Digital Commons Network^™

Allergic Fungal Rhinosinusitis Diagnosis, Management, Associated Conditions, Pathophysiology, And Future Directions: Summary Of A Multidisciplinary Workshop, Lauren T Roland, Cecelia Damask, Amber U Luong, Antoine Azar, Charles S Ebert, Thomas Edwards, Katherine N Cahill, Do-Yeon Cho, David Corry, Tara L Croston, Alexandra F Freeman, Amin Javer, Paneez Khoury, Jean Kim, Michael Koval, Edward D Mccoul, James W Mims, Anju Peters, Jay F Piccirillo, Richard P Ramonell, Amali Samarasinghe, Robert P Schleimer, Prestina Smith-Davidson, Andrej Spec, Michael E Wechsler, Sarah K Wise, Joshua M Levy

The Brown Foundation: Institute of Molecular Medicine

Allergic fungal rhinosinusitis (AFRS) is a unique endotype of chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP). Despite high recurrence rates and often more severe presenting signs compared with other subtypes of CRSwNP, research dedicated to AFRS has been lacking. Diagnostic criteria are outdated, the mechanistic relationship of AFRS to other associated diseases is unclear, and the pathophysiology of disease and risk factors for recurrence have not been well studied. In December 2023, a multidisciplinary group of rhinologists, otolaryngologists, pulmonologists, allergists, immunologists, scientists, and infectious disease experts met at the National Institute of Health to discuss unmet needs for future AFRS research …

Asino Ti Agtawid?: Ti Panagabel Iti Kina-Ilokano Iti Self-Portrait Mask (2021) Ni Luce F. Melegrito, Mark Louie Tabunan

Katipunan

Hinaharap dito ni Tabunan ang Self-portrait Mask 1 (2021), isang ilustrasyong digital ni Luce Melegrito, upang pag-aralan ang kasalimuotan ng usapin ng identidad na hinubog ng kasaysayan at karanasan ng migrasyon at diaspora. Isinusulong niya ang performatibong kalikasan ng identidad sa paggamit ng wika at paghabi ng mga imaheng hinango sa personal na buhay, binuo ng magkakahidwang puwersa ng turismo, at kinilala bilang integral na bahagi ng kultural na pamana. Sa halip na ituring na instrumento ng pagkukubli, nagiging obheto ng paglikha ang maskara sa loob ng pagsusuri ni Tabunan. Ginagawan niya ng paralelismo ang kasaysayan ng pagkakatatag ng Calle …

Cuny In The News: A History Of Reporting On The Humanities At The City University Of New York, Jacqueline R. Cahill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project compiles newspaper articles concerning humanities at the City University of New York, placing them on a timeline to establish patterns and changes within media reporting and public perception. The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity. Examining …

The Reimagined Past: Investigating Generational Trauma Through Visual Semiotics And Visual Autoethnography Of Recreated Family Photographs, Josephine A. Barnett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Family photographs, and particularly the curation of family photo albums, serve as a source of data, providing researchers with the opportunity to illustrate the role of the visual in reproducing certain social norms and ideals by dictating the depiction or representation of specific types of families and experiences. Arguably, what is left outside the frame of a photograph is more revealing about familial norms, memory, and narrative than what is deliberately captured within it (Hirsch, 1997a; Kuhn, 2002a). In other words, the hegemony and standardization of family photos shed light on the need for an alternative visual narrative that depicts …

Not Meant To Be Read: The Stories They Silence, The Resistance That Speaks, Cristina Onea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the evolution of surveillance from overt state violence to the more insidious forms of ideological policing embedded in everyday life. Through lived experience, oral history, and critical autoethnography, I explore how surveillance moves through bodies, families, institutions, and memory—not simply as external control, but as internalized rhythms of fear, vigilance, and self-surveillance. I move between my father's life under Romanian dictatorship, my own embodied inheritance, and the contemporary struggles of librarians facing ideological suppression to reveal surveillance as a structure that persists through generations, mutates across contexts, and demands new forms of resistance.

I argue …

Comparative Genotoxicological Analysis Of Occupational Pesticide Exposures: An Experimental Approach And Systematic Review, Moustafa Samy Sherif

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the genotoxic and cytotoxic effects of pesticide exposure through three complementary research components: a systematic review of occupational pesticide exposure in Arab countries (AraSys), a systematic review on encapsulated versus conventional pesticide formulations (Encap-Sys), and experimental toxicological assessments of various pesticide formulations in human cell lines (Pyr-Ex). This experimental component includes cytotoxicity assays using propidium iodide and DNA damage assessments via alkaline comet assays in HL60 and HepG2 cell lines exposed to pyrethroid insecticides and glyphosate-based formulations.

The AraSys systematic review revealed a critical positive association between occupational pesticide exposure and DNA damage in agricultural workers in …

Functional And Cultural Values Of Shame: A Motivator To Seek Help For Suicidal Ideation, Yu-Chin Lin

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

Suicide is a global issue with rates continuing to rise despite decades of research and prevention efforts. The role of shame in the development of suicidal ideation, especially within non-Western contexts, remains underexplored. This mixed-methods study explored the relationships among shame, suicidal ideation, and help-seeking intentions in a Taiwanese sample, focusing on four culturally distinct Mandarin terms for shame—diu lian, can kui, xiu kui, and xiu chi. A total of 101 participants who has experiences of suicide-related thoughts or behaviors responded to an online survey. Quantitative analyses revealed that all shame terms were strongly correlated …

Evidence Of The Complexity Of The Conversion To Christianity In Early Medieval Funerary Stone Carvings Of Pagan Cultures In Scotland And Scandinavia, Cameron Genet

Theses

This thesis focuses on stone monuments created between the late fifth to late twelfth centuries CE, specifically in Scotland and Sweden. The aim of this thesis is to interpret the symbols or images inscribed onto the stone monuments to determine what they reveal about the Christianization of these regions. The Picts in Scotland and the Norse in Sweden left behind several standing stones such as the Craw Stane from the Picts and the Ledberg Stone from the Norse which have various symbols carved into them. These stones were sometimes created in connection with a burial, allowing the interpretations of their …

Personifying The Goddess: Contrasting Representation Of The Deified Body In Feminist Art, Kelly Lorraine Phillips

Theses

Goddess imagery, the representation of a female deity or a concept of divine feminine power through various forms, symbols, and narratives, has been used by artists to communicate a multitude of sentiments, from spiritual reverence to political ideology. This study probes the evolution of representations of the deified female body from the 1970s to the current era to reveal contrasts in how these icons of female power have transformed over time. The artwork of second-wave feminist and self-identified “Goddess artist” Mary Beth Edelson is examined as a foundation for second-wave Goddess sentiment. Edelson’s collage work, which incorporates figures from a …

Power Asymmetry Dynamics: Assessing Interdependence In France-Cameroon Relations Through Economic And Security Cooperation (2000–2024), Chick Edmond

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

This paper examines the dynamics of power asymmetry in the interdependent relationship between Cameroon and France from 2000 – 2024 with a focus on security and economic cooperation. The main research question asks: To what extent has power asymmetry reinforced or mitigated the interdependent relationship between Cameroon and France within the realm of economic and security cooperation? Based on the hypothesis that increased interdependence between these two states during this period has strengthened existing power disparity. The paper examines how such dynamics have restrained Cameroon’s autonomy and its capacity to pursue policy goals.

The theoretical framework combines dependency theory, postcolonial …

An Ethnomusicological Approach To Culture In Culturally Relevant Pedagogies And Curricula, Andrés R. Amado

School of Music Faculty Publications

Although the frameworks of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Culturally Responsive Teaching, and Culturally Responsive Curriculum tend to reduce educational disparities, pedagogical approaches focused on minoritized populations now draw controversy. This chapter exam ines the essentializing potential of historical notions of “culture” used in these frameworks and proposes instead an ethnomusicological definition that conceives culture as a malleable collection of habits shared by different individuals and groups. This definition avoids equating culture with specific traits of minoritized people and helps valorize collaborative teaching and learning. After situating Culturally Relevant Pedagogy within the intellectual history of “culture,” and overviewing the field of ethnomusicology …

Culturally Responsive Intimate Partner Violence (Ipv) Service Needs Among African Immigrant Women: Examining The Impact Of Cultural Norms And Psychosocial Barriers On Safety Perceptions And Help-Seeking Behaviors, Titilayo Ogunbambi

Dissertations

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) remains a pervasive public health and social justice issue globally, with African immigrant women in the United States facing compounded challenges as they navigate cultural, structural, and systemic barriers, including migration-related vulnerabilities and attachment to cultural values that shape their decisions and experiences. Although formal IPV services exist, they often fail to address the lived realities and culturally specific needs of this population, leading to underutilization and barriers in seeking help. This qualitative study examines how cultural norms, psychosocial barriers, and systemic inequities influence safety perceptions and help-seeking behaviors among African immigrant women survivors of IPV. …

Negotiating Depletion And Endurance: Hiya, Tino, And Bait As Vernacular Grammars Of Political Scandal In The Philippines, Karl Patrick R. Mendoza

Social Transformations Journal of the Global South

Political scandals in the Philippines often provoke intense outrage yet rarely lead to decisive accountability. Leaders are condemned but continue to endure, a paradox commonly attributed to weak institutions or entrenched elites. This research note advances a different explanation by foregrounding hiya (shame), tino (uprightness), and bait (goodness) as vernacular grammars through which publics interpret misconduct. Rather than fixed cultural traits, these idioms operate as interactive processes of depletion and endurance that shape how scandals resonate emotionally, register as morally legible, and align with familiar narratives. Hiya and tino collapse once violated, marking leaders as shameless or irresponsible, while bait …

Maternal Melodrama, Domesticity And Female Liberation In Dekada ‘70, Laurence Marvin S. Castillo

Social Transformations Journal of the Global South

The critically-acclaimed Dekada ‘70 represents one of the most prominent efforts in post-EDSA commercial cinema to narrate the experiences of revolutionary involvement in the context of the Martial Law era. The film is remarkable as an example of mainstream Philippine cinema’s mobilization of popular generic conventions to depict a politically charged narrative that touches upon the question of socio-political and personal liberation. In this essay, I revisit the film to examine how it deploys the subgenre of maternal melodrama in exploring gender and domestic relations as the springboard for the politico-subjective transformation of its middle-class protagonist under the violent milieu …

Cinema As Praxis: An Integrated Theoretical Framework For Philippine Social Advocacy Cinema, Herwin Benedictos Cabasal

Social Transformations Journal of the Global South

This theoretical paper examines social advocacy cinema in the Philippines as a form of counter-hegemonic cultural practice. Drawing on Third Cinema Theory (Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino), critical theory (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer), and participatory communication for social change (Paulo Freire and Thomas Tufte), this paper proposes Cinema as Praxis as an integrated theoretical framework for understanding how politically driven advocacy films operate through the convergence of cultural and political production, ideological representation and critique, and participatory communication. It argues that social advocacy cinema functions through interconnected dimensions: (1) production as praxis, in which collective and grassroots filmmaking constitutes …

Silent Witnesses: Reconnecting Landscape Through Lost Narratives, Abeer Aljohani

Masters Theses

In the heart of the vast Arabian desert, a forgotten tale of tragic love unfolds. Aja and Salma, figures from two different tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia, embody a romance that has long faded into obscurity. The two mountain ranges in Hail, Saudi Arabia, bear their names, standing as silent witnesses to a love story that ends in tragedy—one in which each is killed on separate peaks. Over time, the story has faded, leaving a gap between the landscape and its cultural significance. Could a narrative-based tourism experience revive this link, blending the mountains’ natural beauty with their forgotten story?

This …

Wooorrmmhooolleess, Kimberly Duck

Masters Theses

By now we all know that the internet is an integral part of our existence. One could argue that this online existence holds equal importance to our physical one. While the lines blur even further and Mark Zuckerberg can’t wait to cosplay the rich computer guy from Ready Player One, I choose to refrain from the existential dread that seems to be inescapable when thinking of the future nowadays. While we often associate the internet with portals (after all, we once called websites “Internet Portals”—in German at least), Wormholes more accurately capture the experience. Portals promise instant connection. But what …

For The Time Beings, Tori Hong

Masters Theses

For the Time Beings is a socially engaged installation and artist book exploring the material consequences and future possibilities of sociocultural time theories. Time, in the West, is typically associated with Newtonian linearity, while in the East, time theory relies on Buddhist principles. These epistemologies reinforce hierarchical and patriarchal structures. Centered on Indigenous Asian and Asian American perspectives, For the Time Beings challenges dominant ideologies of existing in time and space.

For nearly a year, I’ve burned handwritten prayers on new and full moons. The ashes of these prayers are incorporated into reverential drawings of chosen ancestors, made with charcoal …

Talking About Politics On Social Media?: Opinions Of Emerging Adults, Barbara Ruth Burke

The Qualitative Report

News stories say the Internet is filled with increasingly polarizing, politically strident speech. Looking beyond the headlines, this study investigates experiences of non-activist, emerging adults at a small college, to see in what ways their everyday social media communications reflect these conflict-oriented, argumentative extremes, and/or if they have internalized a version of the “spiral of silence.” Regarding active media engagement, this project describes how social media is used by a selected group of emerging adults and investigates the reasons these people give when explaining the risks they perceive are related to political communication on social media. Fifteen structured interviews from …

The Sixth Interface: The Integration Of Drone Infrastructure With Low-Altitude Landscape, Shicheng Tang

Masters Theses

This project focuses on the design of outdoor vertical space in Hong Kong in response to the development of China’s Low-Altitude Economy. It explores the integration of these spaces with drones. Through site design and planning, the project uses existing rooftops, parks, and public plazas to create multi-functional drone infrastructure. These spaces enable low-altitude logistics while providing additional social benefits such as public recreation facilities. These landscape enhancements create a harmonious synergy between technology and ecology.

Central to this work is the concept of “The Sixth Interface”, a new spatial layer between the ground and the sky where drone-driven flows …

Gesture And Trace, Luisa M. Heindl

Masters Theses

I approach type as both gesture and trace: something made and something read, impulse and afterimage, formed through action, reception, and reuse.

My work focuses on the smallest components of written narratives: the shapes that form and encase letters, and the typography that enhances the emotional and cultural resonance of text. I explore how type and language encode meaning through various lenses, whether through the ideological ‘freight’ of reviving or using historical styles, the emotional charge of certain forms, the possibilities of variable font technology, or the curated (and sometimes instrumentalized) narratives embedded in nostalgic-feeling visual trends.

Typographic expression embodies …

Healing In Relation: Honoring Post-Graduate Grief As An Opportunity For Relational Scholarship, Tanya J. Behrisch, Anna Rumjahn, Chris Yakimov

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper is a three-way conversation about grief that follows a graduate program. We explore our experiences with post-graduate grief in community, attending to each other’s sense of loss following separation from supervisors, theses, and graduate programs. In committing to slow scholarship, processes—such as navigating feelings and living—have been valued over producing a manuscript quickly. Slowness, including long gaps between meetings, enabled us to follow the diverse contours of quiet alchemical processes such as grieving, opening up to emptiness, self-acceptance, being enough, and letting go. After years of compression and dialogic friction with her mentor, Tanya confronts feelings akin to …

Talent Management Practices In Manufacturing Companies In Poland, The United States, Germany And Japan – A Comparative Analysis, Adam Samborski

European Management Studies

Purpose: The research objective is to determine whether there are distinctions in the assessment of talent management (TM) practices between companies from Poland (PL), the United States (US), Germany (DE) and Japan (JP), and then to identify homogeneous groups. TM practices were defined as developing talent-oriented attitudes among managers (ITM), building a culture of high performance in the company (BH-PC) and retaining the best employees in the workplace (RT).

Design/methodology/approach: Information on the assessment of TM practices was obtained from the ‘World Management Survey – Manufacturing’ (WMS) database. The studies used the Kruskal-Wallis test (KWt) and the Multiple …

Silly Little Romance Books: Analyzing The Value And Function Of The Popular Romance Genre, Mckenzie Chan

Honors Projects

Amidst the increasing popularity of the romance genre, as evidenced by notable growth on online platforms such as TikTok, this project interrogates the perceived value and function of contemporary romance fiction. Drawing on the existing field of romance scholarship, this paper synthesizes key arguments pertaining to romance’s content, readers, form, and market, respectively. Such analysis is grounded in a reading of Ana Huang’s 2021 novel Twisted Love. Furthermore, given the highly gendered nature of popular romance, lenses of feminist critique are used to unpack the cultural significance of these narratives, exploring both the dangers and the merits that they …

New Perspectives On Media And Culture

Communication Research Trends

Media studies were born in the 1930s and 1940s with the popular assumption that film and broadcasting have enormous power to sway voters, shape the minds of children and direct public opinion. By the late 1950s, however, the cumulative research showed that the media, in themselves, are rarely the sole cause of aggressive behaviour, conversions or other personal changes. Media are definitely somehow influential, but media effects are a complex process mingled with the influence of family, friend groups, and the broader socio-cultural environment.

In the search for more nuanced explanations of media influence during the 1960s and 1970s, researchers …

Runx2 Is Essential For Maintaining Synchondrosis Chondrocytes And Cranial Base Growth, Shawn A Hallett, Ashley Dixon, Isabella Marrale, Lena Batoon, José Brenes, Annabelle Zhou, Ariel Arbiv, Vesa Kaartinen, Benjamin Allen, Wanida Ono, Renny T Franceschi, Noriaki Ono

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The cranial base synchondroses, comprised of opposite-facing bidirectional chondrocyte layers, drive anteroposterior cranial base growth. In humans, RUNX2 haploinsufficiency causes cleidocranial dysplasia associated with deficient midfacial growth. However, how RUNX2 regulates chondrocytes in the cranial base synchondroses remains unknown. To address this, we inactivated Runx2 in postnatal synchondrosis chondrocytes using a tamoxifen-inducible Fgfr3-creER (Fgfr3-Runx2cKO) mouse model. Fgfr3-Runx2cKO mice displayed skeletal dwarfism and reduced anteroposterior cranial base growth associated with premature synchondrosis ossification due to impaired chondrocyte proliferation, accelerated hypertrophy, apoptosis, and osteoclast-mediated cartilage resorption. Lineage tracing reveals that Runx2-deficient Fgfr3+ cells failed to differentiate into osteoblasts. Notably, Runx2-deficient chondrocytes showed …

Teachers’ Use Of Generative Artificial Intelligence For Designing Science Lessons In Support Of Environmental Science Agency, Won Jung Kim

Teacher Education

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) holds promise as a tool to assist teachers in addressing specific instructional design and implementation tasks. This study explores how teachers in a master’s-level elementary science methods course used Large Language Model AI, as one type of GenAI, to design lessons fostering students’ environmental science agency (ESA). The course introduced ESA as one of pedagogical constructs that emphasize the importance of science learning relevant and consequential to students’ lives, and encouraged teachers to use GenAI for their ESA-focused lesson design projects. Data sources included surveys, lesson design documents, GenAI chat logs, and field notes. Findings, derived …

The Sauce To Meat Is Ceremony: Cannibalism And Hospitality Serve As Horror And Culture Tropes In Hannibal And Macbeth, Shay Williams

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

When examining Macbeth (1623) as a case study within Shakespeare’s canon, we see all the obvious horror tropes - murder, witches, a ghost, bodies, blood and gore. What is less pronounced is the horror that lies within eating, drinking, feasting, and the ceremony of banquets. On the other side of the spectrum, and unlike the character of Macbeth, we have a figure that epitomizes all things horror, and has been read about in novels, watched on film, and as of late (2013-2015) has been the subject of a Television show, aptly named: Hannibal. In both works, we encounter men/monsters/killers …

“Honey, Life Is Just A Classroom:” Using Taylor Swift As A Pedagogical Tool For College Composition, Liz Thomae

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

As educators, we confront the challenge of cultivating a deeper understanding of writing in an age obsessed with utilitarianism, instant gratification, and pragmatism. Students come into our classrooms inundated with these messages of utility and often find subjects within the humanities, especially first year writing, boring and unhelpful. Especially with the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) use in our classrooms and society at large, we as pedagogues have our work cut out for us. I propose a pedagogical approach that bridges students' interests with essential writing skills by integrating Taylor Swift's music into the composition classroom. Swift's evolution as …

Targeting Neuronal Nitric Oxide Synthase (Nnos) As A Novel Approach To Enhancing The Anti-Melanoma Activity Of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors, Anika R. Patel, Shirley Tong, Kate Alison Lozada, Amardeep Awasthi, Richard B. Silverman, Jennifer Totonchy, Sun Yang

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Background and Objectives: Neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) overexpressed in melanoma plays a critical role in disease progression. Our previous studies demonstrated that nNOS inhibitors exhibited potent anti-melanoma activity and regulated PD-L1 expressions in the presence of interferon-gamma (IFN-γ). However, the role of nNOS in the melanoma immune response has not been well defined. Methods: Changes in gene expression profiles after nNOS inhibitor treatment were determined by transcriptomic analysis. A melanoma mouse model was used to determine the effects of nNOS inhibition on peripheral T cells and the in vivo anti-tumor activity of combining nNOS inhibitors with immune …