Digital Commons Network^™

Perception As Creation In Swann's Way, Ethan D. Snowball

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way is written with such detail that it overwhelms both the reader’s and the character’s sensory experience. Despite all the details, each character takes their senses of the world and strings them together as coherent images and stories. Proust shows that perceptions and memories are malleable, as individuals perceive objects in a way that brings entire stories or images to their conscious experience. The way that Proust’s characters take sensory objects and create images shows that each character can consciously interpret the world around them. Social images find themselves competing with the personally constructed images of an …

Embracing The Unmanageable: The Critique Of The Everyday And The Postwar Condition In Wallace Stevens’ And Robert Duncan’S Works Circa 1950, Kazuma Morita

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

My thesis is designed as an investigation of the ethical and political implications of the everyday in postwar American poetry. While recent scholarship of everyday life studies has clarified the centrality of the everyday or the ordinary to modernism and postwar literature, it does not elaborate enough on the impact of the political condition on literary expressions of everyday life in post-1945 period. Given U.S. military’s infiltration into everyday life of people living inside and outside the country after World War II, it is an important task to spotlight the way American postwar poets tackled U.S. war culture through their …

Postcolonial Notions Of Criminality In Jane Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea, Hannah M. Karim

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis will use Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea to gain a greater understanding of the postcolonial notions of criminality that are sustained and reproduced through racialized purity rhetoric and hierarchy. I argue that the restriction of the definition of the human, within scientific, religious, and legal realms, functioned towards the colonial end of sustaining racial hierarchy. In terms of its means of functioning, I argue that its need to function discretely is a direct response to the abolishment of slavery and with it, the shifting social demand for an appearance of reason, moral righteousness, …

Molecular Epidemiologic Studies Of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Me/Cfs), Anil Kumar

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Background: Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)/chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disabling multisystem complex disorder with no known etiology or approved treatment. Our studies aimed to assess the link between ME/CFS and autoimmune disease (AID) and cancer, and to identify potential biomarkers and biological mechanisms to further explore pathophysiology of this diseases.

Methods: All analyses were done using data from a case-control study of ME/CFS conducted by Dr. Roxana Moslehi and her collaborators. In our first study we estimated the cumulative incidences of AID and cancer among first degree relatives of 60 cases and 61 controls and compared cumulative …

Mobile Air Quality Assessment Using Public Transportation: A Community-Focused Study In The Capital Region, Allen Pronith Reddy Yeddula

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The monitoring of air quality plays a crucial role in establishment of concentrations of air pollutants over space and time in relation to human health, urban planning, and environmental conservation. This research offers a new strategy of monitoring the air quality in the Capital Region of New York State utilizing public transit buses as air quality moving sampling platforms. To assess the level of pollutants, a Capital District Transportation Authority (CDTA) bus network was used across the urban, suburban, and rural areas thus filling a research gap where public transit has most of the time been disregarded as a mobile …

Elucidating The Effects Of Environmental And Physiological Conditions On Stem Cell Regulation In Vivo, Nimmy John

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The Notch signaling pathway is a highly conserved intercellular signaling pathway that any dysregulation can lead to a variety of human diseases. These diseases are further exacerbated by various environmental, pathological and genetic conditions. Previous studies have shown that these conditions have been known to affect the Notch transcriptional response. However, the molecular mechanisms by which such conditions influence Notch signaling remained largely unknown. Moreover, most Notch studies have relied on in vitro systems and indirect reporters, which can miss the dynamic and contextual nature of Notch signaling. Here, we systematically analyzed the effects of these conditions with single molecule …

“A ‘Normal’ Life”: Red Dwarf, Temporality, And The Neuroqueer Absurd, Gretchen B. Graf

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The science fiction series Red Dwarf, beginning in 1988 and broadcasting sporadically over the past nearly four decades, takes place more than three million years in the future where human beings have gone extinct. All, that is, except one; the show’s central character, Dave Lister, is the last known living human being in the universe, outliving humanity by remaining in stasis during a radiation leak that killed the rest of the crew of the titular mining ship. Besides Lister, the narrative also focuses on the nonhuman beings that keep him company. Besides residing in the genre of science fiction, …

Emergent Sites Of Language Contact: Lexical Borrowing By Mexican Bilingual Speakers In Live-Streamed Tabletop Games, Ethan Sims

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The field of contact linguistics has investigated numerous sites of contact between languages and the resulting phenomena (Poplack et al.; 1988, for example); however, there remain many contact sites that have yet to be analyzed. The present dissertation views the lexical evidence of language contact between English and Spanish via the medium of live-streamed tabletop role-playing games. These games, often lacking accessible translations in languages other than English, have become a popular pastime over the last decade, which has increased the amount of contact between the two languages. Dungeons and Dragons, a roleplaying game which typically deals with fantasy elements, …

Technology, Repression, And Contention: How Do Internet And Communication Technologies Affect Political Violence And Collective Action?, Reyhan Topal

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation explores the impact of new technologies on state repression, political violence, and contentious politics via three interrelated studies. The first chapter presents a novel theory that describes the technology policies the Chinese government uses to oppress Uyghurs and turn them into obedient citizens. The chapter analyzes artificial intelligence tools, incarceration testimonies, official documents, police data, satellite evidence, and reports by nongovernmental organizations and scholars. Its findings shed light on the pervasive and increasingly dangerous nature of state repression in the digital age. The second chapter investigates the relationship between digital repression and the nature of conflicts using a …

"Can We See How It Works?" The Interactions Among Teacher, Student, And Content At A Living History Museum, Stacy E. Ward

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Today’s students need to be critical consumers of information. To that end, a thoughtful social studies curriculum provides students an opportunity to gain content knowledge and to practice thinking skills. However, elementary teachers, especially primary grade (K-2) teachers, often do not possess the skills and content knowledge to teach rich historical content and thinking skills. Teachers can partner with museum professionals and access museum content in this endeavor. Living history museums, immersive museums that interpret multiple buildings, trades, and heritage breed animals, hold the potential to be a strong partner for primary grade students, who are only 5-, 6- and, …

Heterogeneous Being: The Inhumanities And The Creative-Scientific Aesthetic, Steven L. Ogden

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Heterogeneous Being attempts to set the often-disunited aspects of the sciences and humanities in congruence and to extol and advance a hybrid creative-scientific aesthetic that moves beyond any restricted dimensions of its previously segregated fields of study. It likewise expresses the need to perpetuate that hybrid form of inquiry and representation to successfully address or convey the precarious realities of Earth’s ecological and environmental conditions. Heterogeneous Being asks readers to observe the inexhaustible proofs of our pluralized configurations with the nonhuman world, to recognize the agentic potentialities nonhuman subjects may hold both in and outside of those inhuman enmeshments, and …

The Benefit Of New Perspective: An Analysis Of Postcolonial Adaptation, Sara L. Tilbe

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In our modern world, the concept of literary adaptation is not unheard of. Each release of a new, popular text comes with an underlying chance that it will likely be snatched up by Hollywood executives to be told through a cinematic setting. However, there is less fanfare when it comes to the topic of literary adaptation, particularly of famous texts that are deemed “classic” of the literary canon. Usually, any news of a literary adaptation of a classic book is meant with polarizing views from the general public. Some welcome the change, excited for what a new author can bring …

Conserved A-Rich Regions In The 3’ Utr Of Zika Virus Differentially Affect Viral Gene Expression, Kristen Kaytes

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Following its discovery in 1947, Zika virus garnered little attention in the global stage until a rapidly spreading epidemic brough the virus to the global stage in 2015. Continuous advances in research have begun to further the understanding of the molecular biology of Zika virus, however much is still unknown. Much of our understanding of the virus comes from cross reference to other viruses within the same family, such as Dengue virus and West Nile virus. A commonality of these viruses is that they resemble cellular mRNAs and have a single-stranded positive-sense RNA genome that contains a 5’-cap but lacks …

Demonstration And Assessment Of Dark Field And Phase X-Ray Computed Tomography, Wadiah Hamed Allahyani

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Conventional computed tomography produces a 2D slice or 3D image from multiple conventional images to avoid overlapping structures and increase visualization of the internal features of the object. A set up, macro controls and processing for computed tomography was created for the Center for X-ray Optics for the first time, and demonstrated in this work. Adding differential phase contrast to conventional x-ray images highlights edges. Two more channels of information, dark field and integrated phase, improve the contrast and increase the signal-to-noise ratios of the image. Combining these channels with computed tomography is an important development. This work is the …

The Job Satisfaction Of New York State’S Public School Business And Marketing Education Teachers, Michael Lamastra

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century (Perkins) Act defines career and technical education as organized educational activities in which students learn applied academics, professional skills, and career training in a specific technical field. Many United States students, and ,specifically, New York State students, do not have access to CTE coursework. New York has seven CTE content areas: agriculture, business and marketing, computer science, family and consumer science, health sciences, technology, and trade/technical education.

One barrier to accessing this coursework is the availability of teaching staff. According to data collected by the New York State Education Department …

Large Scale Machine Learning Over Knowledge Graphs, Bedirhan Gergin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Knowledge graphs (KGs) have become popular across various fields, providing convenient access to web-based knowledge while storing and formalizing domain-specific information. By analyzing KGs, patterns, connections, and dependencies can be identified across different data sources, enabling the inference of new knowledge from given facts. As the use of KGs expands, the size of modern KGs has grown significantly, making them impossible to process within the main memory of a single computer. Distributed computing offers a viable solution to this challenge by leveraging the combined capabilities of multiple servers within a cluster. This thesis explores how distributed computing can be effectively …

The Maritime Archaic Occupation Of The Stock Cove Site (Ckal-3), Newfoundland, Canada, Dana M. Keil

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The Stock Cove site (CkAL-3), located on the southeastern coast of Newfoundland, is an archaeologically rich multi-component site. The Maritime Archaic (ca. 8,000-3,200 BP) culture was the earliest people to inhabit the island of Newfoundland and the Stock Cove site, settling the island by at least 6,400 years ago. Their ability to maintain lithic traditions was key to their success. Finding new sources of lithic material would have been necessary and that process would have varied greatly across the island. In southeastern Newfoundland, far away from key lithic sources on the mainland, this would have been even more important as …

Socio-Economic And Infrastructural Determinants Of Response Time Disparities Across Emergency Service Agencies, Alice N. Ottah

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This study comprehensively analyzes the determinants of disparities in emergency response times for EMS, Fire, and Police agencies in San Francisco from 2021 to 2023, utilizing a multilevel modeling framework and publicly accessible data. Contrary to a primary reliance on structural neighborhood factors, this research reveals that while neighborhood disadvantage statistically significantly interacts with agency type to influence response times, its direct effect is weak and not uniformly consistent across services. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates that variance in call response times across neighborhoods is minimal (Intraclass Correlation Coefficients < 0.02), the effects of disadvantage are agency-specific (null effects for Police and Fire), and even when significant (for EMS calls only), response times are faster in more disadvantaged neighborhoods. These findings challenge the existing literature on emergency response times and highlight the need for tailored policy interventions that consider both neighborhood context and agency-specific operations to promote equitable emergency response.

Differences In Mental Health Outcomes In Immigrant Vs. U.S.-Born Populations In Urban Vs. Rural Areas In The United States, Zoë Gentles

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Background

The immigration process to the United States creates distinct mental stressors. These stressors are influenced by socioeconomic factors including income, education level and insurance status. In rural America, these factors are intensified due to a poor healthcare infrastructure that is limited. This study examines the relationship between urban-rural residence and mental health outcomes among immigrants vs. native-born residents in the United States.

Methods

Data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 2019 and 2022 were used to examine the relationship. The exposure of interest was place of birth, and the outcome of interest was the presence of clinically …

Student And Teacher Perceptions Of Student Capabilities And Their Relationships To Learning Experiences In A High-Poverty Rural School, Amanda J. Zullo

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Background and Purpose. This study was designed to identify, delineate, and explain the significant factors contributing to high school students’ relatively better graduation outcomes in a high-poverty rural region in New York State. Emphasis was placed on identifying key characteristics of the relationships between students’ and teachers’ perceptions of student capabilities and the qualities of student learning experiences. This study drew upon secondary data from a two-phase study of positive outlier schools identified as having significantly better graduation rates than other schools with similar demographic profiles. Informed by Mindset Theory and Authentic Learning Theory, the study examined how personal, social, …

Reproductive Justice: People Matter! History Matters! Places Matter!, Jazmin L. High

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Research has established that racial disparities in contraceptive use exist in the United States with African American women being more likely than white women to report using a contraceptive method associated with lower efficacy or no contraception at all. Several factors have been suggested to explain low uptake of highly effective forms of contraception and disparities including cost, systemic racism, negative attitudes, and cultural mistrust stemming from the history of medical racism. However, the lived experiences of rural African American Southern women are underrepresented in contraceptive research. Utilizing mixed methods, this study explores the contraceptive experiences of 14 rural African …

Stratospheric Variability And Its Relationship To Cold Air Outbreaks In The United States, Paul T. Panhans

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Only since the early 2000s, has there been a growing body of work linking extreme winter temperature anomalies to the variability of the Northern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex (SPV). However, the understanding behind stratosphere-troposphere coupling and cold air outbreaks (CAOs) remain occasionally contradictory in the literature, making it difficult to properly articulate societal risks. Studies often focused on broad stratospheric influences, but this research directly compared stratospheric variability according to their respective tropospheric impacts. This dissertation filled a knowledge gap, as there has yet to be a comprehensive analysis to quantify the differences in stratospheric variability with and without CAOs …

Naloxone Availability And Affordability: An Analysis Of Pharmacies Across New York State, Dina R. Maloney

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The United States (US) has experienced a significant increase in the number of opioid overdose deaths since 1999. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death in the US, surpassing other injury causes such as motor vehicle accidents. Opioids are most commonly associated with drug overdose deaths. The opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan®, has gained popularity in recent years as a critical tool for reducing the number of opioid overdose deaths. Naloxone Access Laws (NALs) and standing orders have been implemented by states nationwide in an effort to increase the availability …

Tapping A Hidden Resource In Classrooms: Peer Interactions And Their Role In Language, Literacy, And Disciplinary Literacy Practices Among Adolescent English And Non-English Learners, Jina Byeon

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This qualitative case study examines how peer interactions among six seventh-grade English Learners (ELs) and non-ELs serve as both a context for and a method of developing adolescents' literacy and disciplinary literacy practices. Data sources include two semi-structured interviews with each student and their four classroom teachers, student and teacher ethnographic interviews, 300 hours of classroom observations (in English Language Arts, Social Studies, Math and Science, English as a New Language Tutorial), and student-generated artifacts (e.g., worksheets).

Through the application of iterative and thematic data analysis, three key themes were identified: 1) adolescents' interactions with their peers fostered a supportive …

Phantasma, Grace Wright

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Ever since the infamous Ides of March, scholars have been debating the true psychology behind Brutus’s betrayal. The purpose of this project is to take a step back from the politicized motivations and explore the emotional, strenuous conditions of Julius Caesar’s assassination. This project will transform William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into a novella with its central focus on the relationship dynamics between the key figures of Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius. The intention of the novella is to not only analyze the play through a critical queer lens, but to interrogate the themes of violence and desire that surround male relationships …

Diversity Within Species: Mechanisms, Evolution And Implications In Bacterial Disease, Kathryn R. Piper

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and the Gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli are ubiquitous commensal and opportunistic pathogens. In humans, S. aureus is commonly found on the skin and mucus membranes, and is known to cause infections in the skin, bloodstream and brain. E. coli is a normal part of the gut microbiota in humans and can cause intestinal and extraintestinal infections alike. S. aureus and E. coli pose global threats to public health, due to the high morbidity and mortality of invasive strains. The wide range of infections they cause in humans and other animals are exacerbated by the presence …

Investigation Of Electromigration Stresses Of Advanced Node Conductors Through Pulsed Power Behavior, Mohd Mueen Ul Islam Mattoo

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The microelectronics industry continues to put a heavy focus on preventing electromigration (EM) failures at advanced node conductors. The continuous scaling coupled with higher operating current densities further accentuate the problem. Most of the electromigration testing in the industry is performed with DC currents to evaluate the electromigration reliability of metal interconnects. However, most of the real-world applications operate using a pulsed current rather than a constant direct current. EM testing with pulsed direct current (PDC) show interesting results with how the current induced stress gradient evolves in absence of the electromigration driving force. It is generally assumed that the …

Personalizing Heat Information For Adults Over 65, Bruce C. Pollock Jr

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In the lead-up to extreme heat events, federal agencies, such as the National Weather Service (NWS), issue products and messages that advise people as to expected impacts, duration, and protective actions of the hazard. Within social media graphics, words such as “elderly” are used but are not defined by age. This can complicate personalization of risk to a hazard, such as extreme heat. I conducted focus groups across the United States and found that the term "elderly” was not understood among the general population. Additionally, I found that definitions of aging were tied to concepts such as mobility, resource access, …

Modeling Feature And Instance Interactions In Longitudinal Data For Improved Performance, Khandker Sadia Rahman

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Tabular data has been a core representation format in machine learning, widely used in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, finance, and social services. In many of these domains, data is collected longitudinally, capturing sequences of events and evolving feature values for the same entities over time. Despite its prevalence, most machine learning approaches assume mutual independence between features and independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) instances. However, these assumptions limit effectiveness in settings where features and entities exhibit complex interdependencies. Moreover, existing approaches frequently overlook a critical dimension: the real-world impact of the decisions informed by model predictions. This thesis addresses …

Utilizing Technology To Support Collaborative Problem-Solving Of K-12 Students In Stem Education: A Multivariate Multi-Level Meta-Analysis, Marzieh Dehghan-Chaleshtori

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

As classrooms in the 21st -century increasingly incorporate digital tools, educators and researchers have turned their attention to the promising potential of technology in enhancing essential competencies such as collaborative problem-solving (CPS) skills (OECD, 2017). CPS skills, including joint decision-making and coordinated problem resolution, are necessary for success in both academic and real-world contexts. While many studies have investigated individual problem-solving in technology-enhanced learning environments, the collaborative dimension remains underexplored (Graesser et al. 2018b). This dissertation addresses that gap by conducting a multivariate multi-level meta-analysis to examine the overall effects of technology use on K–12 students’ CPS skills in STEM …