Digital Commons Network^™

Take A Closer Look: Combating Ageism Through The Use Of Children's Literature, Janice Buehrer

Honors Projects

This project was completed as my final honors project for Bowling Green State University in the spring of 2024. I wrote and illustrated the children's book, "Take a Closer Look," designed for kindergarten through second-grade children. The goal of the book is to be used as a value-socialization device to instill positive perspectives on aging within younger generations. The book itself is meant to be an intergenerational tool as adults read the book about older adults to children, reaching the entire lifespan.

Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 113 (2nd Quarter, April 2024), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

When You Cannot “Look Both Ways”: Accessible Pedestrian Signals And The Ada, Becky Egan

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Artsci - Newsmagazine Of The College Of Arts And Sciences, Spring 2024, College Of Arts And Sciences

CAS Publications

Welcome to the eighth annual issue of the College of Arts and Sciences newsmagazine, ArtSci. In the following pages, you will see just a glimpse of recent work being accomplished by our faculty, students, and alumni as they endeavor to shape our world and our shared futures. In the following stories, student contributors invite us to step up, speak out, and join in being part of the solutions to our society’s challenges.

1st Place Contest Entry: Modification Of Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Adolescents With Language Disorder, Lauren A. Fillet

Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Library Research Prize

This is Lauren Fillet's submission for the 2024 Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains their essay on using library resources, their bibliography, and a summary of their research project on how evidence-based interventions and therapeutic techniques can be modified or supplemented in order to ensure that the benefits of these approaches are maximally accessible to those who struggle with communication.

Lauren is a student in the Masters of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders program at Chapman University. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Leah Beekman.

Artificial Intelligence And Techno-Securitization In Border Control: A Philosophical Appraisal, Mohammad Rubaiyat Rahman

Grad Expo Poster Presentations

The study appraises the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and smart technologies in border control in the context of Philosophy of Immigration. Focusing on the United States-Mexico border region, the AI role is philosophically evaluated as one of the factors of algorithmic oppression on borderland gender and ecology. My study aims to orient philosophical approaches regarding smart border related AI technologies research to the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs.

Pathological And Protective Immune Responses During Covid-19, Jonathan Klein

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Since its introduction into humans in late 2019, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread globally and resulted in the deaths of more than 6.5 million people in just 39 months. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), a clinically heterogenous viral illness that may alternatively manifest as asymptomatic infection or a life-threatening viral pneumonia. This dissertation examines the range of pathogenic and protective immune responses generated in humans with COVID-19, with specific focus on the contribution of various maladaptive immune responses to the development of severe disease. The investigations presented here are organized into 4 chapters, …

Implications For Energy Demand And Emissions By Mitigating Heat Stress In Heterogeneous Urban Building Types In India, Aishwarya V Iyer

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The buildings sector plays a key role in influencing global demand for energy and materials, and the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). 80% of future population growth is expected to take place in the Global South, primarily populated with low-and-middle income (LMI) countries, making these countries hotspots for growth in the buildings sector, especially the residential sector. India, the most populated low-and-middle income country, is expected to lead the world in energy growth from the residential sector in the next decades. However, previous global reports often do not represent the diversity in building types from these countries, especially excluding the …

Emergence Of Inhibitory Circuitry In The Developing Cortex, Alex Wang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The cerebral cortex is essential to the processing and integration of sensory information, allowing us to perceive and interact with the world around us. Cortical function is subserved by specialized neural circuits comprised of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. Inhibitory GABAergic interneurons regulate the activity of excitatory pyramidal neurons to determine the output of cortical circuits across the entire brain. Interneurons are an extremely diverse population, but somatostatin-expressing interneurons play unique roles in cortical processing and function. In primary visual cortex, somatostatin interneurons exhibit robust visual responses, are broadly tuned for visual features such as stimulus size, and are modulated by …

Ancient Maya Labor Relations: Building A Palace At Ucanha, Yucatán, Mexico, Jacob Welch

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation studies the labor relations involved in the construction of Ucanha Structure 92, a Maya palace located in Yucatán, Mexico. Archaeological investigations have uncovered a complex history of episodic building events that transformed a one-room building in the Terminal Preclassic (1–250 CE) period into Ucanha’s largest residence at the end of the Late Classic (750–900 CE) period. This transformation included the construction of entirely new monuments, as well as minor renovations to pre-existing construction phases. The monumentality of Ucanha Structure 92 implies that the site’s royal family could recruit laborers to build their residence; therefore, this structure offers an …

Social-Ecological Practice Theory And Human-Wildlife Interactions: People, Cattle, And Predators In Makgadikgadi, Botswana, Katherine Orrick

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

2024My dissertation delves into the complex interplay between human activities and wildlife dynamics, focusing on understanding and mitigating human-wildlife interactions (HWI) for sustainable coexistence. Overseeing and managing HWI requires acknowledging that the behavior and actions toward humans and wildlife are made up of local variations across both ecological and social processes. This intertwinement of ecological and social processes is complex; hence, conservation projects aiming to overcome human-wildlife conflict may, in fact, risk exacerbating it whenever either process is only superficially addressed. Ecologists, social scientists, and policy makers are challenged with a lack of knowledge surrounding subject-specific theory and language to …

The Duality Of Neurons: Co-Transmission Of Serotonin And A Neuropeptide, Nlp-3, In The Caenorhabditis Elegans Egg-Laying Circuit, Allison Butt

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Neurons typically release both a neurotransmitter and one or more neuropeptides in a process known as co-transmission. While this process is a widely observed phenomenon, the logic of why a neuron releases these two or more different types of signals to accomplish its myriad of functions remains largely unclear. In this dissertation, I studied how two serotonergic neurons in the C. elegans egg-laying circuit—known as the Hermaphrodite Specific Neurons (HSNs)—release both the neurotransmitter serotonin and the neuropeptide NLP-3 to activate egg laying. Egg laying typically occurs in a temporal pattern with two-minute active phases, during which the HSNs are highly …

How Molecular Chaperones Promote Pathogen Survival, Carissa Chan

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

All organisms require metal ions to help carry out biological processes. Mg2+ is the most abundant divalent cation in all living cells, where it neutralizes negative charges on DNA and RNA, acts as a cofactor for enzymatic reactions, stabilizes macromolecular complexes, and fulfills numerous other essential roles. Due to the critical nature of Mg2+ in all cellular compartments, cells have developed intricate mechanisms of sensing and responding to changes in intracellular and extracellular Mg2+. Inside the cell, Mg2+ concentration in the cytoplasm impacts the synthesis, maintenance, and degradation of proteins, which perform the vast majority of biochemical functions. First, because …

Microbial Controls On Globally Significant Methane Cycling In Wetlands And Forests, Wyatt Arnold

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Methane (CH4), like carbon dioxide (CO2), is a potent greenhouse gas that has played a critical role in the warming of the planet. Yet unlike CO2, virtually all of the methane emitted into the atmosphere is the product of biological activity. Specifically, it is the metabolic byproduct of a group of archaea that are collectively referred to as methanogens. These methanogens thrive in a diversity of habitats—from landfills, to ruminant guts, to the wood of trees—and excel at converting carbon into methane. Their vast presence and activity in natural environments, like wetlands and inland waters, accounts for more than half …

Nanopatterned Electrochemical Biosensor Electrodes With Enhanced Signal And Sensitivity, Emily R. Kinser

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Innovations in materials and process development in recent decades have enabled surface engineering at the nanoscale, which provides a pathway to improvement in the performance and longevity of biomedical implants and biosensors. One such novel class of materials is bulk metallic glass. As an amorphous metal, bulk metallic glass can be molded with after initial casting to produce high-precision features by elevating the material above the glass transition temperature, Tg, via the process of thermoplastic forming (TPF). Thus, BMGs enable a unique pathway to molding nano-scale structures in air at comparably low processing temperatures. Platinum-base BMG alloys (Pt-BMGs) are of …

Impact Of Medical Drugs On Microbiome Dynamics, Andrew Albert Verdegaal

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Medical drugs, especially orally delivered medical drugs, remain one of the most w¬idely used methods for treating diseases and ameliorating disease symptoms. Furthermore, all humans are colonized with a diverse representation of bacteria in their gastrointestinal tracts. As such, medical drugs administered to patients will encounter the gut microbiome. This dissertation describes some possible interactions occurring between host, drug, and the gut microbiome, and how these interactions can affect hos¬¬t health. The first example I present describes the intertwining of Parkinson’s disease (PD) drug-based therapies with the gut microbiome through a complex network of interactions. One group of PD drugs, …

“The Geopoetics Of An Undiscovered Continent: Eurasianism As A Writing Practice”, John Anthony Stachelski

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Drawing on extensive archival research and a comprehensive body of scholarship, this dissertation offers a critical reimagining of early 20th-century Eurasianism through the prism of literature and art. Beginning with the proto-Eurasianist schema introduced by Konstantin Leontiev in the 19th century, I argue that the influence of his deeply aestheticized combination of politics and religious thought is essential to understanding the work of Eurasianism’s founders Petr Savitsky and Petr Suvchinsky, the figures around whom the ideology’s major split occurred. This dissertation challenges the way Eurasianism has often been understood and portrayed in scholarship, and simultaneously presents an original argument about …

Spatial Multi-Omics Mapping Of The Human Brain Hippocampus, Graham Su

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

With the introduction of next-generation high-throughput DNA sequencing, “Omics” has become staple in biological and biomedical research. Currently, single-cell omics has enabled a wide range of biomolecular assays at single cell level including proteomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, and more. These techniques have the power to interrogate the different dimensional states of single cells and in parallel with one another. Extensive and rich datasets have been produced with these methods ranging from normal to developing to diseased cells, especially informative in delineating heterogeneous populations. However, the trade-off for high-throughput single-cell Omics is the loss of cellular phenotypic and positional information. When …

Regulation Of Hepatic Mitochondrial Oxidation And Gluconeogenesis, Traci Ellen Lamoia

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is one of the most common metabolic disorders worldwide and is characterized by defective insulin secretion, peripheral insulin resistance, and dysregulated whole-body glucose homeostasis. In Chapter 1 I review the etiology of T2D and describe the well-established link between T2D and metabolic dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). I also describe several pharmaceutical interventions for the treatment of T2D, including metformin, the first-line treatment for T2D, and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R)/glucagon receptor (gcgR) dual agonists, a class of recently developed and highly effective treatments for T2D. This sets up the major goal of the work presented …

The Black Spirit: Theorizing Black Political Theology In The Long Civil Rights Movement, Da'von Anthony Boyd

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how Black political theology constructed the philosophical, ethical, and political architecture of the long civil rights movement. By recovering the radicalism of Black political theology in the Black Freedom Struggle, I seek to assess how religion animates the normative theorizing and political mobilization of liberation movements. I closely examine the political theories of its preeminent organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Nation of Islam (NOI). I offer a theory of Black political theology in defining civil rights praxis by tapping into the cultural synergy of theism with the …

Uncovering Transkingdom Connectivity Through Mapping Host-Microbiota Interactions, Nicole Sonnert

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Our microbiota, the trillions of microbes that constitutively colonize every outward-facing surface of our bodies, have diverse impacts on human physiology, yet the molecular bases for these effects remain mostly unknown. Classical pathogens often invade host tissues and modulate immune responses through interactions with human extracellular and secreted proteins (the ‘exoproteome’). Commensal microbes may also facilitate niche colonization and shape host biology by engaging host exoproteins; however, direct microbiota-exoproteome interactions remain largely unexplored. We developed and validated a novel technology, BActerial Selection to Elucidate Host-microbe Interactions in high Throughput (BASEHIT), that enables proteome-scale assessment of human exoproteome-microbiome interactions. Using BASEHIT, …

Exploring Function And Mechanism Through Intuitions, Explanations, & Learning, Amanda Mccarthy

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Imagine learning about a car engine for the first time. You might expect that the person explaining to you how a car engine works would first explain the role that the car engine has within the car (functional information) before diving into how the camshaft, pistons, spark plugs, cylinders, and crankshaft all work together to make the car engine work (mechanistic information). Where might this intuition that functional information should come before mechanistic information come from? Is mechanistic information too convoluted to be understood without function as a cognitive scaffold? This thesis considers the strength of this intuition of explanatory …

The Ambivalence Of Salvation: On Sentimentality, Suffering, And Redemption, Amanda Griffin

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

For many contemporary theologians and theorists, the Christian doctrine of salvation is a problem. This is clearly elucidated for today’s context in the anti-social turn in queer theory, or queer negativity. This dissertation develops a Christian soteriology that takes queer negativity’s critiques seriously, without abandoning salvation altogether. Instead, I argue that honesty about the ambivalence that virtually always attends soteriology can allow it to mean and function differently. My attention to queer negativity focuses on the work of Lee Edelman, Leo Bersani, and Stephen Best. All three, in different ways, argue that Christian redemptive logics shapes common-sense thinking in the …

Identifying Mechanisms Of Pathogenicity In Familial Cardiomyopathy-Linked Alpha-Tropomyosin Mutations, Saiti Srabonti Halder

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) and Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) are two very divergent diseases which often have poor prognosis and are major causes of sudden cardiac death. In HCM, the left ventricular wall stiffens and thickens, making it difficult for the heart to pump blood efficiently. In DCM, the left ventricular chamber becomes enlarged while the walls become thinner and weaker, being unable to pump blood. When HCM or DCM happens as a result of an inherited mutation, it is said to be familial and can be passed down from one generation to the next. Missense mutations in alpha-tropomyosin (TPM1), a regulatory …

A “Spicy” Molecular Mechanism Of Trpa1 Hyperactivation Conferred By A Disease Mutant And Insights Into C-Terminal Regulatory Components, Avnika Prasad Bali

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Roughly one third of Americans suffer from chronic pain and inflammation, yet so far little progress has been made to develop new pain remedies beyond non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents and opioids, which often harbor deleterious side-effects. The identification and mechanistic analysis of pain-initiating receptors in peripheral nociceptor neurons is therefore an attractive approach to develop new analgesic and anti-inflammatory therapeutics. Transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channels are the largest group of receptors expressed in nociceptor neurons and are capable of transducing noxious thermal and chemical stimuli into cation influx that triggers pain signaling. My thesis work focuses on one such TRP …

Dissecting The Role Of Neuromodulators In Value-Based Decision Making, Heather Ortega

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Neuromodulators such as acetylcholine (ACh) and norepinephrine (NE) play diverse roles in the central nervous system. Structurally they are organized to exert a coordinating force over many brain regions as their nuclei project widely. Functionally both neuromodulators serve basic functions including arousal and attention as well as more complex roles such as learning and reinforcement. More interestingly, new evidence points to a distinct cognitive utility where ACh may influence learning and NE promotes stochastic choice. Evidence for these roles comes primarily from pharmacological depletion studies, recording from nuclei, and Pavlovian or sensory-cue guided tasks. However, the computational roles of NE …

Models For Interrogating The Role Of Glutathione Biosynthesis In Pancreatic Islet Development And Function, Emily Ann Davidson

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Currently, over 537 million people worldwide have diabetes, a disease characterized by impaired insulin synthesis, and/or utilization. Of diabetics, roughly 90% have type 2 diabetes and develop high blood glucose caused by pancreatic islet dysfunction. The islet is composed of five different endocrine cell types. Sixty - 80% (varies by species) of islet cells are insulin-producing β cells. A hallmark characteristic of dysfunctional β cells is impaired insulin secretion. Among the many factors implicated in islet cell dysfunction is oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is defined as the imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cellular antioxidant capacity. During oxidative stress, …

Single-Cell Perturbation Of Human Accelerated Regions In Neural Stem Cells, Mark Alan Noble

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The evolutionary emergence of the uniquely large and complex human brain isunderpinned by the alteration and expansion of the neural stem and progenitor cell (NSC) pool during development. These modifications are the manifestation of numerous regulatory and genetic changes, many of which have yet to be described. One salient set of candidates consists of ~1500 Human Accelerated Regions (HARs), which are noncoding regions of the genome that have been highly constrained throughout evolution until the human lineage, where a significant number of substitutions occur, indicating divergent functions. I designed a direct-capture Perturb-seq screen repressing 180 HARs with evidence of neurodevelopmental …

Bronze Age Prone Burials Of The Mongolian Gobi Desert: An Anthropological Study Of Mortuary Traditions, Bukhchuluun Dashzeveg

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) in Mongolia witnessed significant changes in mortuary practices, particularly the transition from prone burials to the slab grave tradition. This dissertation investigates the complex interplay between socio-cultural, political, and ideological factors that shaped these transformations, focusing on the reuse of burial spaces at the Shiriin Chuluu site in the Gobi Desert. In attempting to better understand the prone burial tradition of the Gobi and eastern Mongolia, I focus specifically on the history and utility of the prone concept as a category; the emergence and spread of these practices as a …

Genetic Background’S Influence On The Pathogenesis Of Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 1 (Sca1), Victor Hipolito Olmos

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1) is a rare, dominantly inherited monogenic neurodegenerative disease that primarily affects the Purkinje cells (PCs) of the cerebellum. Our lab utilizes SCA1 as a model to unravel the complexity that is neurodegeneration. Neurodegeneration has long been a challenge due to the interactions of multiple cell types, various disease-causing genes, and degeneration beyond a single brain region. We utilized the SCA1 82Q B05 transgenic model (B05) which expresses the disease-causing gene, ATAXIN-1 (ATXN1), only in the PCs of the cerebellum. This mouse model recapitulates the disease phenotypes seen in human patients and allows us to investigate …