokine …

Alcarràs, El Darrer Préssec: Una Aproximació Des Dels Food Studies, Neus Penalba Suárez

Spanish Faculty Research and Scholarship

Tourné en catalan avec des acteurs non professionnels et à mi-chemin entre la fiction et la non-fiction, Alcarràs (2022) sonde l'extinction des petits producteurs agricoles. Tout au long du film, nous sommes confrontés à différentes représentations de la dépossession subie par trois générations. Le présent article se propose d'interpréter Alcarràs et sa poétique de la fin, du point de vue théorique des food studies, en portant une attention particulière à l'analyse du scénario. En effet, pour narrer le drame d'une famille d'agriculteurs expropriés à l'époque du néolibéralisme, Simón utilise une série d'histoires encadrées : des souvenirs de la famille, …

The Ubiquity Of Time In Latent-Cause Inference, Dan-Mircea Mirea, Yeon Soon Shin, Sarah Dubrow, Yael Niv

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Humans have an outstanding ability to generalize from past experiences, which requires parsing continuously experienced events into discrete, coherent units, and relating them to similar past experiences. Time is a key element in this process; however, how temporal information is used in generalization remains unclear. Latent-cause inference provides a Bayesian framework for clustering experiences, by building a world model in which related experiences are generated by a shared cause. Here we examine how temporal information is used in latent-cause inference,using a novel task in which participants see ‘microbe’ stimuli and explicitly report the latent cause (‘strain’) they infer for each …

Regarding The Lesbian Potluck, Kate Thomas

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Is Landscape Queer?, Kate Thomas

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tracing The Desert Island: Atlantis, Unknowability, And Colonial Imagination, Edwige Crucifix

French and Francophone Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

This contribution studies the myth of the desert-ocean in Pierre Benoit’s 1919 [1920] hit novel L’Atlantide. Locating the mythical lost continent in the Sahara, the novel catered to the period’s exoticism while serving colonial ideology. While the desert was materially crucial for the Empire, it also provided new symbolic ground, becoming a favored locus of the colonial imagination as a site of extreme hostility, due as much to its climate as to its anticolonial activity. As the ultimate colonial fantasy, the desert also paradoxically provided fertile ground for a contrapuntal utopian discourse, apparent when reading Benoit’s novel in light …

In Search Of Border Sanctuaries: Religion, Landscape, And Territory In The Peloponnese, Shannon Mailhouse Dunn

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Despite the impact of scholarly models for the distribution of Greek sanctuaries, this is the first comprehensive and critical study of “border sanctuaries,” a type of sacred site that has been strongly associated with territorial borders of poleis in ancient Greece. When used as a distinct site type, it correlates location in a border zone with specific functions related to that border, such as community definition or territorial control. Focusing on the Archaic and Classical periods, and building on scholarship of borders, religion, and landscape, this study presents four border zones throughout the Peloponnese, and treats each sanctuary within it …

Lists In Legal Drafting: How Brain Science Can Help Student Drafters Produce Documents That Are Easier To Read And Comprehend, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Lists play an important role in legal drafting of every type. A list helps the reader break down larger pieces of information, and a well-constructed list's visuals can aid in comprehension. A good list can also head off future legal disputes by making it easier for all parties to read and understand its contents. But a list, in and of itself, is not beneficial unless it is organized in such a way that the brain can easily group like items. By understanding the basics of how the brain processes information, the legal writer can better understand how to group pieces …

Legal Issues In Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, And Non-Fungible Tokens (Nfts), Christa Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

When do new technologies require changes in the law? Judge Easterbrook argued in 1996 that there is no more need for a "Law of Cyberspace" than there ever was for a "Law of the Horse." Rather, existing laws spanning multiple fields are often sufficient to cover niche factual applications and even new technological change. The same is true now for "The Law of Blockchain." Nonetheless, blockchain marketplace participants lack any cohesive, useful analysis to tum to that is neutral in outcome and performs a comprehensive analysis spanning the multitude of laws affecting the whole ecosystem. We might not need a …

13 C-Stable Isotope Resolved Metabolomics Uncovers Dynamic Biochemical Landscape Of Gut Microbiome-Host Organ Communications In Mice, Xia Xiao, Yixuan Zhou, Xinwei Li, Jing Jin, Jerika Durham, Zifan Ye, Yipeng Wang, Bernhard Hennig, Pan Deng

Animal and Food Sciences Faculty Publications

ackground Gut microbiome metabolites are important modulators of host health and disease. However, the overall metabolic potential of the gut microbiome and interactions with the host organs have been underexplored. Results Using stable isotope resolved metabolomics (SIRM) in mice orally gavaged with 13 C-inulin (a tracer), we first observed dynamic enrichment of 13 C-metabolites in cecum contents in the amino acids and short-chain fatty acid metabolism pathways. 13 C labeled metabolites were subsequently profiled comparatively in plasma, liver, brain, and skeletal muscle collected at 6, 12, and 24 h after the tracer administration. Organ-specific and time-dependent 13 C metabolite enrichments …

A Cooperative Study Assessing The Effects Of A Second Iron Injection Administered Before Weaning On Growth Performance, Hematological Status, And Tissue Mineral Concentrations Of Nursery Pigs*, Tyler Chevalier, O. Adeola, S. D. Carter, C. R. Dove, M. J. Estienne, C. L. Levesque, C. V. Maxwell, T. Tsai, Merlin D. Lindemann

Animal and Food Sciences Faculty Publications

Objective: A study involving 7 experiment stations evaluated the effects of a second iron injection administered before weaning on growth and hematological measures of pigs.

Materials and Methods: Pigs (n = 514) were given an iron injection (100–200 mg) on the first day of life. Piglets were then allotted to pairs of similar-weight, samesex siblings 3 to 5 d before weaning (on d 18–24) with one piglet from each pair receiving a second iron injection. All pigs received common station-specific postweaning diets. Data were subjected to ANOVA with the model containing the terms treatment, station, pair within station, and treatment …

Threading Unity Throughout Itaa: A Collaboration Of Fashion Academics Across Content Threading Unity: Apparel, Marketing, Beauty And Interior Design Within The Fashion Industry, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Carter Gabriel Averbeck, Kendel Bolton, Denise Sutton

Publications and Research

Sustainability has been an academic research topic of late that impacts more than just the fashion industry for apparel. Besides the apparel industry, marketing, beauty, and interior design are aware of the promise of sustainability for both the environment and consumers. Sustainability reduces its environmental impacts of pollutants such as carbon footprints and unsold inventory, protecting workers who create garments, and animal welfare (Biela-Weyenberg, 2023) which can impact the supply chain. “The United Nations established the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion in 2019 to hold fashion brands to a higher standard to create environmentally friendly apparel” (2023, p.1). Through modern …

A Deep Learning Model For Early Diagnosis Of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus From Facial Images, Shourav Bikash Dey

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) poses significant challenges due to its complex and varied symptoms making diagnosis extremely challenging and time consuming. Symptoms of SLE often mimics other autoimmune or physical conditions and around 5 million people worldwide suffers from this condition, as reported by the Lupus Foundation of America during their study in 2019. However, diagnosis is much more difficult in developing countries with backdated clinical technology and setup therefore, making it virtually unknown the exact number of SLE patient count worldwide. Among all the heterogeneous symptoms presented by SLE, Butterfly Malar Rash (BMR) is one of the symptoms that …

Speculative Enquiries: The Third Annual Conference Of The European Culture And Technology Laboratory., Connell Vaughan, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Noel Fitzpatrick

Conference Proceedings

The third annual conference of the ECT Lab+ was held over three days in November 2023 in Limassol at the Media Arts & Design Research Lab (MADLab), Cyprus University of Technology. The conference brought together experts from the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology, and other fields to explore ways of enquiry that enrich (non-)positivist ways of knowing as well as post-structuralist critique towards them. Given the political, representative and epistemic crises of the current times, there is a need for transdisciplinary responses to overcome siloed thinking of academic fields of study and offer solutions by revisiting questions of speculation as …

Industrial Hemp Production And Potential Risks In Kentucky, Hoyeon Jeong

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Since the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2014 and 2018 legalized Industrial Hemp (Cannabis Sativa. L), interest in grain, fiber, and floral hemp production has seen growing pains. As an emerging crop, there is a research gap in the impact of weather and agronomic conditions on hemp production including THC (Delta 9 Tetrahydrocannabinol) and pollen drift as risks in hemp cultivation. The first essay aims to measure the impact of weather and agronomic factors on hemp grain, fiber, and floral yields in Kentucky using a yield-weather model with information on field locations. The results show that heat conditions during the growing …

Social Impact Lab: Impact Report Ay 2023-2024, Lynn University

Karen S. Lynch Center for Leadership and Social Impact: Impact Reports

No abstract provided.

Rabble: A Companion To Pwa-Tem (2024)

Rabble, 2014-

Rabble is a companion chapbook publication to the magazine Pwatem. From the preface of most issues: "'Tell the rabble my name is Cabell."- James Branch Cabell to his editor, to help people learn how to pronounce his name. Cabell used the word derogatively but we are taking it back. These pages will showcase the writing and illustrations of our rabble-the ordinary students of VCU."

Trademarks On The Blockchain: Nft Domains And Collisions, Jelena Laketić

Michigan Technology Law Review

Blockchain technology supporting cryptocurrency transactions is one of the most critical innovations of this decade. Establishing a legal identity on blockchain, however, is fraught with uncertainty. In the 1990s, the internet faced a similar set of issues, which were resolved through the ICANN dispute resolution system. This Article asserts that blockchain technology urgently needs a similar cohesive approach to NFT domains.

This Article will explore trademark issues with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), specifically NFT domains. It begins by exploring the fundamental structure of NFTs by demystifying the technology and showing how NFTs contrast with other currency regimes. Increased usage of NFTs …

Innovation Originators, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim, Rafeel Wasif

Michigan Technology Law Review

Asian Americans are one of the most striking and undertheorized ethnic groups in the field of innovation. While a prolific ethnic group when it comes to being named as inventors on U.S. patents, very little has been written on this observation, perhaps because of previously limited datasets and unwieldy data analysis on ethnic backgrounds about patenting at the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). Research on inventor diversity and ethnicity in innovation has begun to explore some ethnic groups, but a more holistic account should focus on one particular overlooked group. Recently, entrepreneurship studies concerning ethnicity have shown that …

Straight Right, Joe Maslanka

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A marine's life risks a downwards spiral after getting pulled over and given a DUI. Hands can become fists or bonds, and your actions will always be your own.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so …

Pwatem: An Anthology Of Literature And Art (2024)

Pwatem (Poictesme), 2006-

Pwatem is an anthology of literature and art from undergraduate students at Virginia Commonwealth University. Pwatem publishes poetry, prose and art of all kinds from talented undergraduate students of all majors.

Direction Of The Play: "A Wrinkle In Time", Kaitlin Webster

All Graduate Projects

This paper details the research, process, and production of a theatrical work in fulfillment of the requirements of the Master in Theater Production. The production central to this piece is a high school performance of the play A Wrinkle In Time by Morgan Gould. Section 1 outlines the pre-production parameters and play selection. Section 2 deeply analyzes the story, setting, and production design. Beyond script analysis, this section contains a lot of research connected to the original book by Madeleine L’Engle, initially published in 1962. This production was set in 1960. Much research is focused on the historical context and …

Direction And Technical Supervision Of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Laura Williams

All Graduate Projects

This project contains the research, application, performance, and final reflection of the entire production process of A Mid-Summer Nights Dream at Fairhaven Middle School from November 2023 through May 2024 by Laura Williams and the students and faculty of Bellingham School District involved in A Mid-Summer Nights Dream. The document includes character and visual production research, historical context and significance, student learning goals regarding the production as a unit, documentation of the production period and post-production reviews.

Cyanide Toxicity Induced By Apricot Kernel Consumption: A Case Report, Jatin Sadarangani, Vaishnavi Singh, Benjamin K. Kingsly

North Texas GME Research Forum 2024

Functional foods are food items that should be consumed as part of a regular diet in order to provide advantages beyond what are typically referred to as traditional nutritional benefits. Furthermore, in order to support the better function claim or the decreased illness risk claim, these positive outcomes must be scientifically proven. Foods with particular health benefits have been referred to as "superfoods" more recently. Superfoods are conceptually defined as foods with high biological value because of their high concentration of bioactive components and high concentration of nutrients, as well as their high bioavailability and bioactivity in the body. As …

Angioedema Linked To Combination Pill Trandolapril/Verapamil, Aadil Bhutta, Sana Khan, Monica Dhiman, Udit Bhatt, Akinjide Onifade

North Texas GME Research Forum 2024

Angioedema is the swelling of deeper layers of skin caused by a build-up fluid, oftentimes due to the culmination of immune system activation against allergens. There are several causes of angioedema, including animal dander, exposure to various foods, insect bites, and medications such as Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and Angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs). This swelling primarily presents periorbital and periorally, however can also less-commonly affect the airway. Angioedema can be life-threatening if involving the throat and larynx given the potential of respiratory airway compromise. This case presents a patient who had been on an ACE-ARB for almost 2 decades, …

Post Operative Atrial Fibrillation After Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting In Octogenarians: A Systematic Review, M Eliann Reinhardt, Manuel Jimenez, Priya Mohan, Bernardo Reyes

East Florida Division GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

Athletic Donors’ Control Over The Future Of Collegiate Athletics, Matthew Thomas Gelder

Student Works

No abstract provided.