Digital Commons Network^™

Mapping Seafloor Habitats And Characterizing Demersal Reef Fish Communities On The West Florida Shelf Across Multiple Spatial Scales Using Multibeam Sonar And Underwater Video, Alexander R. Ilich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the role of spatial scale in deriving seafloor terrain attributes, modeling benthic habitat, and analyzing ecological patterns of the demersal reef fish communities on the West Florida Shelf (WFS), with implications for improving predictive habitat mapping and understanding fish-environment relationships. Spatial scale plays a central role in benthic habitat mapping and ecological inference, influencing how terrain attributes are derived, how habitats are modeled, and how ecological responses are manifested. This work integrates multiscale terrain analysis, acoustic remote sensing, and community ecology to evaluate how spatial scale influences both physical habitat representation and ecological analysis.

Chapter …

Enhancing The Resilience Of Informal Economies In Coastal Cities Against Climate Change: An Integrated Framework For Development, Adaptation, And Mitigation A Global Comparative Case Study Of Alexandria, Safaa Mohamed Abobakr, Marwa Mohamed Hassan Elrashidey

Emirates Journal for Engineering Research

This study addresses the escalating environmental, social, and economic challenges confronting informal settlements in coastal cities, with a specific focus on Alexandria, Egypt, as a representative model of the global coastal urban crisis. The research problem centers on the extreme vulnerability of the informal sector—which constitutes approximately 55%–60% of the city’s workforce—to climate change risks, particularly sea-level rise and recurrent storm surges (Nawat). These phenomena result in chronic livelihood disruptions, with an average operational downtime of seven days per storm event, alongside the significant loss of direct physical assets.

The study employs an integrated analytical methodology that synthesizes a literature …

Risks And Security Strategies In The Global Lithium Resource Supply Chain, Wang Qifeng, Cong Xiao

Dianchi(Changsha)

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of International Trade Liberalization On Oil And Gas Management Policies In Developing Countries: A Case Study Of Indonesia, Bagus Satrio Utomo, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, Suyono Thamrin, Donny Yusgiantoro

Indonesian Journal of International Law

This study aims to analyze the impact of international trade liberalization on oil and gas management policies in developing countries, with a focus on Indonesia as a case study. As a country rich in natural resources, Indonesia faces challenges in maintaining sovereignty over the management of its national oil and gas industry amidst commitments to international trade agreements such as the GATT/WTO. Through a qualitative approach and analysis of international agreement documents, national regulations, and oil and gas industry data, this study finds a significant influence of trade liberalization principles on oil and gas management policies in Indonesia. The results …

Legacy Vs. Luxury: Generational Stadium Design And Fan Perceptions In Professional Sport, Joshua Greer, Tim Wilson

Global Sport Business Journal

This study examines whether generational differences in National Football League (NFL) stadium design influence fans' evaluations of venue quality, addressing a gap in the sport management literature on the relative importance of modernization versus heritage in shaping spectator satisfaction. Drawing on the sportscape framework and environmental psychology, the study analyzes 539,660 fan-generated online reviews from across 30 NFL stadiums. Composite satisfaction scores were calculated and used to assess relationships among stadium age, capacity, and perceived quality.

Results indicate no statistically significant difference in satisfaction between legacy stadiums (opened before 2000) and new-generation venues (opened in 2000 or later). Although legacy …

Field Research In Rural Geography: Limits And Possibilities, Omar Adil

BOUHOUT

No abstract provided.

Strategies Health Care Leaders Use To Align Financial Sustainability With Quality Patient Care, Emmanuel Nyamboga Maseno

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Examining The Role Of Physical Illustrations Within The Home To Represent Our Connections With The Climate Emergency And Its Potential For Climate Action, Devon Tipping

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

In a time of upheaval and rapid change individuals and society arechallenged emotionally, often expressed as anxiety and a sense of powerlessness.This is particularly relevant in terms of environmental issues and in the context ofthe climate emergency which has contributed to a rise in eco-anxiety. Within thiscontext, illustration can offer valuable tools to inspire climate action. Artwork, acommon feature in most homes, is often viewed daily, yet can it serve a purposebeyond decoration?The project, Floriography, explored how images within domestic spaces can fosterclimate awareness. The focus was to engage people who may find climateconversations overwhelming, using illustration to introduce these …

Navigating The Cocoon: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Mothers’ Experiences Of Seeking Diagnosis And Services For Children With Disabilities In Insular Rural American Samoa, Elizabeth Cutrer, Ocean K. Akau, Lorena Seu, Isabel Medina Hull, G. E. Kawika Allen, Ofa H. Kanuch, Cameron W. H. Hee, Melia Fonoimoana Garrett

Faculty Publications

This study examines how mothers raising children with disabilities in American Samoa experience the processes of seeking diagnosis, navigating special education, and advocating for services within an insular rural context. American Samoa, an unincorporated U.S. territory located 2600 miles from Hawaiʻi with a population under 50,000, represents a case of what we term insular rurality—a condition in which the structural disadvantages of rurality are intensified by oceanic isolation, territorial governance, and colonial history. Data were collected through three focus groups with fifteen mothers whose children hold a range of disability diagnoses, with a card sort activity at the outset of …

Predicting Urban Heat‐Related Illness Across U.S. Climate Regions And Demographics, S. E. Brown, Vivek Shandas

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

We still know relatively little about how climate, demographics, built environment, and behaviors interact to drive hospitalizations during extreme heat events (EHEs). To address this paucity in understanding, we draw on extant literature to develop a transdisciplinary discrete event system dynamics (SD) modeling approach to address two research questions about the relationship between EHEs and heat‐related illnesses (HRIs): (a) How will changes in EHE frequencies, intensities, and durations in major Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) across the contiguous United States (CONUS) Climate Regions drive HRI morbidity across demographic, health‐status, and household groups over the coming decades? and (b) What are the …

Philanthropic Grantmakers’ Roles In Transforming Higher Education: A Narrative Inquiry, Elizabeth Jean Larkin Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Philanthropic foundations have become influential actors in higher education reform, often supporting initiatives to improve student success, advance equity, and promote systemic change. Yet limited research has examined how philanthropic grantmakers understand and navigate their roles in shaping long-term change across the higher education field. This narrative inquiry explored the personal and professional experiences of eight philanthropic grantmakers working across different foundations, roles, and organizational contexts in the United States. Guided by organizational change theory, Strategic Action Fields theory, and sustainability planning in dynamic systems, the study examined how grantmakers made sense of their responsibilities, influence, and contributions to systemic …

Examining The Referral Pathway For Black Families Evaluated Through The Early Steps Program, Zelda Fleming

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates that for children with or at risk for developmental delays, early intervention services are associated with improvements in academic and cognitive skills by the time they reach kindergarten (Atkins et al., 2020; Litt et al., 2017). Untreated developmental delays are linked to early school failure and social and emotional problems (Sher et al., 2020). Black children are 5 times less likely to receive early intervention services when compared to their White peers (Barnard-Brak et al., 2021; Feinberg et al.,2011). Thus, they often do not have the opportunity to receive early intervention services. The literature in this area suggests …

Applied Geography In Morocco: Current State And Prospects, Al-Akhal Al-Mukhtar

Bouhout

No abstract provided.

The Soil Crisis In Modern Food Systems: Rethinking Agricultural Land Use, Antonia Moure Richard

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Feeding a larger world while preserving the resource that makes agriculture possible—soil—poses a governance problem. By 2050, food systems must support 9.8 billion people even as prevailing practices continue to degrade soils that are non-renewable on human timescales. Technological fixes (e.g., vertical farming, hydroponics) may complement production, but they cannot substitute for soil at scale. The question that follows is simple: are current uses of soil compatible with the future needs of food systems? This article argues that without a shift in governance, short-run productivity gains are achieved by drawing down the soil asset, thereby undermining long-run food security and …

Tables Analytiques Des Titres Et Des Auteurs : Index Des Auteurs - Poej 1945-2010, Nada Corbani Akl, Abla Abi Nader

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Tables Analytiques Des Titres Et Des Auteurs : Index Des Titres - Poej 1945-2010, Nada Corbani Akl, Abla Abi Nader

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Tables Analytiques Des Titres Et Des Auteurs : Index Des Matières - Poej 1945-2010, Nada Corbani Akl, Abla Abi Nader

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

At-Gpsr: Adaptive Trajectory To Support Geographic Routing Protocol In Uav Assisted Vanet, Bassam Hasan

Al-Farahidi Expert Systems Journal

Connectivity and data delivery latency in vehicular networks are strongly affected by the high dynamism of vehicular traffic, which depend on many random factors. Under the inevitable constraints imposed by road paths and free-flowing vehicular traffic conditions (e.g., low to medium vehicle density, high mobility, high speeds), these networks suffer from fast topology variations that lead to frequent disconnections. Consequently, communications experience increased data delivery latency. Establishing a connection between source and destination vehicles depends heavily on vehicle density along the road. UAV assistance becomes more necessary as vehicle density along the road decreases. Moreover, when a road segment is …

Smart City Utopia: Between Marketing And Humanization ``Epistemological Reading'', Fidaa Faez Zayna

Al-Farahidi Expert Systems Journal

The review offers a critical reading of the politicization of contemporary urban problems. Recently, numerous headlines and ideas have emerged regarding the ongoing quest to meet planning standards that keep pace with significant developments in the special needs of the population, but this quest has not been neutral with respect to the main goal of achieving the ``humanization'' of the city's constituent elements. The review discusses whether Urban Media Marketing of the ``fashion'' of smart cities, smart planning and other attractive titles ``within the framework of ``Urban Marketing'' has produced cities that respect human privacy. The review also touches on …

Agentic Ai Approach For Online Financial Fraud Detection, Shadi Saleh, Kelechi Osuji, Wolfram Hardt

Al-Farahidi Expert Systems Journal

As digital payment systems facilitate billions of transactions every day, there is a high probability of fraudulent activities in these systems. Traditional fraud detection systems, including rule-based systems and machine learning-based systems, have three major limitations: lack of explainability in terms of regulatory requirements, lack of contextual reasoning in terms of rare behavioral patterns, and lack of interaction with human experts in fraud analysis. This paper proposes a novel agentic framework in fraud detection systems by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) in context-aware reasoning based on historical transaction evidence. The framework is designed as a system …

The Layered Knowledge Profile, Harendra A. Alwis Mr.

Defensive Publications Series

The Open Knowledge Format (OKF) gives the world a portable, vendor-neutral envelope for knowledge — markdown files with YAML frontmatter, cross-linked into a graph — and, by deliberate design, declines to specify how the knowledge inside that envelope should be organised, requiring only a single type field and defining the interoperability surface rather than the content model. The Layered Knowledge Profile (LKP) supplies the content model that OKF leaves open. It encodes, as machine-readable structure expressed entirely within OKF's own conventions, the asymmetric ontological dependency among the four realms of reality described by Alwis (2026), so that a body of …

Board-Certified Behavior Analysts Experiences In Providing Health Insurance Resources To Parents Of Children With Autism, Martins Acha

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Underground Economic Transformation On The Indonesia-Timor Leste Border: From Stigma To Inclusion Strategy, David Kaluge, Agus Suman, Marlina Ekawati, Frederic Winston Nalle

Forest and Society

This study investigates the dynamics of the underground economy in the Indonesia–Timor-Leste border region, focusing on how cross-border informal activities evolve into a socially legitimized parallel economic system. Employing a qualitative case study approach, the research was conducted in four regencies of East Nusa Tenggara Province that directly border Timor-Leste, utilizing field observations, in-depth interviews, and policy document analysis. The findings reveal that underground economic practices are not merely acts of legal transgression but adaptive responses to structural exclusion, regulatory ambiguity, and the absence of effective state services. Three primary factors sustain these activities: strong kinship-based social networks, cost-efficiency rationality …

Local Public Employees' Perceptions Of Climate Change Adaptation Capacity In South Sulawesi, Indonesia, Andi Lukman Irwan, Andi M. Rusli, Muhammad Chaeroel Ansar

Forest and Society

This study examines the perceptions of local government officials regarding adaptive capacity to climate change in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. While previous research often emphasizes technical or structural aspects, this study offers a perception-based and multidimensional approach, capturing institutional views from within key climate-sensitive agencies. Data were collected through a structured survey involving 576 purposively selected respondents from five provincial departments. Adaptive capacity was assessed across five dimensions: environmental, social, financial, political, and human resources. The results reveal relatively high awareness of environmental issues and internal collaboration, yet significant weaknesses in financial resources, public engagement, and human capital. Regression analysis …

Interview With Geoffrey 'Geoff' Alger, Geoffrey 'Geoff' Alger, Logan Dovalina

Rio Grande Valley Oral Histories

Geoff Alger (b. 1961, Glen Cove, New York) was interviewed on June 23–24, 2026, at his home in McAllen, Texas, by Logan Dovalina. The interview covers Alger’s life and career as a museum professional deeply rooted in Rio Grande Valley history.

Alger recounts his family’s 1971 move from Long Island to McAllen, his parents’ museum careers (McAllen International Museum, Museum of South Texas History, Confederate Air Force), and his own path from a teenage volunteer to decade-long employment at the Confederate Air Force museum. He discusses later roles as curator and exhibits specialist at museums in Oregon and the Valley …

The Empathetic-Perverse: A Contemporary Exploration Of The Grotesque In Southern Gothic Literature, Halle Elizabeth Griggs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Contemporary scholars and critics alike can agree that much of our understanding of Southern Gothic literature and its relation to the grotesque comes from Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor often portrays a transformation within that of grotesque characters (characters with moral flaws and/or physical disabilities). These transformations, depicted through use of pain, violence, and outlandish behavior, help to bring these grotesque characters closer to God, experiencing a sort of divine grace or redemption. Yet, often these grotesque characters are depicted in a way void of compassion. Despite describing fiction from the middle of the last century, most critics still rely on the …

Preparing Preservice Teachers: Developing Skills For Working With Students With Disabilities In The Social Studies Classroom, Melissa Waugh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was aimed towards investigating the extant research, best practices, and teacher preparation standards related to working with students with disabilities in the social studies classroom. The study was guided using three research questions: Are students with disabilities’ learning needs reflected in the National Council for Social Studies National Standards for the Preparation of Social Studies Teachers?; How do preservice social studies teacher programs prepare their candidates for teaching students with disabilities as evidenced by Social Science Education methods course syllabi?; and, What might a college-level course aimed towards social studies teaching methods centering around students with disabilities’ learning …

Movement Ecology And Population Dynamics Of Box-Nesting Black-Bellied Whistling-Ducks (Dendrocygna Autumnalis) In Louisiana, Katie E. Miranda

LSU Master's Theses

Understanding demographic and behavioral processes underlying population dynamics is essential for effective wildlife management, especially for species subject to harvest pressure or experiencing population shifts. Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks (Dendrocygna autumnalis) are currently undergoing a notable northward range expansion and are increasing in abundance across the southeastern United States, raising management concerns for both ecological and economic reasons. As a result, there is growing public support for a special Black-bellied Whistling-Duck-specific harvest season, yet little research has been conducted on this species, particularly within newly-established populations. To address this gap, I conducted this study with the goal of evaluating seasonal …

Freshwater Harmful Algal Blooms (Habs) Public Health Message Efficacy Evaluation, Alexandra Benitez Gonzalez, Heather A. Triezenberg, Diane Doberneck, Abigail Bennett, Mark Rey

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) can present health risks to humans, animals, or ecosystems. Communicating with the public about HABs risks can be challenging because symptoms vary in type and severity across different individuals. However, people with underlying health conditions are often particularly vulnerable to exposure, and they may experience negative health outcomes if they lack awareness of the risks that HABs pose. Literature on risk communication suggests that the way messages are framed influences the impact on risk perception and behavioral intentions. To provide insight into how agencies and practitioners can more effectively communicate health risks from HABs, we designed …

Dentists' Attitudes Regarding Diagnostic Codes In Dentistry, Mary A. Baechle Dds, Robert B. Allen Dds, Al M. Best Phd

Virginia Dental Journal

No abstract provided.