Digital Commons Network^™

Characterising Acute And Chronic Care Needs: Insights From The Global Burden Of Disease Study 2019, A. A. Asadi-Pooya

Department of Neurology Faculty Papers

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care addresses short-term conditions. Chronic conditions increasingly strain health systems, which are often unprepared for these demands. This study examines the burden of conditions requiring acute versus chronic care, including sequelae. Conditions and sequelae from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2019 were classified into acute or chronic care categories. Data were analysed by age, sex, and socio-demographic index, presenting total numbers and contributions to burden metrics such as Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), Years Lived with Disability (YLD), and Years of Life Lost (YLL). Approximately 68% of DALYs were attributed to chronic …

Realmweaver: Designing A Sandbox Simulation Game With Ai-Driven Storytelling, Tianzhe Fan

Theses

This paper introduces Realmweaver, a sandbox simulation game concept that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and procedural generation to balance player creativity and system automation. Realmweaver empowers players to create dynamic characters, build expansive worlds, and co-author narratives through adaptive AI systems. By leveraging technologies such as natural language processing and layered procedural algorithms, the game addresses challenges in maintaining narrative coherence and balancing user agency with system autonomy. The design framework integrates intuitive interfaces, including highlighted narrative systems and interactive hover functionality, ensuring accessibility while enhancing engagement. These features enable players to navigate complex systems and shape immersive worlds with …

Threading The Void, Jessica Hut

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The contemporary architectural environment is commonly characterized by fragmented and underutilized space. These areas, often overlooked, hold the potential to be reclaimed in a way that activates our spaces through integration and minimal intervention. By deriving the design logic from organic forms found in nature, these structures are able to embrace logic and reason that has had centuries to optimize itself. Learning through this natural wisdom, we can make use of the underutilized spaces in our built environment. Allowing a shift away from static, isolated objects while also blurring boundaries in a way that critiques the spatial organization of contemporary …

Human Pain Neuroscience And The Next Generation Of Pain Therapeutics, Bryan A Copits, Michele Curatolo, Patrick M Dougherty, Robert W Gereau, Wenqin Luo, Maryann Martone, Hakan Olausson, Theodore J Price, William Renthal, Clifford J Woolf, Guoyan Zhao

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The recent approval of suzetrigine for acute pain treatment highlights both the success of targeting peripheral sensory neurons for pain management and the potential of developing new pain therapies primarily in human-based systems. To realize this transformative potential, further research into somatosensation and pain neuroimmunology in human systems is essential.

The Role Of Piezo1 In Mediating Chondrocyte Cell Signaling And Senescence, Sophie Gretler Paradi

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Osteoarthritis (OA), the leading cause of disability, is driven by articular cartilage degeneration and inflammation. Mechanosensitive ion channels PIEZO1 and PIEZO2 have been implicated in OA progression via calcium signaling in chondrocytes. This study investigates the role of conditional Piezo channel knockout (cKO) in modulating calcium signaling and senescence in OA, particularly under the supra-physiologic inflammatory condition of a high-fat diet (HFD). Using calcium imaging, we found that Piezo1 cKO and dual Piezo1/2 cKO significantly reduced Yoda1-induced calcium signaling, while Piezo2 cKO alone had no effect. Under HFD conditions, Piezo1 cKO showed a non-significant trend toward reduced calcium influx, potentially …

Partially Supervised Reinforcement Learning For Gps-Denied Navigation, Ethan Weilheimer

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Navigating dynamic environments is a key challenge for autonomous agents, yet most existing research focuses on 3D settings or settings where the agent has full access to relevant semantics. In this work, we propose a learning framework for aerial navigation in the presence of changing dynamics and limited positional information. Specifically, we consider a drone navigation task where a drone at one time has access to GPS location information, which it has now lost and needs to navigate in the same area but at a future time with no GPS signal and differing transition dynamics. To address this, we introduce …

Trans-Dimensional Coexistence: I No Longer Hold You But I See You, Keren Guo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

We live in a world where impermanence is the only lasting truth. Fleeting moments and fading relationships reoccur in our lives, but the journey continues, nonetheless. My practice projects my individuality onto universal connections between humans through depicting worlds full of colorful imaginations, experiences, creatures, and figures. I draw inspiration from work by Inka Essenhigh, Yoko Ono, and Pipilotti Rist, studying contemporary artists’ use of colors, materials, and audience participation to make an array of works from paintings to an interactive installation as my final work. Additionally, I look into historical sources about mythical creatures and religious beliefs to enhance …

Containers Of Becoming, Embodied Thresholds: Wearable Art As Performance, Bei Qi Ms.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My interdisciplinary art practice investigates wearable sculpture as a tool for emotional processing, identity negotiation, and embodied performance. Beginning with early works like a cape made from thrifted scarves—exploring how different wearers transform the same garment—I have expanded their role into vehicles for personal and collective meaning. Drawing from the work of artists including Nick Cave, Stan Brahkage, Lucy McRae, Lucy Orta, and Rebecca Horn, I examine how bodily concealment, distortion, and constraint can foster new modes of self-discovery.

Over time, my practice has evolved to incorporate performance, time-based media, and psychological frameworks. For example, my choreographed dance Enneagram: Beings …

Held Together, Falling Apart: Classical Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome As Embodied Abstraction, Chloe S. Macaulay

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Reconciling life within a body defined by fragility, I create worlds of connectivity to embody and refigure Classical Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (cEDS)–a connective-tissue disorder causing hypermobile joints, fragile skin, easy bruising, and poor wound healing. Large-format oil paintings employ a multi-layer method, layering paint like skin to reform the body onto canvas. Drawing on Surrealist automatic processes and theories of unconscious production, my methodology combines intuitive, process-based mark-making with traditional oil painting techniques and experimental material practices to subvert and reassert artistic agency, weaving between control and surrender. Scientific imagery, particularly SHG imaging of cEDS collagen tissue, informs a visual language …

Spring 2025 Student Scholar Symposium Abstract Volume, Chapman University Center For Undergraduate Excellence

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

No abstract provided.

Adler, Asterios, & Maus, Crystal Ganatra

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

Adler, Asterios, & Maus examines how small visual decisions in illustrations make up a language. And when the dialect changes from the predominant one in a graphic novel, something novel happens. A scene or specific quality gets the spotlight. It also explores how these visuals tie to Adlerian psychology and El Refaeian ideas on autobiography, behavior, and emotion. It identifies through two interesting grpahic novels- Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli and Maus by Art Spiegelman- how these ideas can be used to understand ourselves. It intensely zeroes in on specific moments of visual language shift. Some of these change range …

Froggy People: Anthropomorphism And Slice-Of-Life In Autobiographical Comics, Maddie Baker

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores how the following three comics categories overlap and interact with one another: slice-of-life, anthropomorphic, and autobiographical. I search for reasons why comic makers would choose to tell their own daily life stories using animal avatars rather than their own faces. While each of these three categories has been studied extensively individually, I hope to find additional insights by observing how comic makers employ the genres together as storytelling devices. Each category has unique narratological power which impacts the reader’s experience. For example, anthropomorphism affects how the author and reader internalize and relate to characters. Slice-of-life comics are …

Lines Of Thought: The Cartoon As A Phenomenological Object And A Philosophical Tool, Thomas Attwood

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

Cartooning’s greatest strength is its simplicity. This essay argues that the cartoon’s inherent modesty and accessibility are central to its philosophical utility, and that its spare visual language conveys more than meets the eye. Drawing on phenomenology, it considers cartooning as a process grounded in the body, and it investigates the bodily encounter between the viewer and the cartoon. Through an analysis of cartooning work by Saul Steinberg, R.O. Blechman, and Liana Finck - a “family of cartoonists” - it demonstrates how a line-drawn, representational cartooning language can transform the act of looking into a participatory experience that interrogates issues …

Imaginary Friends: Engaging The Unconscious Mind Through Picture Books, Cleonique Hilsaca

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

“Imaginary Friends” investigates the potential of the ‘imaginary friend’ as a narrative device in picture book storytelling. By combining the research of Marjorie Taylor on ‘imaginary companions’ and Lois Rostow Kuznets on ‘toy animals’ in literature, I seek to give form to the concept of the imaginary friend, to then explore the phenomenon further by delving into the intellectual heritage of the imaginary and the unconscious mind. To explain how the imaginary friend works as a visual metaphor in illustrated narratives, I borrow principles of image-making and their effect on children, as discussed by Martin Salisbury, Morag Styles, and Molly …

Firing The Canon: Queer Representation In The Magical Girl Genre, Lena C. Humble

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This research delves into the impact queer representation in the shoujo (Japanese for young girl) genre has on audiences. More specifically, the “Magical Girl” (a subgenre of shoujo) genre’s main focus is about ordinary girls whose lives are drastically changed when they are given magical powers. One of the major plot points of magical girl media is how these girls find balance with their ordinary lives with their magical alter egos, and their attempts to keep these lives separate. Much of this media follows a small group of girls, who tend to build deeply emotionally intimate relationships as they share …

The Dragon's Eye: A Quest For Tabletop Role-Playing's Visual Culture, Benjamin Kent

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

The world of Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TRPGs) has always been defined and dominated by Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the game that pioneered the industry in the 1970’s. Meanwhile during this time, independent games have consistently innovated new ways of utilizing this highly creative field both in contrast and in concert with D&D’s growth. As a decade-long player and developing creator of these games, I hold a vested interest in furthering our understanding of them. The visual aspects of these products are well-documented and celebrated, but in this essay I attempt to define the overall landscape of TRPG visual culture …

Buffalo Bill And The Great Western Story, Sarah A. Hawkes

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

The author investigates how narratives are constructed through visual culture to better understand her own history. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show acts as a case study demonstrating how “history” is often a narrative established by those in power. These narratives often essentialize their subjects, leading to erasure and exclusion. Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley are used as examples of figures that have become caricatures in service to a greater narrative about the American West. This paper argues for the inefficacy of considering any one narrative as “history” instead recommending a close reading of many different narratives. Three different Western figures, …

The Liminal Space Of Dreams: Narration Of Dreams In Graphic Novel And Comics, Muyang Li

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores the dream as a narrative in graphic novels and comics, examining its character as a subconscious experience depicted by means of visual storytelling. Focusing on psychological, symbolic, and aesthetic functions of dream narrative, I demonstrate that dream narration offers an allegory by means of which both creator and reader can explore issues of identity, desire and trauma in an intimate and healing way. In analyzing these functions of dream narration, I draw upon ideas from theorists such as C.J Jung, Freud and other scholars who have engaged their work on the psychological perspective of the experience of …

The Kinship Of Creatives, Saba Saif Ur Rehman

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This research essay contends that artists and creative individuals must recognize their agency in shaping societal narratives, particularly during times of technological and political upheaval. The essay draws on the insights and contributions of visionaries like Walter Benjamin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Tomm Moore to emphasize the power of imagination and creativity in addressing real-world issues. It argues that previous technological advances have often reinforced hierarchical and oppressive systems, benefitting a select few while neglecting the masses. As we enter the fourth Industrial Revolution, this essay calls the artists to reclaim their tools from being co-opted for exclusionary and …

A Honduran Prevalence Study On Soil-Transmitted Helminths Highlights Serological Antibodies To Tm-Wap49 As A Diagnostic Marker For Exposure To Human Trichuriasis, Neima Briggs, Leroy Versteeg, Rojelio Mejia, Jeroen Pollet, Maria Jose Villar, Bin Zhan, Graeme Segal, Stephanie Novak, Patricia Lenihan, Paul Musgrave, Viviana Ellis, Carol Florencia Coello, K Jagannadha Sastry, Joe Craft, Peter J Hotez, Maria Elena Bottazzi

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections rank among the most prevalent communicable diseases of humans, yet detection of these parasites is mostly restricted to identifying active infection through fecal examinations. Currently, there are no commercial diagnostic tools to identify a prior whipworm or hookworm exposure, and the few serological assays for roundworm infection have not been well validated for crossreactivity or infections in humans. Such diagnostic restrictions limit the range of scientific and clinical questions that surround STH exposures and their implicated relationship to chronic diseases, such as autoimmunity, allergy, and cancer. The goal of this investigation was to evaluate the diagnostic …

Go Cry About It!, Grace C. Ryder

MFA in Visual Art

I have always been a crier. I have always felt deeply and intensely. Goodbyes, heartbreak, joy, and empathy—I’m grateful to feel it all, even when it hurts. My artwork often investigates vulnerable topics through making the personal public using self archival and diaristic elements. Inspired by my familial and romantic relationships, I explore my connections to other people and how I memorialize and honor them. My painted works often depict ephemeral objects, establishing their value through the use of oil paints while my sculptures are often exaggerated, oversize forms, emphasizing the passage of time.

From January 1st to December 31st …

Hot Girls Don't Worry About Copyright: Trans/Formative Works And The Femmage Lifestyle, Czeslawa Wojtkowski

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis examines the ways in which collage is an ontologically transgender medium due to its freedom from traditional artistic formal and narrative structures. Considering that many trans experiences center around dichotomies, juxtaposition, and self-definition, collage is the best equipped to communicate these experiences in innovative ways. Through interrogations of feminized labor and the ways in which the art world upholds harmful gender binaries, as well as discussions of Femmage, maladjustment, and obsession, I argue that the fragmentary nature of photomontage, digital collage, and videomontage can externally express the multitude of feelings and identities contained within a body, to a …

Undefinitive, Lan Mu

MFA in Visual Art

My thesis project, Undefinitive, examines the cyclical process of destruction, transformation, and rebirth through installation, ceramics, and text. With a deep unease toward my own gendered body, I investigate how vulnerability, both physical and psychological, can become a site of resistance and empowerment. Drawing from feminist theory, Chinese mythology, and stream-of-consciousness narratives, my work explores the monstrous and the fragmented as inseparable states of one’s becoming. Through references to body art, speculative fiction, and queer theory, I reimagine femininity and queerness as forces capable of dismantaling societal structure and forging new modes of existence.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where …

Places, Please!, Catie Cook

MFA in Visual Art

Growing up in the American South as the daughter of a scenic designer, I frequently found myself on both the physical stage of the theatre and the metaphorical stage of gender performance. Through immersive oil paintings, I seek to visually represent where these two experiences merge, depicting imagery and characters from my childhood staged in theatrical and uncanny environments. In this thesis I explore the canine motif as my primary subject, positioning the Dalmatian as a self-insert and exploring the show dog as a foil to the Southern beauty. Building upon Judith Butlers theory of gender performance, and Laura Mulvey’s …

Hauntological Warfare: Explorations In Propaganda, Influence Campaigns, And Online Affect, Roy Uptain

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis, Hauntological Warfare: Explorations in Propaganda, Influence Campaigns, and Online Aesthetics, investigates how ideological power continues to shape contemporary reality through both overt and spectral means. Drawing from concepts like hauntology, psychological operations (PsyOps), and disinformation aesthetics, I examine how propaganda does not simply vanish once its immediate goals are achieved, but instead lingers—reshaping memory, identity, and cultural narratives through what I call hauntological warfare.

My post-conceptual research-based art practice engages this terrain by creating site-specific installations, performances, and media works that make these invisible forces perceptible. Works such as Kill Zones (for Boeing) (2024), r/RoastMe (2024), …

Unmeasured, Detached, And Isolated: The Legitimation Of A Domesticated Identity, Eva M. Agüero

MFA in Visual Art

Unmeasured, detached and isolated explores the lingering effects of colonialism on identity, behavior, and cultural perception through the lens of my personal experience as a Venezuelan immigrant in the United States. I investigate how colonial legacies—especially those codified through manuals of etiquette like Manuel Antonio Carreño’s Manual de Urbanidad y Buenas Maneras—continue to shape self-perception and societal expectations. Through video, sculpture, miniatures, and installation, I reconstruct a visual language that resists simplification and reclaims complexity. Engaging with the symbolic weight of tropical imagery, domestic spaces, and hybrid aesthetics, my work challenges Eurocentric frameworks and examines the figure of the migrant …

Diagnostic Imaging Of A Large Pancreatic Pseudocyst With Infection Over Time In A Dog, Chanyoung Ryu, Wooseok Jin, Sang-Kwon Lee, Daji Noh, Sooyoung Choi, Kija Lee

The Thai Journal of Veterinary Medicine

A 5-year-old Pompitz presented with anorexia and vomiting. Radiographs showed a half-moon-shaped mass in the left cranial abdomen. A large cyst was identified near the left pancreas on ultrasound. Computed tomography revealed a fluid-attenuating mass with rim enhancement in the pancreas. Laboratory tests identified Staphylococcus warneri in the cystic lesion, and pancreatic pseudocyst with infection was suspected. The fluid accumulation and clinical signs recurred over several months. Pre-operative magnetic resonance imaging showed a hyperintense cystic lesion with a duct-like structure and hyperintense line between the cyst and the gastric wall on T2-weighted images as well as signal change of the …

Guidance And Lessons Learned For Instructors Seeking To Add Video Creation To Their Skill Set, Wendy A. Swenson Roth

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this introduction here.

Videos have entered the classroom, whether for online asynchronous courses or as supplementary information in synchronous classes. COVID-19 accelerated the pace of online and video learning but left instructors with little time to explore the optimal use of this technology. Nonetheless, videos are here to stay, raising questions about what unique choices faculty must make when implementing them and what new skills are required as videos become additional content delivery sources. The following article provides implementation guidance and lessons learned for instructors seeking to add video creation to their skill set.

Design, Implementation, And Reflection From An Interdisciplinary Course In Museum Studies, Brenna L. Decker

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this introduction here.

In Spring of 2023, I developed a special topics course titled Collection Material Handling to introduce students to museum management using Utah State University collections on the Logan, UT campus. The cross-listed upper-level course brought 16 USU students together from two disciplines: anthropology and natural sciences. The publication details how I used various learning theories to guide the creation of course content and how I structured and implemented activities in the classroom and in the collections. Examples of worksheets, activities, student feedback, and recommended improvements to assignments are provided. I encourage …

Identifying The Potential Effect Of Zolmitriptan On The 1b Pathway Of Golgi Tendon Organs In Regulating Intermuscular Inhibition In The Extremities To Find A Link In The Mechanism Of Spasticity, Adam E. Davis, T. Richard Nichols

Research Day

The deep dorsal horn (DDH) of the spinal cord is a major integration center for receiving a variety of neural projections from the brainstem as well as a variety of afferent inputs from muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs (GTOs) in the muscles. Following spinal cord injury (SCI) to the DDH, an overall loss of serotonergic input from the brainstem is observed, for which there is evidence to suggest that this may play a role in inhibiting the activity of bursting interneurons in the DDH, possibly leading to uncontrolled motoneuron activity, hyperreflexia. GTOs primarily supply the force feedback network (FBB), …