Digital Commons Network^™

Putting Lipstick On A Pig: Biogas, Methane Digesters, And The Greenwashing Playbook, Randall S. Abate

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Industrial animal agriculture pitches biogas and methane digesters as solutions to the outsized methane footprint of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), yet these efforts merely seek to convey to the public that CAFOs’ operations are environmentally responsible. In reality, quite the opposite is true because biogas and methane digesters more deeply entrench these facilities into the status quo of unsustainable production and disposal methods at CAFOs. This article first describes industrial animal agriculture’s impacts on climate change, with a focus on methane emissions. It then addresses biogas and methane digesters as ineffective solutions to the methane emissions from CAFOs. Next, …

Coastal Migration With Dignity: Safeguards For Vulnerable Communities, Randall S. Abate, Aashini Choksi

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Comment proposes to apply social justice-oriented safeguards to vulnerable communities in the climate migration context, focusing on recommendations to diminish the vulnerability of communities in two climate migration case studies in the United States. Part I describes the troubling realities of climate gentrification in Florida as well as forced displacement from coastal areas for native communities in Alaska. Part II addresses the existing federal and state legal frameworks in these contexts, and how gaps in each framework exacerbate the vulnerability of these overburdened communities. Part III proposes law reforms to address these concerns. It first recommends adjustments to the …

Lynn Mann Hornsby Papers - Accession 492, Lynn Mann Hornsby

Manuscript Collection

The Lynn Mann Hornsby Papers include materials collected by Mrs. Hornsby during her service as a delegate to the 1979 White House Conference on Library and Information Services, and her participation in related regional conferences. Lynn Mann Hornsby is a Winthrop graduate (Class of 1970) and won the 2020 Mary Mildred Sullivan Award from Winthrop “for selfless dedication of time, energy and talent in service to others.” Lynn has served on several boards and volunteered extensively in the community in different roles. The collection itself includes a wide variety of background papers relating to library and information services and issues …

The Impact Of Hybrid Working On Employee Way Of Life And The Need To Reshape The Employee Value Proposition, Kanishka Chandanamali Athalage

Dissertations

This dissertation details a post-pandemic qualitative investigation conducted to understand the impact of hybrid working solutions on reshaping the employee value proposition (EVP) in the health insurance industry of the UAE. The research aims to evaluate how the introduction of modern hybrid working solutions impacts employees in a post-pandemic environment and, in turn, whether this creates a demand for human resources to refocus drivers of the EVP. Traditionally, EVP is referred to as the overall give-and-get in an employment deal; however, the pandemic was an eye-opener for organizations to redefine what it entails. Since hybrid working has become the new …

A Disconnected School: Why Vertical Alignment Is Not Used To Better Transition Students From Middle To High School (A Qualitative Study), Timothy Revels

Theses and Dissertations

The project focuses on one school – The Carrie Anderson School (TCAS) in Medellin, Colombia which is a private bilingual school that has American accreditation and is one of the most popular and well-regarded schools in the country. The idea for this project started with observation of TCAS ninth grade students and how they struggled during the first half of their freshman year in high school. At that time the school did not have vertical alignment between their middle and high schools. Data was collected from the school using student grade data, faculty surveys, and faculty interviews. The data shows …

Research And Graduate Studies Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2024, Office Of Research And Graduate Studies, Illinois State University

Research and Graduate Studies Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Milner Library Annual Report, 2024, Milner Library

Reports and White Papers - Milner Library

Annual report for Milner Library, Illinois State University.

(Re)Producing Orientalism: Industry Logic Of Chinese Mobile Game Re-Skins In The Global App Empire, Yizhou Xu

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

Through the case study of the mobile title Game of Sultans, this article examines the proliferation of iterative and copycat games through the practice of reskins in the mobile game industry. Based on year-long autoethnographic fieldwork working in a Chinese mobile game company, I provide an on-the-ground perspective of how Orientalist representations in reskinned games are instrumentalized through the roles of “cultural brokers” and the work of localization for Western markets. By taking a theoretical and technological understanding of reskins, I argue that reskinned games, as a form of industrial mimicry, while an important aspect of standardized game production, …

Age Of Sensing Empowered Holographic Isac Framework For Nextg Wireless Networks: A Vae And Drl Approach, Apurba Adhikary, Avi Deb Raha, Yu Qiao, Md. Shirajum Munir, Monishanker Halder, Choong Seon Hong

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

This paper proposes an artificial intelligence (AI) framework that leverages integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), aided by the age of sensing (AoS) to ensure the timely location updates of the users for a holographic MIMO (HMIMO)- enabled wireless network. The AI-driven framework guarantees optimal power allocation for efficient beamforming by activating the minimal number of grids from the HMIMO base station. An optimization problem is formulated to maximize the sensing utility function, aiming to maximize the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of the received signal, beam-pattern gains to improve the sensing SINR of reflected echo signals and maximizing the evidence lower bound …

Reverse-Engineering Of Disinformation Campaigns During The War In Ukraine, Lora Pitman, Ava Baratz, Kelly Morgan, Marcy Alvarado

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

Information operations have long been a part of warfare. Disinformation campaigns, in particular, are usually launched by states in order to mislead and confuse populations in adversarial countries, but also to obtain support for their actions from domestic audiences. These campaigns threaten human security, at the individual level, but also state- and even international security. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia came with a new wave of disinformation not only in Ukraine itself, but also in countries from various other continents. This paper studies the characteristics of the spread of disinformation from the first day of the war in February …

An Exploratory Study Of Research Contexts For Information Literacy Instruction, Allison Hosier

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

In a previous study, the author argued that information literacy instruction which takes into account the contextual nature of research is more meaningful to students and has more potential for long term impact than instruction that focuses narrowly on academic research skills. As part of that argument, the author identified six types of research that represented the contextual nature of research—academic, creative, personal, professional, scholarly, and scientific. This list of research types has since proven useful in the classroom. However, it is still an open question whether this framework is a useful way of thinking about research. The author set …

Artificial Intelligence And Lis Publishing: A Survey Of Journal Editors, Allison Hosier, Laureen Cantwell-Jurkovic

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This Qualtrics-based survey was used to explore the AI-related policies of LIS journals and various journal support mechanisms about AI (e.g., AI detection tools, peer reviewer guidelines, copyediting processes, and more), as well as EIC perspectives and attitudes toward generative AI within the context of scholarly publishing. In early summer 2024, researchers shared the survey with select top-tier journal editors in the library science field. Results from this survey will be published in the article “Artificial Intelligence and LIS Publishing: A Survey of Journal Editors” in Library Trends in 2025 (Volume 73). These findings contribute to a larger conversation about …

Pleasures And Politics: Moving Towards A Feminist Performance Practice, Delaney Burke

Theses : Honours

The focus of this research is the use of the female body as a tool for developing a feminist performance practice. This research interrogated the use of neo-burlesque and erotic dance in contemporary postdramatic performance. Contemporary feminist performance artists, such as Emma Maye Gibson (aka Betty Grumble), often use the female body as a tool for entertainment and political statement, and this trend parallels an increase of women moving into the burlesque and erotic dance spheres as professional performers and hobbyists. Despite this suggestion that the female body is a fertile site for feminist action and statement, its use is …

Steve Grossman, The Catalyst: A Practice-Led Research Investigation Into Developing A Chromatic Approach To Improvisation, Joshua Parker

Theses : Honours

Steve Grossman was a tenor saxophonist from Brooklyn, New York, who passed away in 2020, leaving a catalogue of recordings and improvisations that are largely overlooked and under-appreciated by the mainstream jazz culture. Inspired heavily by the modal and free jazz improvisations of John Coltrane during his later period (which heavily utilised a chromatic approach to generate intensity), Grossman developed his own unique and powerful approach to the post-Coltrane style. This voice began to solidify from a young age, as is evident on recordings during the 1970s, such as Miles Davis’ Black Beauty Live at Fillmore West (1973) and Live …

Producing ‘Bedroom Pop’ Music: A Compositional Project That Employs Production And Compositional Techniques Identified Through Analysis Of Select Chelsea Cutler Songs, Anna Therese Dabbs

Theses : Honours

This study explores key production and compositional techniques in popular music, specifically within the genre of ‘bedroom pop,’ focusing on the distinctive style of artist and producer Chelsea Cutler. The aim of this project was to compose an entirely new work grounded in existing genre structures and shaped by Cutler’s unique approach. To achieve this, available literature on popular music production and composition, specifically ‘bedroom pop’, was reviewed to identify common processes and techniques. A listening analysis featuring five of Cutler’s songs was conducted to establish her unique production and compositional style, with findings applied in an original song, ‘You …

Integrating The Patient’S Voice Into The Research Agenda For Treatment Of Chemosensory Disorders, Claire Murphy, Pamela Dalton, Katie Boateng, Stephanie Hunter, Pamela Silberman, Jenifer Trachtman, Suz Schrandt, Bita Naimi, Emily Garvey, Paule Joseph, Conner Frank, Abigail Albertazzi, Gurston Nyquist, Nancy Rawson

Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery Faculty Papers

World-wide some 658 million people were infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and millions suffer from chemosensory impairment associated with long COVID. Current treatments for taste and smell disorders are limited. Involving patients has the potential to catalyze the dynamic exchange and development of new ideas and approaches to facilitate biomedical research and therapeutics. We assessed patients' perceptions of the efficacy of treatments for chemosensory impairment using an online questionnaire completed by 5,815 people in the US Logistic regression determined variables predictive of reported treatment efficacy for patients aged 18 to 24, 25 to 39, 40 to 60, and 60+ …

Wholistic Healing: Challenges And Opportunities For The Church, Anna Galeniece

All Books

Edited by Anna M. Galeniece

Plant-Parasitic Nematodes Associated With Maize, And Their Relationship With Soil Properties In Southern And Southwestern Ethiopia, Abebe W. Aseffa, Beira H. Meressa, Tadele Tefera, Kristina K. Green, Peter Anderson, Esayas Mendesil

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Maize is an important cereal crop in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Plant-parasitic nematodes significantly impact maize production. However, research on maize nematodes in SSA is limited. The current study aimed to assess the occurrences and densities of nematodes associated with maize and to assess the correlation of some soil physicochemical properties with nematodes in southern and southwestern Ethiopia. One hundred and eighty-six soil and root samples were collected from 62 maize fields (31 from Hawassa Zuria and 31 from Mana districts). Eleven plant-parasitic nematode genera were identified. The most important genera of plant-parasitic nematodes identified were Meloidogyne and Pratylenchus, followed by …

A Convolutional Neural Network With Image And Numerical Data To Improve Farming Of Edible Crickets As A Source Of Food—A Decision Support System, Henry Kyalo, Henri E.Z. Tonnang, James P. Egonyu, John Olukuru, Chrysantus M. Tanga, Kennedy Senagi

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) produce sounds as a natural means to communicate and convey various behaviors and activities, including mating, feeding, aggression, distress, and more. These vocalizations are intricately linked to prevailing environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. By accurately monitoring, identifying, and appropriately addressing these behaviors and activities, the farming and production of crickets can be enhanced. This research implemented a decision support system that leverages machine learning (ML) algorithms to decode and classify cricket songs, along with their associated key weather variables (temperature and humidity). Videos capturing cricket behavior and weather variables were recorded. From these videos, sound …

‘Routines’ And ‘Formulaic Language’ In Conversation Analysis, Danielle Pillet-Shore

Faculty Publications

Though the field of conversation analysis (CA) was founded upon examinations of interactional “routines” such as conversation openings and closings, conceptualizing and categorizing communicative phenomena as “formulaic” is anathema to CA. This chapter details how, since its inception, CA work has empirically elucidated how participants to recorded episodes of naturally occurring social interaction actively and collaboratively accomplish conversational activities as ‘routine’ or not by selecting from available action alternatives, spontaneously coordinating their selections vis-à-vis one another. Taking a multimodal CA approach, this chapter reviews state-of-the art literature on how people open and close in-person and telephone conversations, showing the immense …

Foreign In Two Homelands, Michelle Lynn Kahn

Bookshelf

What happens when migrants are rejected by the host society that first invited them? How do they return to a homeland that considers them outsiders? Foreign in Two Homelands explores the transnational history of Turkish migrants, Germany’s largest ethnic minority, who arrived as “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter) between 1961 and 1973. By the 1980s, amid rising racism, neo-Nazis and ordinary Germans blamed Turks for unemployment, criticized their Muslim faith, and argued they could never integrate. In 1983, policymakers enacted a controversial law: paying Turks to leave. Thus commenced one of modern Europe’s largest and fastest waves of remigration: within one year, …

Engagement Between African American Male Students And The Community College, Parrish Geary

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Using data from the Community College Survey of Men designed by the Community College Equity Assessment Lab—Minority Male Community College Collaborative at San Diego State University, this study examined factors influencing in- and out-of-classroom engagement of African American male students at community colleges in California. The results suggested positive relationships between multiple predictors and independent variables on ethos factors for African American men. Additionally, the outcomes showed that 4 of the 5 independent variables were significant for African American men (i.e., personal relationships, faculty acknowledgment, belonging, and feeling welcomed). A review of the standardized beta coefficients revealed that the strongest …

Role Play Or Real Play: A Quasi-Experiment In The Counseling Classroom, Elke Schmeling

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between pedagogy and self-efficacy beliefs is at the core of this dissertation. A continued demand for mental health service providers who can handle challenging caseloads requires novice professionals who are both well prepared and confident in their own skills and abilities, as self-efficacy is a positive predictor of performance. Since experiential learning opportunities are considered particularly beneficial to fostering self-efficacy beliefs, two cohorts of graduate students in a beginning psychotherapy course who engaged in different experiential learning activities were compared in terms of their counseling self-efficacy growth over the course of one semester. One cohort of students engaged …

On The Influence Of Private Stimulus Magnitude When Reporting Private Events, Christian T. Hickman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The nature of private events provides challenges to developing a scientific understanding of the conditions under which humans learn to describe private events. Replicating and extending procedures from Stocco et al. (2014), we further evaluated the conditions under which verbal responses come under the control of private stimuli. Given that some participants vocal responses came under the control of public stimuli in Stocco et al. (2014), we implemented more subtle public accompaniments with all participants to reduce the likelihood of public stimuli acquiring control of participant’s verbal responses. Further, we systematically manipulated the visual clarity of the presented stimuli using …

Exploring Culture, Support, And Success Among Mexican American Female Students At A Hispanic Serving Institution, Joanna Saldana

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Educational attainment among Hispanic populations in the United States remains a challenge, particularly among Mexican Americans who exhibit lower rates of degree completion. This dissertation examined the influence of cultural factors, specifically familism and collectivism, on the educational experiences of Mexican American undergraduate women at San Joaquin Delta College (SJDC) in California's San Joaquin Valley. The study aimed to elucidate how levels of familism and collectivism predict social, academic, and psychological support needs, as well as success strategies among this demographic.

Literature highlights the significance of familism, emphasizing familial obligations, and collectivism, prioritizing group harmony, within Mexican American communities. Mexican …

Swipe Up And Break Up: A Grounded Theory Study Exploring The Impact Of Tiktok On Adolescents’ Perceptions Of Love And Romantic Relationships, Amitoj Sandhu Kaur

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Adolescence is a time period when major developments occur with respect to adolescents’ physical, emotional and cognitive capabilities, and such developments ultimately make it a pivotal time for a person’s identity formation and understanding of interpersonal relationships. In today’s world, social media is extremely popular, especially among adolescents, and it has influenced their behaviors, perceptions and interactions with others. With TikTok, a social media platform, gaining popularity in recent years and overwhelmingly so among adolescents, researchers began researching the general impact of TikTok on adolescents’ mental health. Some researchers have begun exploring niche research topics related to the impact of …

Exploring Latinx Students’ Perceptions And Experiences Of Servingness Through Platica At A Hispanic-Serving Community College, Pedro Reynoso Valdez

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The main focus of this study centers on the overarching question, What does it mean to serve Latinx students at a Hispanic serving community college (HSCC)? This recurring question, both in research and in practice, has brought critical attention and dialog regarding the concept and practice of servingness; specifically, it has shed light on how Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), including HSCCs, conceptualize and enact their respective HSI identity. However, oftentimes, missing from this conversation are the perceptions and experiences of Latinx students themselves enrolled at HSCCs. As a result, there has been a call for more research that incorporates Latinx students’ …

Why Would I Read When The Game Is On?: Reasons Adults Give For Reading Or Not, Emmy C. Nelson

Honors Program Theses

This thesis dives into the ideas of why people read and do not read, beginning in their childhood years. Many different factors add to why people choose to read or why they choose not to read. School plays an important role as to why people choose to read because reading is not necessarily a natural process since it is different from learning how to speak. Reading has to be taught and understood fully in order to read independently, understand the material, expand ideas, and connect with the reading. Without this, individuals can become “poor” readers or have a low reader …

Changing Demographics In A Rural Iowa High School: A Case Study Of The Experiences Of Emergent Bilinguals, Lindsay Carter

Honors Program Theses

For this thesis project, I conducted a qualitative case study of a rural high school facing demographic changes that affected the district’s population of English language learner (ELL) students. This study took place in Smalltown Community School District (all locations and names in this study are pseudonyms), an Iowa school district located in a very rural area of the state. I have close ties to this district and have spoken with people involved in their efforts to work with this population change they are facing. As a future teacher of ELL and multilingual students, I was highly interested in pursuing …

The Relationship Between Athletes' Competitive State Anxiety And Self-Confidence And Coaches' Behaviors, Derek Anderson

Honors Program Theses

Competitive state anxiety (CSA) and self-confidence are prominent issues in athletics and can cause detrimental effects on athletic performance. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of perceived coach anxiety and perceived coach self-confidence on athlete competitive state anxiety and self-confidence. It was predicted that as perceived coach anxiety increases, athlete competitive anxiety will increase. Furthermore, as perceived coach self-confidence decreases, athlete self-confidence will decrease. Ninety-six Division I athletes from three sports (men’s/women’s track and field, women’s soccer, women’s softball) were recruited. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years of age (M = 20.33, SD …