Digital Commons Network^™

Dónde Están: Searching For Desaparecidos Of The Argentine Dirty War, Paula Fleischer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is a data physicalization textile representing the 30,000 'desaparecidos' from the Argentine Dirty War of late 1970s. The large quilt visualizes the official count of 9,000 missing persons in the shape of a headscarf worn by their mothers and grandmothers, while the overall dimensions of the quilt acknowledges 30,000 missing persons. The quilt and accompanying missing persons posters encourage the viewer to interact with the data, however the observed reluctance to engage influenced the direction of this discussion about the hegemonic disinclination to get involved when authority figures 'disappear' fellow residents of our communities.

Medication Adherence Among Partnered, Sexual Minority Men Living With Hiv: What’S Love, Interdependence And Comorbidities Got To Do With It?, Kendell M. Doyle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sexual minority men (SMM) report higher incidence and prevalence rates of HIV infection relative to their heterosexual counterparts. The burden of HIV infection has garnered research attention focused on HIV risk reduction and HIV disease management (such as medication adherence). More recently, attention has been paid to the association of comorbid chronic health conditions and ART adherence among people living with HIV (PLWH) more broadly. Yet, limited attention has been paid to the association of comorbidities among SMM living with HIV specifically, despite the high rates of HIV among this population and various other risk factors that put SMM at …

The Density Distribution Of The Material Around Betelgeuse, Iman Behbehani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star visible in the constellation Orion. Its windy and highly convective surface results in a complicated mass loss pattern difficult to understand and replicate in simulations. The ejected mass can form a shell around the star we consider the circumstellar material (CSM). In this study, we use ALMA interferometric observations to find the structure of Betelgeuse's CSM, and connect to the mass loss mechanisms that could form it. We measure a bipolar circumstellar structure with a position angle of 42.3$\pm 7.0^\circ$. We observe asymmetries in the form of hot spots in the north east of …

Novel Machine Learning Methods For Quasar Variability And Strong Gravitational Lensing, Joshua Fagin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Machine learning methods are well suited to handle the unprecedented data volume expected from upcoming wide-field surveys. The European Space Agency's Euclid telescope was launched in July 2023 and is expected to observe billions of galaxies at high resolution, including tens of thousands of strongly lensed galaxies. The Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will monitor tens of millions of quasars throughout its ten-year lifetime, thousands of which will be strongly lensed. This flood of data will enable measuring lens galaxy mass distributions and substructure, as well as probing quasar accretion disk structure and black hole properties …

In A Dark Wood Amid The Storm: Literary Representations Of Midlife In The Social And Political Turbulence Of A Kindred Era, Robert Mccreanor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The apparent parallels between the social and political crises of the 19-teens’s to 1930’s and those of today is a source of popular fascination and commentary. Some have argued that much of our current anxieties about impending global doom harken back to the widespread doomsaying of exactly a century ago in relation to World War I, the 1918 Spanish Influenza and the rising authoritarianism of the 1930’s. Exploration of the midlife experience amid 21^st century political and social crises has been prolific and can also be seen to echo literary representations of this particular life stage from the seemingly …

Transitional Justice And Counter-Productivity: A Case Study Of Serbia And Croatia, Michael F. Curry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the post-Cold War era, transitional justice emerged as a method to reconcile societies that had suffered large-scale human rights abuses through autocratic oppression and/or intra-state conflicts. During this time, the concept of what transitional justice meant and what problems it could resolve expanded exponentially. However, the empirical results of such initiatives have been mixed. Many states subject to transitional justice initiatives have failed to liberalize or develop domestic governance capacities. Why do transitional justice initiatives fail even under the most favorable conditions?

The most common answer to this question is that these initiatives are often ineffective, hindered by a …

Stolen Moments: Jazz And The Opportunity To Capture Hip Hop Fans, Fahiym Abdul-Wasi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the intricate relationship between jazz and hip-hop, examining how these two influential genres intersect culturally and musically. Jazz, with its rich history and expressive improvisation, laid the groundwork for hip-hop, a genre that emerged as a powerful voice for Black Americans and other disenfranchised communities. The thesis highlights the impact of sampling, a fundamental technique in hip-hop that allows artists to repurpose jazz recordings and thereby preserve their legacy while infusing contemporary narratives. By analyzing key albums and the contributions of notable artists, this study underscores the potential for reintroducing jazz to new audiences through hip-hop. As …

“Justice, Justice Pursue”: Coworker Reactions To Religious Workplace Accommodations, Joshua A. Nagel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines coworker reactions to religious accommodations in the workplace, a growing necessity as religious diversity increases, and recent legislation strengthens protections for religious observances. Religious accommodations can provoke perceptions of differential treatment, impacting coworker morale, cooperation, and organizational cohesion. While extensive research exists on disability accommodations, religious accommodations differ fundamentally as they often relate to moral beliefs and are viewed variably in terms of necessity and controllability. Drawing on organizational justice theories, this dissertation applies and modifies Colella’s (2001) and Colella et al.’s (2004) models for coworker perceptions of distributive and procedural fairness of disability accommodations to the …

The Spaces Between: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Classical Music Performance Practice, Fifi Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In his theory of duration, the philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) asserts that the present moment is “both a perception of the immediate past and a determination of the immediate future…a joint system of sensations and movements.” In an ideal musical performance, this sensori-motor apparatus guides every one of the performer’s decisions on stage, resulting in an aural experience that is spontaneous, visceral, and deeply personal. In practice, much of today’s classical music performance culture, which relies heavily on visual notation and prioritizes fidelity to the composer’s intent, is antithetical to fundamental artistic values such as creativity, individual self-expression, and direct …

Origin And Maintenance Of The Andean Bird Fauna, Elkin A. Tenorio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The origin and maintenance of the tropical montane diversity have been evaluated over multiple decades using various techniques and perspectives. Despite major progress in understanding phylogenetic relationships, diversification patterns, distributional data, and general ecology in the Andean biota, large gaps in our understanding remain, particularly in the synthesis across scales. To fill these gaps, I aimed to explore patterns and processes that underlie species diversification in birds of the tropical Andes of South America by combining different approaches using phenotypic, phylogenetic, and genomic data in multiple temporal and spatial scales.

In the first chapter, I examined the macroevolutionary patterns of …

An Interpolating Regime For The Extreme Values Of A Random Zeta Model, Christine K. Chang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We study the large values of a random model of the Riemann zeta function over short intervals. The extreme value statistics depend on the interval size: the log-correlated regime governs intervals of order one while the i.i.d. regime emerges over longer intervals. The main focus is to describe the transition between these two well-understood regimes as the interval varies in length. This thesis shows that there is an intermediate regime where the behavior of the zeta model’s maxima cannot be entirely captured by either extreme— i.i.d. or fully log-correlated. This suggests that the Riemann zeta function exhibits correlations around its …

The Interaction Of Multilingualism And Depressed Mood On Cognitive Set-Shifting, Annalise Caviasco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although findings are mixed, many researchers believe there are cognitive benefits to multilingualism, a phenomenon dubbed the “bilingual advantage”. Of these apparent benefits, cognitive flexibility, or the ability to shift thinking styles based on the context or specific demands of a certain situation, is thought to be highly relevant. Current literature suggests that one aspect of multilingualism, the practice of “code-switching” between languages throughout their daily lives, is related to increased general cognitive flexibility compared to monolinguals. Another branch of research on cognitive flexibility investigating the role of affect in cognition demonstrates that clinical depression as well as transient negative …

The Question Of Money: State, Protest, And Informal Currencies In The Wake Of Greece’S Economic Crisis, Helen Panagiotopoulos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Monetary unions are designed to foster political, social, and economic integration among member states by enabling the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. Yet when a member nation faces economic crisis, citizens may respond by creating monetary systems of their own. This research asks whether such practices are simply demonstrations of human resiliency and adaptability, or whether they also challenge the very idea of a shared market and currency that do not align with national identity. Greece offers a crucial case for this inquiry. Following the 2008 debt crisis, austerity measures led to economic depression, mass unemployment, and …

Choreographies Of Care: Disability And Relationality In Performance, Kiera Bono

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation explores enactments of what I am calling “choreographies of care” in interdisciplinary performance practices in the 21^st century. Working across disability studies, race and ethnicity studies, queer theory, and performance studies, I investigate the ways in which chronically ill and disabled artists have generated multisensorial movement, sound, and performance works that resist normative understandings of time, space, bodies, and interactions between bodies. Focusing mostly on performances and events that I have attended in New York City or virtually over the past decade, my project engages directly with disability arts communities in which I have been deeply embedded …

Relevant Deformations Of Brane Brick Models, Georgios P. Goulas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The thesis studies relevant deformations of 2d gauge theories with $\mathcal{N}=(0,2)$ supersymmetry, realized on the worldvolume of D1-branes probing toric Calabi-Yau 4-folds. Brane brick models are the primary means for engineering such theories and streamlining their connection to geometry. In this thesis, we relevant deformations of brane brick models, focusing on a specific class of deformations in which the initial and final theories are both described by brane brick models. Relevant deformations serve as an additional, systematic way of generating these theories, as well as uncovering connections between them. Within the framework of brane engineering, these deformations acquire a geometric …

Disability Theatre Communities: Engaging Artists And Audiences In Contemporary International Performance, Joseph Paul Hill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Disability Theatre Communities” examines how communities are constructed in, through, and around contemporary international disability theatre performances. It explores ideas of community formation and intersection across three case studies to elucidate the various ways in which disability theatre artists, productions, companies, and organizations attract, engage, and educate variable artist and audience communities. The project analyzes Rome, Italy’s Teatro Patologico and its Integrated Theatre of Emotion, a theatrical training program for neurodivergent performers; Wales-based writer, theatre-maker, and dramaturg Kaite O’Reilly, whose international collaborations center d/Deaf and disabled performers and foreground audience accessibility; and the biennial BIT (Blind in Theatre) International Festival …

Towards Automated Evolution Of Imperative Deep Learning Programs, Tatiana Castro-Vélez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Software engineering (SE) is increasingly intersecting with data-centric domains such as machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL). Similar to bugs in traditional software systems, defects can emerge in ML and DL systems. ML, including DL, systems are now widespread and rely on dynamic models defined by input data. Developers face the challenge of building dependable systems while addressing the demand for scalable software.

Efficiency is essential to support responsiveness with respect to ever-growing datasets. Traditional DL frameworks achieve scalability through deferred execution, enabling symbolic, graph-based deep neural network (DNN) computation. While efficient, this approach is error-prone, cumbersome, and difficult …

Non-Linear Heart Rate Variability: Investigating Cardiac Complexity Of Psychopathic Traits, Khaya A. Roach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psychopathy is a complex personality disorder characterized by distinct emotional and interpersonal deficits, and affects approximately 25% of the prison population and 4.5% of nonincarcerated populations. The manifestation of psychopathy can be understood through two distinct variants, each demonstrating unique etiological pathways and clinical presentations. Primary psychopathy is characterized by core interpersonal and affective deficits, including shallow emotions and manipulativeness, while demonstrating reduced autonomic responsivity and lower anxiety levels. Secondary psychopathy presents with higher levels of impulsivity, anxiety, and emotional dysregulation, showing stronger associations with various psychopathologies. Treatment outcomes also vary between the variants, with primary psychopaths typically showing poor …

Leveraging Stellar Chemistry For A Global View Into The Atmospheres Of Brown Dwarfs And Giant Exoplanets, Emily Calamari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), it is now possible to examine substellar mass atmospheres in unparalleled detail and precision. However, unraveling the complicated thermodynamics and chemistry in these atmospheres remains a challenge. Atmospheric retrievals are a leading data-driven technique capable of recovering an object’s fundamental parameters such as mass, radius, effective temperature, gravity, cloud structure and composition and chemical abundances. However, in directly imaged or isolated worlds, constraining and/or interpreting these fundamental parameters can be difficult, particularly as retrieval models try to parameterize the overall impact of clouds.

For my dissertation, I turned to main …

Teaching And Technology: "You Can't Just Do The Same Thing Online", Sakina Laksimi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how faculty at the City University of New York navigated the abrupt transition to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing how pedagogy is shaped by technological, institutional, and social conditions. Drawing on twenty-two interviews with twelve faculty across eight disciplines, I use a grounded theory approach to analyze how instructors adapted courses, reimagined assessment, and sustained connection with students amid crisis. Three overlapping pedagogical orientations emerged: improvisational, relational, and design-based teaching. These approaches highlight how faculty balanced responsiveness, care, and intentional course design in environments mediated by digital platforms and marked by inequity. The study situates …

Asian American Artists, Improvisation, And Collaboration, Johnna Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of my dissertation is to explore how contemporary Asian Americans artist-performers have formulated their identities through collaborations with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The project addresses issues in the existing literature on this topic and provides an alternative framework of cosmopolitanism to understanding the multidimensional aspects of artistic collaborations. The dissertation examines the history of the AACM and the Asian American improvisers and reveals ideological differences among its members on how music should reflect their identities. These histories paved the way for the artist subjects of my three case studies: Miya Masaoka, Vijay Iyer, …

The Effect Of Tbi On Working Memory And Anxiety In Rats, Mariola Sobolewska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a significant public health concern, often leading to cognitive and emotional impairments. This study examined the effects of TBI on working memory and anxiety-like behavior in young male Sprague-Dawley rats using the Radial Arm Maze (RAM) and Elevated Plus Maze (EPM), which are behavioral assessments. The RAM tests spatial working memory by evaluating the animal’s ability to remember and efficiently navigate multiple arms to retrieve rewards. The EPM assesses anxiety-like behavior based on the animal’s preference for open versus closed arms. The study utilized young male Sprague-Dawley rats, a well-established rodent model known for its …

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Characterization For The Study Of Beyond Lithium-Ion Battery Electrolytes, Allen Zheng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

To achieve a sustainable future, key issues in the energy and construction sectors such as the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and recycling of waste construction materials must be addressed. While fossil fuels offer a high energy density source of quick, consistent energy, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric offer intermittent energy output, requiring energy storage systems to maintain steady energy availability for consumers. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and grid storage due to their high energy density, low self-discharge, and rechargeability. However, they are limited by high …

Form And Structure In African Music: Four Case Studies In San, Por Por, Ewe, And Aka Music, Bai Xue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the organizational principles in African music through the analysis of four distinct musical traditions: the San music of Southern Africa, Por Por honk-horn music of urban Accra (Ghana), the Northern and Southern Ewe music of Ghana, and the Aka music of the Central African Republic. While the study of African music has often emphasized its sociocultural and rhythmic aspects, structural principles have remained a relatively underexplored subject. This study argues that African music is highly structural yet should not be analyzed as fixed blueprints. Instead, it introduces a “block-based method” for analyzing oral music, the first step …

The Salience Of Function Words In Implicit Statistical Linguistic Learning: An Erp Investigation, Daniel M. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research has indicated that children and adults can implicitly learn language patterns; however, questions still remain regarding the role and nature of implicit learning, particularly of sequential patterns. Implicit statistical learning is a type of unconscious learning of sequential patterns, which may be especially relevant to phrase structure learning. Prior studies have highlighted the differential processing of function words (FWs), such as determiners, relative to content and nonsense words and have also pointed to particular neural response patterns (specifically, Anterior Negativity, or AN) to early syntactic violations. To date, there is relatively little work directly investigating the role of FWs …

Repurposing Atractylenolide Iii, A Natural Anti-Inflammatory Compound, For Alzheimer’S Disease, Angela M. Steele

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurological condition ranked as the fifth leading cause of death in adults over the age of 65. Despite the severity, 98% of drugs have failed as treatments for AD. Current novel drug development approaches have been unable to produce a disease-modifying treatment as they often have a one-target approach, not accounting for the complex nature of the disease. One of the hallmarks of the disease, inflammation, may provide a better target for treatment because it interacts with multiple facets of the disease. Drug repurposing to identify compounds that mitigate inflammation in AD could provide …

Text-Based Propaganda Detection, Vivek Sharma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the digital age, the swift consumption of news and the widespread dissemination of propaganda significantly threaten democratic principles and informed decision-making. News organizations, often aligned politically, tailor their content to appeal to specific audiences, thereby perpetuating biases. Despite advancements in detecting propaganda through various computational techniques, including Large Language Models(LLM) and BERT-based approaches, significant challenges persist concerning data availability and the effectiveness of detection tools. This thesis explores the landscape of text-based propaganda and reviews related research in textual analysis. It introduces a novel method for collecting a social-media based dataset, which includes analysis of journalists' tweets to discern …

The Architecture Of Exclusion: Disability, Race, And The History Of New York City’S 600 Schools, Francine Almash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the largely erased history of New York City’s 600 schools—segregated public schools created to house students labeled as emotionally disturbed or socially maladjusted. These institutions, operating throughout the mid-20th century, disproportionately served Black and Puerto Rican youth, many of whom were placed in these schools under vague behavioral criteria and with little to no pathway for return to general education settings.

Combining archival research, longitudinal policy analysis, historical media review, and critical race and disability studies frameworks—including DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Theory)—this project situates the 600 schools at the intersection of institutional racism and ableism. It argues …

Online Resources For Oral Communication Courses, Sean P. Palmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Online resources focusing on oral communication skills are lacking, even as online education itself expands. While I was aware of this lack, I didn’t realize its severity until LaGuardia Community College went fully remote during the 2020 global pandemic, and I was looking for online tutoring aids for oral communication. Furthermore, the information presented online is frequently unsuitable for the purposes of online pedagogy due to its specialized and jargony mode of presentation. Also, many existing assignments involving oral communication assume public speaking as the default model, despite the growing importance of emergent digital modes of oral performance, like podcasting …

Bmp Signaling Co-Regulation Of Immune Response And Lipid Metabolism, Katerina K. Yamamoto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs) are secreted peptide ligands of the Transforming Growth Factor beta (TGF-β) family, initially identified for their roles in development and differentiation across animal species. They are now increasingly recognized for their roles in physiology and infectious disease. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the BMP ligand DBL-1 controls fat metabolism and immune response, in addition to its roles in body size regulation and development. DBL-1 regulates classical aspects of innate immunity, including the induction of anti-microbial peptides. We theorized that BMP-dependent regulation of fat metabolism could also promote resilience against microbial pathogens. We found that …