Digital Commons Network^™

The Case Of The Disappearing Filipino American Houseboy: Speculation On Double Indemnity And The United States Imperialism, Victor Bascara

Kritika Kultura

The creations of a new cultural formation, US imperialism, development, and globalization are traced in this article by the use of James M. Cain’s 1936 pulp novella-turned-film Double Indemnity. Representations of the Fil-Am houseboy, his disappearance and re-appearance in the texts, provide an impetus for discovering the cultural transitions from the colonial to the postcolonial periods.

Signs, Meaning, Interpretation: C. S. Peirce's Critique Of Deconstruction And Post-Structuralism, E. San Juan Jr.

Kritika Kultura

From the perspective of Peircian semiotics, this paper presents a prolegomenon of “a science of pragmaticist aesthetics.” Following the fundamental epistemological categories of C. S. Pierce, San Juan reads Michael’s Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost as unraveling the anatomy of terror in Sri Lanka. Such a reading, for San Juan, “elicit signs of whether we, and others in the collaborative enterprise, embody,” quoting Pierce, “an intelligence capable of learning by experience.”

En-Gendering Desire In Aida Santos's Lesbian Poetry, Danicar Mariano

Kritika Kultura

Lesbian feminist literary criticism seeks to deconstruct the essential categories of male and female and their “natural” link to the production of desire, enabling an insightful criticism that formalism and feminism alone cannot fully venture in. Thus, this lesbian feminist literary reading of Aida Santos’s poetry critiques heteropatriarchy in language, desire and gender by questioning the binary assumption operative in them. A binary logic defines women and men by what each are not, highlighting one sex over the other, and presenting them as in need each other. This patriarchal assumption intersects with compulsory heterosexuality to marginalize lesbian existence in the …

Enemies And Friends: A Consideration Of The Burnham Kidnapping, Gerald T. Burns

Kritika Kultura

The relationships between the political and the spiritual, hostage-taker and victim, friends and enemies, the US and the Philippines are shaped and contested in the light of journalistic accounts of the Burnhams’ hostage crisis in 2001, and in particular Gracia Burnham’s reconstruction of it in her memoir. The following four distinct but related contexts are used as lens to explore the binarisms: 1) the psychosocial dynamics and literary traditions of captivity; 2) what used to be billed the “special” but has more recently and perhaps more accurately been called the “entangled” relationship between the United States and the Philippines; 3) …

The "Chinaman" Question: A Conundrum In Us Imperial Policy In The Pacific, Richard Chu

Kritika Kultura

When the US took over the Philippines from Spain in 1898, it faced the dilemma of how to deal with the “Chinaman” question. While it applied the same Chinese exclusion law in the Philippines as it did in the mainland, the situation in the colony differed in a significant way—the Chinese had long been part of the Philippine economy and society. Faced with the task of constructing a “Filipino” nation in its own image, the US therefore had to find ways to separate the Chinese from the rest of the population. One of the ways by which it accomplished this …

Responses To "Dancing Into Oblivion", Ricardo G. Abad

Kritika Kultura

No abstract provided.

‘En Shaddud: Early Bronze Age Settlement, Middle Bronze And Iron Age Burial Remains And A Hellenistic Farmstead At The Foot Of Tel Shaddud, Karen Covello-Paran, Tali Kan-Cipor-Meron

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

This study presents findings from excavations at the foot of Tel Shaddud, focusing on settlement and burial patterns across various historical periods. Evidence from the Early Bronze I layer reveals the initial settlement characterized by stone-paved floors and extensive habitation extending towards the nearby spring of ‘En Shaddud. The Middle Bronze I tombs uncovered indicate a cemetery below the tell, containing artifacts that reflect burial practices consistent with warrior traditions in the region. Notably, the analysis of burial offerings indicates continued cemetery use into the Iron Age. Hellenistic remains suggest a transition to agricultural use, with well-constructed farmstead features emerging …

The Communality Of Creativity And The Creativity Of Community: A Comparison Of The Ethics Of Nikolai Berdyaev And Watsuji Tetsurō, Anton Luis Sevilla

Kritika Kultura

Self-fidelity is a human ethical task. But how can we be faithful to a self that is both individual and social? This paper takes up this question by comparing the basic ethical frameworks of Nikolai Berdyaev and Watsuji Tetsurō. In the first section of this paper, Berdyaev’s notion of personality and his three forms of ethics (ethics of law, ethics of redemption, and ethics of creativeness) are discussed. In the second section, Watsuji’s notion of ethics as the study of man (ningen) is explored, detailing the dual structure of ningen and the double-negation of ethics. And in the third section, …

"At A Loss For Words": Theatre, Performance And The Northern Ireland Prison Protests, Lionel Pilkington

Kritika Kultura

In plays as diverse as Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City, Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians and Vincent Woods’s At the Black Pig’s Dyke, there is evidence of an intemperate opposition to the idea of republicans performing protest against the state in Northern Ireland. Using Augusto Boal’s conception of theatre as a cultural weapon with a powerful emancipatory and utopian potential (“theatre as a rehearsal for revolution”) and drawing on Joseph Roach and Nicholas Argenti’s ideas of the kinesthetic imagination, this essay considers the republican prison protests that took place Ireland in the period 1978-81. “At a Loss for Words” argues …

Sean O'Casey And Radical Theatre, Terry Phillips

Kritika Kultura

Sean O’Casey’s work after the Dublin trilogy has been neglected to a great extent by both theatre audiences and literary critics. This essay considers three plays which address specifically Irish issues, The Silver Tassie (1926), The Star Turns Red (1940) and Red Roses for Me (1943). Taken together, they may be understood as a radical response to successive counter-revolutionary indigenous governments: Cumann Na nGaedheal (1922-1932) and Fianna Fáil (1932-1948). The essay concludes that these plays ground the case for O’Casey as a radical Irish playwright—socially, politically and aesthetically.

"To Speak Your Truth": Dialogues On Political Theatre And The Troubles, Bill Mcdonell, Joe Reid

Kritika Kultura

This essay is structured in two sections: At the outset, Bill McDonnell provides an overview of the broader political and cultural context which produced Belfast Community Theatre, and other significant grass-roots Republican community theatres from the 1970s. Together, and especially in the case of Republican theatre groups, the essay argues that they constitute the only radical theatres in post-1945 Britain and Ireland to meet Erwin Piscator’s stringent criteria for a political theatre. This is followed by a series of dialogues on theatre and the war in the north of Ireland, which take up the larger part of the essay. The …

The Collected Poems Of J.R.R. Tolkien (2024), Edited By Christina Scull And Wayne G. Hammond., John R. Holmes

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by John R. Holmes, of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien (2024), edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond

Preparing Spiritually Resilient Warriors In The Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, Vic Morris

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Morris, Victor E. “Preparing Spiritually Resilient Warriors in the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command.” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2024. 285 pp.

The Canadian Armed Forces has outcomes and expectations for warriors to be spiritually resilient but does not have a training program that has been researched, tested, and validated to achieve this. This study investigates how chaplains can prepare spiritually resilient warriors in CANSOFCOM. A chaplain-led spiritual resilience course was created and delivered to CANSOFCOM members. The course was aligned with the holistic wellness strategy of OPF2, and designed as an inductive, experiential learning experience. An …

Marvelous Bodies: Italy's New Migrant Cinema, Vetri Nathan

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Historically a source of emigrants to Northern Europe and the New World, Italy has rapidly become a preferred destination for immigrants from the global South. Life in the land of la dolce vita has not seemed so sweet recently, as Italy struggles with the cultural challenges caused by this surge in immigration. Marvelous Bodies by Vetri Nathan explores thirteen key full-length Italian films released between 1990 and 2010 that treat this remarkable moment of cultural role reversal through a plurality of styles. In it, Nathan argues that Italy sees itself as the quintessential internal Other of Western Europe, and that …

Decentralized And Divided: Philadelphia’S Public Assistance System And Community-Based Initiatives, Gianna Casey, Shari Orisich

Honors Theses

Public assistance programs and community-based initiatives have aided Philadelphian’s residents in a cohesive effort to fill the gaps of community-needs. While both are inherently different in their methodologies and executions, their structures are built upon a collective foundation of legislative principles and policy-based ordinances in Philadelphia. These concepts, first began with poor laws and religious organizations in the 19th century, have turned into a complex system that has fallen tremendously short of sufficiently addressing the specialized needs of Philadelphian families. The surrounding laws for public assistance program administration (e.g. TANF and WIC), are founded within the objectives of these poor …

New Trends In The Study Of Haredi Culture And Society, David N. Myers, Nechumi Malovicki-Yaffe

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

Who are Haredim? And why are they the source of both increasing attention and continuing misunderstanding? New Trends in the Study of Haredi Culture and Society draws on the innovative research of leading scholars from a variety of disciplines—including history, religious studies, demography, linguistics, and geography—to trace the growing prominence of Haredi (often called ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Jewish life. Haredi Jews are committed to preserving a measure of segregation from the rest of society consistent with the guiding principles of their forebears; yet increasingly, they are appearing more visibly and assertively in public spaces. Demographic analysis suggests that they will …

Testing Vivo-Morpholino Mediated Gene Knockdown Of Stat6, Spi1b, And Hnf4Α In Adult Threespine Stickleback, Stella Dipippo

Honors Scholar Theses

The fibrotic immune response to the cestode parasite, Schistocephalus solidus, varies among threespine stickleback populations. Fibrosis suppresses parasite growth but has costly effects on the fish. Previous genomic studies in stickleback have suggested potential roles of Spi1b, STAT6, and HNF4α in modulating fibrosis severity, but there is presently no evidence for this in-vivo. We used antisense vivo-morpholino oligonucleotides (MOs) to attempt to knockdown the expression of each gene in the liver, spleen, and intestine of adult stickleback. Vivo-MOs have been proven effective in other species of teleost fish, as well as in mice and humans, but …

Leveling Up: Students' Perceptions Of Digital Game-Based Learning, Maryan Al-Houssein

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This case study investigated middle school students’ perceptions of digital game-based learning (DGBL) in the classroom, focusing on engagement, motivation, and academic achievement. Using Piaget’s (1962) Constructivist Learning Theory as a framework, the research examined the influence of interactive digital games on students’ educational experiences. A qualitative study was utilized, using Likert scale surveys and open-ended questions to gather rich, descriptive data from students across grades 6-8. The findings revealed three primary themes: (1) Engagement and Interest, with students reporting increased enjoyment and interactivity in learning; (2) Motivation and Focus, indicating that competitive elements and rewards in games encourage student …

Working Paper No. 92, Karl Polanyi, Human Labor, And The Working Class, Niccolo Cellini

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that Karl Polanyi advanced ideas regarding human labor that we could judge as both seminal and enduring. Through examining his famous book, The Great Transformation, we could draw out three interconnected theses central to his critique of market-oriented economies. Firstly, we could emphasize that Polanyi judges labor as a fictitious commodity, emphasizing distinct aspects associable with labor’s emergence during the industrialization of England. In developing his ideas Polanyi draws upon the historical examples of the Speenhamland System and Frederick Engels' accounts of industrial labor that highlighted the destabilizing effects of embedding labor within …

Global Impact Of Aging On The Hemodynamic Response Function In The Gray Matter Of Human Cerebral Cortex, Ruosha Li, Jung Hwan Kim, David Ress

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

In functional magnetic resonance imaging, the hemodynamic response function (HRF) is a stereotypical response to local changes in cerebral hemodynamics and oxygen metabolism due to briefly (< 4 s) evoked neural activity. Accordingly, the HRF is often used as an impulse response with the assumption of linearity in data analysis. In cognitive aging studies, it has been very common to interpret differences in brain activation as age-related changes in neural activity. Contrary to this assumption, however, evidence has accrued that normal aging may also significantly affect the vasculature, thereby affecting cerebral hemodynamics and metabolism, confounding interpretation of fMRI cognitive aging studies. In this study, use was made of a multisensory task to evoke the HRF in ~87% of cerebral cortex in cognitively intact adults with ages ranging from 22 to 75 years. This widespread activation enabled us to investigate age trends in the spatial distributions of HRF characteristics within the majority of cortical gray matter, which we termed as global age trends. The task evoked both positive and negative HRFs, which were characterized using model-free parameters in native-space coordinates. We found significant global age trends in the distributions of HRF parameters in terms of both amplitudes (e.g., peak amplitude and contrast-to-noise ratio) and temporal dynamics (e.g., full-width-at-half-maximum). Our findings offer insight into how age-dependent changes affect neurovascular coupling and show promise for use of HRF parameters as non-invasive indicators for age-related pathology.

Full Issue

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Triangulating The Likelihood Of Confusion: Linguistics And Consumer Surveys, Eric Derosia, Jesse Egbert, Thomas Lee

BYU Law Review

This Article highlights contributions that linguistic analysis can offer in the assessment of the likelihood of confusion in trademark infringement cases. Parties in such cases often engage an expert witness to conduct a survey that measures the likelihood of consumer confusion. We show how an expert linguist can provide important, nonintuitive dynamics of corroboration. We introduce “expert triangulation” as a conceptual framework to analyze whether, and to what extent, experts in linguistics and consumer surveys can corroborate one another. That is, having two different sources of empirical evidence which lead to similar conclusions should be a benefit to the courts, …

Going Generic: A Linguistics Approach To Genericide In Trademark Law, James A. Heilpern, William G. Eggington, Earl Kjar Brown, Zachary D. Smith

BYU Law Review

This Article examines the phenomenon of trademark genericide—the process by which once-protected brand names like “escalator” and “trampoline” lose their legal status by becoming synonymous with entire product categories. Traditional methods used by courts to assess genericide, such as consumer surveys and dictionary definitions, are often criticized for their subjectivity and lack of scientific rigor. In response, this Article introduces corpus linguistics as a more reliable, data-driven alternative for determining whether a trademark has become generic.

By analyzing real-world language usage through large corpora, corpus linguistics can track the public’s shifting perceptions of a trademark over time. Using case studies …

Corpus Linguistics And The Original Meaning Of The Sixth Amendment, Wesley White

BYU Law Review

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right of an accused to have the assistance of counsel in a criminal prosecution. Put simply, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s current framework, an accused does not enjoy this right until the government has brought a formal charge. Thus, an accused who engages in plea bargaining before being formally charged is not guaranteed the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Many critics of this framework focus on the purpose of the Sixth Amendment to argue that the right to counsel should be guaranteed in pre-charge plea bargaining. Others point to policy concerns.

This Note is among …

Corpus Linguistics At The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

BYU Law Review

This Article examines the intersection of corpus linguistics and patent law. It introduces the foundations of corpus linguistics and its application to the law and advances the potential for its application to patent examination at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Historically, the disciplines of corpus linguistics and patent law did not intersect until scholars began to consider the application of corpus linguistics to patent litigation for interpretation of terms in patent claims. Interpretation of legal language provided by corpus linguistics and applied to patent examination at the USPTO has yet to be addressed and is a novel …

Biomedical Potential Of Natural Products From Selected Tanzanian Flora: A Review, Stephen S. Nyandoro, Joan J.E. Munissi

Tanzania Journal of Science

Natural products have been used for treatment of various diseases for thousands of years and served as sources of drug lead compounds for the improvement of livelihood. This paper presents a review on the biomedical potentials of selected natural products isolated from eight plant species indigenous to Tanzania. The review covers research work published between 2010 and 2023, and identifies 33 natural products with different pharmacological properties from Tanzanian plants. These bioactive natural products are discussed with other similar compounds isolated elsewhere from the same or different plant species to get further insights on the potential application in modern medicine …

Tnf Prevents Establishment Of Anti-Tumor Immunity And Elucidates Toxicities Following Myxoma Virus Based Oncolytic Virotherapy, Miriam Beatriz Valenzuela Cardenas

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha (TNF) can lead to tumor regression through its direct cytolytic activity, yet it has also been implicated to facilitate tumor progression. This scenario complicates the efficacy and applicability of TNF based therapeutics as treatment for malignancies. In the context of oncolytic virotherapy (OV) which uses replicating viruses to treat tumors and acts by triggering production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, exploring such mechanisms is vital. Here we show that a Myxoma based oncolytic virus (vPD1/IL12) can induce large amounts TNF. The presence of TNF in the context of vPD1/IL12 plays a detrimental role both for tumor regression by …

Modelling V-Band Atmospheric Loss With Deep Learning, Ralph Lyndon Gesner

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Modelling atmospheric loss is fundamental to implementation of future mm-wave terrestrial and earth space communication links. Atmospheric losses have traditionally been estimated by calculating the contributions of individual weather phenomena through in-situ meteorological measurements and statistically derived models for estimating localized atmospheric water content. Collecting data for all points along the propagation path and calculating the physical effects of gases, clouds, and precipitation individually is both time consuming and impractical for large-scale use cases.

In response to these present limitations, this work proposes the use of novel deep learning models for estimating atmospheric losses from tabular meteorological sensor data and …

The American Cancer Society National Lung Cancer Roundtable Strategic Plan: Advancing Comprehensive Biomarker Testing In Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Adam H Fox, Raymond U Osarogiagbon, Farhood Farjah, James R Jett, Bruce E Johnson, Robert A Smith, Gerard A Silvestri

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Comprehensive biomarker testing is a crucial requirement for the optimal treatment of advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with emerging relevance in the adjuvant treatment setting. To advance its goal of ensuring optimal therapy for persons diagnosed with lung cancer, the American Cancer Society National Lung Cancer Roundtable (ACS NLCRT) held The Summit on Optimizing Lung Cancer Biomarkers in Practice in September 2020 to align its partners toward the goal of ensuring comprehensive biomarker testing for all eligible patients with NSCLC. The ACS NLCRT's Strategic Plan for Advancing Comprehensive Biomarker Testing in NSCLC, a product of the summit, comprises actions …

The Effects Of Fermentation By Different Species Oflactic Acid Bacteria On Betalains And Polyphenol Profile And In Vitro Bioactive Potential Of Red Beetroot Juice, Tomasz Sawicki, Monika Jabłońska, Małgorzata Starowicz, Lucyna Kłębukowska, Wioletta Błaszczak

Journal of Food and Drug Analysis

In the current study, the effects of fermentation by Lactobacillus acidophilus, Levilactobacillus brevis or Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (La/Lb/Lp, 1-2.5%) and incubation (30/37℃, C1/C2) of red beetroot juice on the profile of betalains and polyphenols (UHPLC-DAD-MS), and antioxidant capacity using photochemiluminescence (PCL) and spectrophotometric assays (DPPH/ABTS) was investigated. Additionally, anti-glycaemic (anti-AGEs) and anti-cholinergic (anti-AChE) potential in vitro was analysed. Fermentation distinctly initiated isobetanin and neobetaninformation and enhanced flavonoid concentration, emphasising rutin, kaempferol and (+)-catechin. The fermented juices inhibited protein glycation in the BSA-GLU model and showed high DPPH and ABTS values. LP2.5% juice was the only one indicating anti-AChE potential.