Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of Novel Analytical Methods For The Investigation Of Mammalian Tissues And Cells, Grace A. Binder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation endeavors to advance the frontiers of analytical chemistry by addressing critical challenges across three distinct chapters. In the first chapter, the focus is on the evaluation of digestion methods for the analysis of trace metals in mammalian tissues and the Standard Reference Material NIST 1577c. The primary goal is to optimize methodologies, laying the groundwork for reliable trace metal analysis and furthering our understanding of their roles in biological systems.

Transitioning into the realm of immunomodulation, the second chapter elucidates immune response, disease and treatment through the optimization and discovery of STING modulators, utilizing the luciferase assay for …

Factors Supporting Academic Engagement Among Cambodian American High School Youth, Vichet Chhuon, Angela Dosalmas, Nida Rinthapol

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This exploratory study examined the relationship between Cambodian American

students’ (N = 77) attitudes and beliefs regarding school climate and school

engagement. We examined engagement through two primary constructs:

academic intrinsic motivation and future educational expectations. Four specific

correlates of engagement were examined to understand the quality of Cambodian

American students’ school engagement: sense of racial fairness; feelings of

teacher support; perceptions of self-competence; and perceptions of positive

classroom environment. Perceptions of self competence were positively

associated with higher educational expectations. Our regression models found

that students’ sense of positive classroom environment in addition to teacher

support was important …

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled: A Theological Investigation Of Expressive Individualism And Existential Anxiety, Elyse Penton, Joseph A. Dennis, Dennis Nicholson, Jorge Rivera

Liberty University Research Week

In his work Ethics of Authenticity, Charles Taylor explores the contours of anthropology through studying contemporary philosophical thought in the postmodern West, wherein human identity is viewed as an internal, unique, moral ideal that finds fulfillment through the affirmation of others. This phenomenon has been termed by Robert Bellah as expressive individualism (hereafter EI). Though the political and societal implications of EI have been discussed by Carl Trueman and other scholars, the intersection between EI and contemporary existential anxiety from a theological perspective has not been substantially studied. We argue that EI is a significant contributing factor to the heightened …

A Brief Overview Of Health, Poverty, And Mental Health Concerns In American Indian/Alaska (Ai/An) Populations Native, Abbie Hopson

Liberty University Research Week

American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations consistently experience significant health disparities compared to other races and to the general population. The majority of the negative mental and physical health outcomes of this population are preventable. This study provides an overview of the health disparities faced by American Indians/Alaska Natives, outlines contributing social determinants, and suggests future directions for research and treatment. Primary focuses were identified from government and Native organizations, including census data, education reports, and other similar sources, and were explored more in-depth through a variety of studies from the fields of psychology, history, sociology, and anthropology. Initial …

Teaching Citation Politics Through Literature Review Topographies: Towards Cultivating Relational Writing Practices, Mairi Mcdermott

Feminist Pedagogy

Feminism teaches how power works and circulates through our often-unquestioned everyday practices. Since becoming a professor, I have committed myself to this feminist teaching by demystifying--and reimagining--habituated practices, relations, and expectations in higher education that produce and are produced through cis-hetero-patriarchal capitalist White supremacy. Since literature reviews and citation practices are core materials scholars work with, I invite doctoral students to consider different ways these materials can be engaged in efforts to craft transgressive knowledges and worlds through our research. In this article, I describe an assignment designed to disrupt hegemonic patriarchal inheritances in the conventions of writing literature reviews …

A New Nature Is Coming. We Will Be Repossessed, And The Spectres Of The Post-Natural Will Take The World. Predictions Of A New Symbiotic Earth In "Fafner" (2018) By Daniel Perez Navarro, Miguel Angel Albújar-Escuredo

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

This paper engages in the debates about decentralizing the role of men in the world we live in. Byproducts of this new mindset are concepts such as the “Posthuman” (Braidotti 2012); the status of “Holobiont” (Haraway 2016), and the experiencing of a new “Coexistence” with the non-human (Morton 2018). I suggest the novel Fafner (2018) as a perfect sample of this intellectual debate from an artistic and fictional view. Using concepts from diverse fields of thinking and applying them to literary analysis, this paper will review the in-depth transformation of nature portrayed by Fafner’s narration. Additionally, it will accomplish …

The Daily Gamecock: April 2024, University Of South Carolina, Office Of Student Media

April

No abstract provided.

Cas Connections- 2024 Spring Term - April, Dean's Office College Of Arts And Science

CAS Connections

No abstract provided.

Impacts Of Fire And Prospects For Recovery In A Tropical Peat Forest Ecosystem, Me Harrison, Nj Deere, Ma Imron, D Nasir, Adul, Ha Asti, Ja Soler, Nc Boyd, Sm Cheyne, Sa Collins, Lj D'Arcy, Wm Erb, H Green, W Healy, Hendri, B Holly, Pr Houlihan, Sj Husson, Iwan, Ka Jeffers, Ip Kulu, K Kusin, Nc Marchant, Hc Morrogh-Bernard, Se Page, A Purwanto, Br Capilla, Ord Ortega, Santiano, Kl Spencer

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Uncontrolled fires place considerable burdens on forest ecosystems, compromising our ability to meet conservation and restoration goals. A poor understanding of the impacts of fire on ecosystems and their biodiversity exacerbates this challenge, particularly in tropical regions where few studies have applied consistent analytical techniques to examine a broad range of ecological impacts over multiyear time frames. We compiled 16 y of data on ecosystem properties (17 variables) and biodiversity (21 variables) from a tropical peatland in Indonesia to assess fire impacts and infer the potential for recovery. Burned forest experienced altered structural and microclimatic conditions, resulting in a proliferation …

Narco Service Provisions In Tierra Caliente: La Familia Michoacana, Los Caballeros Templarios, And Los Zetas, Itzel Mendoza

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

This article analyzes the mutual relationship of dependency between civil society and narco cartels in Tierra Caliente, focusing on civilian experiences in Michoacan, Guerrero and el Estado de México. This paper will examine the functions of La Familia Michoacana, Los Caballeros Templarios and Los Zetas through community service provisions and cartels’ governance. Additionally, socioeconomic factors of Tierra Caliente will be examined to determine which types of communities lend themselves to cartels to provide community provisions as I argue that socioeconomic factors drive cartels’ operations and behaviors.

Formerly Used Defense Sites On Unalaska Island, Alaska: Mapping A Legacy Of Environmental Pollution, Jennifer Schmidt

ISER Articles

Unalaska Island, Alaska, served as a US military base during World War II. The military installed bases on Unalaska and nearby islands, many of which were built adjacent to Unangan communities. The military used toxic compounds in its operations and left a legacy of pollution that may pose health risks to residents and local wildlife. The goals of this study were to identify hotspots of contamination remaining at Unalaska formerly used defense (FUD) sites, evaluate the risk posed by arsenic, and examine “no US Department of Defense action indicated” (NDAI) status determinations for FUD sites near communities. We compiled soil …

Woosh Jín Toolshát Yeisú, WeʼRe Still Holding Each OtherʼS Hands : Relationships And Revitalization In Lingít Country, Éedaa Heather Burge

Faculty, Staff, and Students

This dissertation examines the relationships the Lingít language revitalization movement has to concepts of gender, identity, organizations and academia. The Lingít language and the Lingít people reside within Southeast Alaska in the United States, as well as northern British Columbia and the southern Yukon territory in Canada. Relying on my own lived experience as a Lingít learner and educator, as well as interviews and conversations with Lingít community members, we discuss how relationality supports the larger goal of Lingít language and cultural revitalization. Specifically we talk about the role of women within the language movement, and what approaches can best …

From The Outside, Looking In: Reflections On The Complex Infrastructures Of African Art History, Joanna Gardner-Huggett

Artl@s Bulletin

This essay engages with the five articles featured in this issue from the perspective of a non-specialist. Each contribution considers challenges facing scholars of African arts when confronted with incomplete and not always reliable historical evidence. The author contends that given the escalating demands for the repatriation of African objects, all art historians— not only art historians focused on African arts—should better understand the important strategies proposed by contributors to this issue. These interventions encourage the development of a more critical audience for African arts and also model ethical research, a slow critical archival practice, and sustainable provenance and digital …

You Cannot See It: Navigating Yorùbá Religious Artistic Materials, Stephen A. Fọlárànmí

Artl@s Bulletin

My research spanning two decades in Ọ̀yọ́ Palace generated series of questions about access to artistic materials in site-locational spaces, archives and private collections. I probe how scholars have navigated and negotiated these terrains, especially artworks created for religious functions. I explore alternatives to resolve field challenges and consider the effects of such hindrances in art historical research. Drawing on the concept of ọ̀gbẹ̀rì, anecdotes and personal scholarly experiences, I interrogate research access and propose approaches based on personal experience on the importance of Yoruba religion, and practice of initiation.

Iṣẹ́ ìwádì mi fún bíi ogún ọdún sẹ́yìn lórí ààfin …

Shifting Approaches, Innovative Methods: Collection Histories As A Tool To Move Beyond William Fagg’S ‘Lower Niger Bronze Industry Mystery’, Imogen Coulson, Julie Hudson, Sam Nixon

Artl@s Bulletin

At the end of 2019, the British Museum launched a new research project focusing on copper alloy objects associated with the Lower Niger Bronze Industry. The aim was to increase knowledge of these objects through a combination of provenance and collection history research and scientific analysis. This paper will outline the earlier art historical-focused approach to the Lower Niger Bronzes corpus and will then describe the new research and its methodology. Initial findings will be presented through a case study of objects from the Forcados River in the Niger Delta region of present-day Nigeria. In doing so, we aim to …

Making Absences Present: The Process Of Visualizing Knowledge Production In Museum Records, Caitlin Glosser

Artl@s Bulletin

In this paper, I evaluate the development of data visualizations as an art historical approach. By visualizing data for Senufo-labeled objects in the Musée Africain de Lyon’s collection, I demonstrate how the museum’s knowledge infrastructure privileges European collectors over African makers. I use Tableau visualizations to decenter this narrative by making silences present in a more impactful manner than through text alone. The visualizations also reveal the complex role that one maker, Bèma Coulibaly, played in the life of the collection. The addition of the individual narrative to the data was necessary to bring a human element into view.

Nous …

Technologies Of Recovery And Discovery: The Poetics Of “Artefacts”, Kathryn Simpson

Artl@s Bulletin

This article discusses the ways that objects, specifically personal belongings, held in British collections have their stories muted to become imperial signifiers. Using two pieces of jewellery acquired in 1859 by David Livingstone, British missionary and traveller (1813-1873), a lip ring from a Mang’anja woman in present day Malawi and a bracelet from the Kafue valley in present day Zambia, this article evidences how digital tools can be used to layer, in a palimpsestic way, the information available about colonially collected objects, to locate them physically, in the space they inhabit, and narratively, in the space they create.

En este …

What Does It Mean To Keep Kissing-Close To The Evidence, And Why Might It Matter?, Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Constantine Petridis

Artl@s Bulletin

African art specialists often lack detailed information to assess the original meanings, uses, and contexts of so-called historical or traditional arts of Africa, and they rely on indirect evidence to interpret the works. Thus, claims about African arts often reflect speculation rather than irrefutable details. When specific documentation for an object does exist, the circumstances of its creation require careful evaluation as well. The assessment of the quality and reliability of any claim is of particular importance in attempts to determine an object’s place of origin in the ongoing debates about restitution.

Hsc Connects Newsletter - April 12, 2024, Unm Hsc Communications

HSC Connects Newsletters

Weekly newsletter of the UNM Health Sciences Center.

An Ecology Against The Right. Learning Uncertainty And Humility From Ecosystems, Pierre L. Ibisch, Mona Eikel-Pohen, Elias Iceman, Jake Snelling

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This article is a translation from the German to English. The title of the original is:

Ibisch, P.L. (2020): Eine Ökologie gegen rechts. Von Ökosystemen Unsicherheit und Demut lernen. In: Leitschuh, H., A. Brunnengräber, P.L. Ibisch, R. Loske, M. Müller, J. Sommer & E.-U. v. Weizsäcker (eds. J. Sommer, P.L. Ibisch, A. Brunnengräber): Ökologie und Heimat. Jahrbuch Ökologie 2021. Hirzel-Verlag, Stuttgart, 191-205.

An Examination Of The Big Five, Mental Illness Stigma, And Crisis Intervention Training, Trista Wolfgram

Theses and Graduate Projects

The number of individuals incarcerated with mental illness continues to grow, and correctional officers may play a critical role in rehabilitation. A correlation analysis was conducted between Big Five personality traits and mental illness stigma to determine whether there is a significant relationship in a sample of state correctional officers who participated in Crisis Intervention Training. A mixed model ANOVA was also conducted to assess whether personality traits impacted levels of mental illness stigma following completion of the training. A moderate negative correlation was found between agreeableness and mental illness stigma. All other findings were not clinically significant, potentially due …

“It Didn’T Hurt Me”: Patients’ And Providers’ Perspectives On Unsupervised Take‑Home Doses, Drug Diversion, And Overdose Risks In The Provision Of Medication For Opioid Use Disorder During Covid‑19 In San Juan, Puerto Rico, Roberto Abadie, Celia B. Fisher

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Background During the COVID−19 pandemic, clinics offering medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) needed to rapidly introduce unsupervised take−home dosing, while relapsing patients and patients unable to enter treatment faced increased risks of fentanyl−related overdose deaths and other drug−related harms. Based on a qualitative study of people who inject drugs (PWID) receiving MOUD treatment and MOUD staff in Puerto Rico, this paper documents the lived experiences of patients and providers during this period and the risk perceptions and management strategies to address substance misuse and drug diversion attributable to unsupervised take−home−dose delivery

Methods In−depth qualitative interviews were conducted with patients …

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 7 Special Issue: Mediatization

Human-Machine Communication

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 7. Special Issue on Mediatization

Artificial Sociality, Simone Natale, Iliana Depounti

Human-Machine Communication

This article proposes the notion of Artificial Sociality to describe communicative AI technologies that create the impression of social behavior. Existing tools that activate Artificial Sociality include, among others, Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, voice assistants, virtual influencers, socialbots and companion chatbots such as Replika. The article highlights three key issues that are likely to shape present and future debates about these technologies, as well as design practices and regulation efforts: the modelling of human sociality that foregrounds it, the problem of deception and the issue of control from the part of the users. Ethical, social and cultural …

Communicative Ai And Techno-Semiotic Mediatization: Understanding The Communicative Role Of The Machine, Göran Bolin

Human-Machine Communication

Mediatization discourse has so far mainly been centered on media from institutional or social-constructionist approaches. The technological developments within communications industries coupled with the wider societal process of datafication might, however, beg for dusting off the smaller, although the long-time existing, technological approach to mediatization as a complement to the two other approaches, in order to understand aspects of automation and human-machine communication. This theoretical article explores how existing mediatization approaches can refocus to include lessons learned from human-machine communication. The first section accounts for the main mediatization approaches. The second section discusses debates on communication, artificiality, and meaning-making. The …

Mediatization And Human-Machine Communication: Trajectories, Discussions, Perspectives, Andreas Hepp, Göran Bolin, Andrea L. Guzman, Wiebke Loosen

Human-Machine Communication

As research fields, mediatization and Human-Machine Communication (HMC) have distinct historical trajectories. While mediatization research is concerned with the fundamental interrelation between the transformation of media and communications and cultural and societal changes, the much younger field of HMC delves into human meaning-making in interactions with machines. However, the recent wave of “deep mediatization,” characterized by an increasing emphasis on general communicative automation and the rise of communicative AI, highlights a shared interest in technology’s role within human interaction. This introductory article examines the trajectories of both fields, demonstrating how mediatization research “zooms out” from overarching questions of societal and …

Hong Kong’S Political Landscape From The Media Coverage In The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, Kexin Sun

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

The study aims to obtain a deeper understanding of the political landscape in Hong Kong by investigating agenda-setting and narratives that are being presented by media from Hong Kong and mainland China during The Anti-ELAB Movement in 2019. News stories about The Anti-ELAB Movement from five media outlets in Hong Kong and mainland China are collected to answer three questions. First, does their agenda-setting differ in the collected news stories? Second, what specific issues do those media navigate differently? Third, what do those news stories reveal about the political landscape?

Hong Kong is a complex blend of Chinese and Western …

The Myopia Epidemic: Exploring The Pathology And Management Of The World’S Most Common Eye Disorder, Gabriella Baldassarre, Bs

inSIGHT

Myopia is the most common eye disorder in the world and an increasing cause of vision impairment in children.¹ Myopia is an imbalance in the refractive components of the eye and its length, leading to inaccurate focusing of light rays in front of the retina tissue instead of on it. There is a spectrum of severity of myopia, from mild nearsightedness to a more severe form known as high or degenerative myopia, which has the potential to cause vision loss and blindness. There is evidence of a developing myopia epidemic, with an estimated one-third of the world population affected …

Insight, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2024

inSIGHT

Contents

8 - The Myopia Epidemic: Exploring the Pathology and Management of the World’s Most Common Eye Disorder
By Gabriella Baldassare

15 - Evolution of Lamellar Keratoplasty
By Ishan Kasat

19 - Bridging the Global Gap of Blindness Through Artificial Intelligence
By Nathan Delacth

24 - CMV Retinitis: An Expert’s Perspective
By Caitlyn Kwun

29 - Macular Holes: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Complications
By Ayra Khan

36 - Chronic Progressive External Ophthalmoplegia
By Bahram Pashaee

39 - Medical Missions, Ethical Considerations, and the Future for Healthcare Delivery in Ophthalmology
By Robert Medina

43 - Shaping the Future of Vision: The Rise …

The Holobiont, Food Justice, And Gaia 2.0 A Post-Human(Ist) Approach To Functional Medicine, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Functional medicine is a personalized and holistic approach to treating chronic disease. In this article, I build upon posthumanist literature by examing how functional medicine practitioners are decentering and destabilizing what it means to be human. Functional medicine discourse on the holobiont, which considers the human as an assemblage of different microbial species, reframes the “humananimal” (see Nayar 2018) as the “humicrobe.” I engage Gaia 2.0 (see Lenton and Latour 2018) when analyzing the interconnectivity, interdependence, and mutualism of all life. My approach to interconnectivity interweaves both functional medicine descriptions of systems biology and Luhmann’s (2012) approach to system’s theory …