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Dotphotozine, Issue 15, 2026, Students Of The Csusb Art Department, Francis Almendarez

Dotphotozine

No abstract provided.

Is Nostalgia The Hidden Mechanic Of Mmorpgs?, Zoee Sowders

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

Since the advent of online gaming, MMORPG video games have allowed players to socialize and collaborate within the bounds of a virtual world. For many, these online worlds were an escape from their daily lives, a place where they could meet people with similar interests and embark on adventures impossible in real life.1 While many of the early MMORPG games faded into obscurity after the genre lost its shiny new sparkle, there are still a handful today that maintain player counts in the millions even after nearly two decades of operation. Specifically, World of Warcraft, Runescape, and Final Fantasy XIV …

Feeling Like A Woman: Interoception And The Objectified Body, Tomi-Ann Roberts, James W. Pennebaker, Benita Jackson

Psychology: Faculty Publications

Much of the interoception literature assumes that people can accurately detect their heart rate, stomach contractility, muscle tension, and other biological cues. This is not true. Instead, interoception is an active integrative psychological process where the feeling of one’s internal state emerges from physiological signals, contextual cues, and the social and cultural experiences of living in a body. Thinking of interoception this way shifts the focus from measuring accuracy at detecting biological signaling to studying lived experience. One such experience is the widespread objectification of women’s bodies. Living in a body that is chronically evaluated creates a particular form of …

Voices | Risd Mfa Illustration Anthology 2026, Illustration Department, Illustration Mfa, Jaleen Grove, Minglu Du, Manuela Guzman, Rhea Hu, Faith Huang, Burcu Koleli, Airien Ludin, Ranran Ma, Mervin Miao, Nayyab Naveed, Rhea Pradeep, Pingfan Que, Mot Tuman, Skye Wang

Illustration MFA Anthologies

Illustration has often been dismissed as just a mechanical art, concerned with technique more than intellect. In fact, illustration is a theory of something’s essence, expressed and communicated visually. Craftsmanship – or a playful, mindful lack of it – is always in service to a concept and a purpose. The Masters theses summarized in this book are the result of struggles to give form to more than the tangible world. As writers and visualizers our students picture new meanings and refreshed experiences for the familiar; they define things previously unnamed.

Taphonomy And Fossil Record Of Eufistulana Mumia In The Owl Creek Formation Of The Mississippi Embayment, Riley Rilette

Honors Theses

This study examines the taphonomy and preservation of Eufistulana mumia, a boring bivalve, within the Owl Creek Formation of northeastern Mississippi. The formation was deposited in a shallow marine environment of Maastrichtian age within the Mississippi Embayment. A total of 66 specimens were collected from exposures within the formation and analyzed to evaluate morphometric variation and orientation patterns. Field measurements of trend and plunge of each specimen were recorded in situ using a geological compass, and specimens were later prepared and measured in the laboratory with digital calipers. Morphometric results show consistent tube morphology, with basal widths larger than distal …

Bridging Communities Through Sport: A Social Work Study On Refugees Teaching Cricket To American Citizens, Nafees Alam

Social Work Faculty Publications

This qualitative study explores the psychosocial and communal impacts of a reciprocal integration initiative where refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia taught cricket to Americans in New York City, New York and Boise, Idaho (2022–2024). Grounded in Erikson's psychosocial theory and Bandura's self-efficacy framework, the study examines how sport fosters dignity, self-determination, and cross-cultural cohesion. This study recruited 15 refugee coaches and 30 American learners using qualitative methods through interviews, focus groups, and observations. Findings reveal refugee coaches gained self-worth and resolved Eriksonian conflicts, while 78% of American learners reported reduced stereotypes. Cricket fostered social capital, transforming public parks into …

Strategizing Environmental Preparedness In West Virginia, Molly Ann Hardy

Graduate Student Scholarship

The environmental justice (EJ) movement recognizes that environmental harms and goods are not equitably distributed, especially in regions that have faced historical marginalization, structural inequalities, and extractive exploitation, such as Appalachia. In West Virginia, the only state fully contained within the Appalachian region, a changing climate and the legacy of extractive industry have scarred the landscape and its people. All 55 counties have experienced floods, totaling more than 2,000 flash flood events, and each county has been declared a federal flood disaster site at least nine times. As of 2020, 21% of bridges maintained by the West Virginia Division of …

High-Resolution Monitoring Of Intra-Seasonal Agricultural Drought Using Sentinel-2 And Machine Learning Across Bimodal Growing Seasons In Kenya, S. Mohammad Mirmazloumi, Harison Kipkulei, Rose Waswa, Tobias Landmann, Tom Dienya, Maximilian Schwarz, Fabrizio Ramoino, Clément Albergel, Gohar Ghazaryan

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Drought presents significant challenges to agriculture, threatening food security and livelihoods, across many regions. In Kenya, recurrent droughts across diverse agro-ecological zones emphasize the urgent need for reliable and scalable drought assessment methods. Although drought assessment with various datasets has been carried out for this region, many of them often use course or moderate resolution data. This study uses high-resolution Sentinel-2 observations and machine learning to monitor intra-seasonal crop conditions and assess drought impacts across bimodal growing seasons. Using pixel-based supervised random forest models trained with multiple vegetation indices as input, we classify croplands into drought-affected and unaffected areas. The …

Narratives Of Dis-Ease: A Genre Study Of Pathography, Sylvelyn Jo A. Almanzor

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This essay establishes pathography as a distinct genre of creative nonfiction, tracing the development, form, and cultural significance of this body of literature. I have broadly defined it as narratives on personal experiences of Gabriel Marcel's "dis-ease"—covering and critiquing the human understanding and experience of sickness, pain, and grief—which has evolved from autobiographical narratives and life-writing of patients and medical professionals to a recognized form of creative nonfiction. This study will analyze the genre's structure, themes, and rhetorical strategies with consideration to cultural significance and how it negotiates the human understanding of suffering, healing, and societal attitudes toward existence and …

Reimagining Civic Readiness: Middle School Teachers’ Definition And Perceptions Of The Importance Of Civic Readiness, Razak K. Dwomoh

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

This article examines how middle school social studies teachers define “civic readiness,” how teacher motivation shapes civics instruction, and why middle-level civics is integral to engaged citizenship. The paper presents teachers as “curricular instructional gatekeepers” and argues that civic readiness (preparedness/willingness) differs significantly from civic competence (mastery) in terms of meaning, scope, and outcomes, proposing a four-staged pathway from readiness to engagement, then development, and finally to competence. It further provides an overview of three interrelated concepts (academic readiness, college readiness, and career readiness) to juxtapose civic readiness within the larger literary discourse. The …

Strengthening Students' Political Thinking Skills By Researching The Annexation Of Texas, Rebecca Macon Bidwell, Jeremiah Clabough

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

The unit plan in this manuscript uses best practices from the C3 Framework published by the National Council for the Social Studies and Wayne Journell’s ideas about political thinking to engage students in discussion of the politics leading to the nomination of Governor James K. Polk as the Democratic Party nominee for president in the U.S. 1844 presidential election. Students explore the impact of candidates’ views of the annexation of Texas during this election as well as the influence of President Jackson on the nomination process in the Democratic Party. Ultimately, the election pitted Governor James K. Polk, the dark …

Hitler Must Be Killed: A Wwii Case Study, Jeffrey Byford, Presley Shilling, Alisha Milam

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

Social studies education during the 1960s experienced an educational renaissance known as the new social studies movement. Over 50 projects were funded by the National Science Foundation or private corporations to interject a student-centered curriculum into K-12 classrooms during this period. Nearly 60 years later, can student-centered decision-making activities be used in an era of high-stakes testing and planned curriculum? This article attempts to rekindle students' interest in decision-making and discussion by exploring elements in Moral Reasoning: The Value of Life from the Harvard Social Studies Project (HSSP). The activity called "Hitler Must Be Killed" helped students bring the content …

Consumer Protest In A Hyperconnected World, Cara Lewis Levin, T. Andrew Poehlman, Angeline Scheinbaum

AMTP Proceedings 2026

Consumer protest in various forms—boycotts, negative word-of-mouth, brand sabotage—has largely been theorized within an “old” broadcast model of marketing, where firms spoke one-to-many and controlled most brand-related discourse. In contrast, today’s “hyperconnected” model embeds brands in dense human–technology networks, where social media, microtargeting, and always-on feeds shape how brands enter people’s lives and how protest unfolds. This paper argues that the informational substrate shift from broadcast to hyperconnectivity requires a fundamental rethinking of consumer protest. We first contrast the broadcast and hyperconnected models, then outline hyperconnectivity’s implications at the firm, consumer, and societal levels. We then revisit canonical constructs (e.g., …

Impending-Exit Period And Employee Performance: Rethinking Human Capital Disruption, Yea Hee Ko, Charlie O. Trevor

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The well-established disruptive effects of employee turnover on firms have typically been attributed to post-exit dynamics, such as losses of human and social capital. Little is known, however, about leavers’ pre-exit job performance, which, if declining in sufficient magnitude as separation nears, may drive some of this disruption. Drawing on career concerns research, we argue that impending exit weakens incentives to improve future career prospects at the firm, thereby resulting in reduced performance. Our analysis reveals strikingly large negative relationships, as job performance during the impending-exit period declines by 53.9% and 79.8% across two performance measures. Additionally, we predict and …

Advancing Fish Tissue Reference Material Development For Ag Nanoparticles Through A Perfusion Approach, Nathaniel J. Clark, Robert Clough, Adam Laycock, Rachel Smith, Richard D. Handy

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

There is a regulatory need for reliable methods to quantify nanoparticles in biological samples for the hazard assessment and bioaccumulation potential of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs). Single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) is a promising technique, but its application is hindered by the lack of validated sample preparation procedures (e.g., solubilisation) and suitable biological reference materials. This study aimed to develop an in-house biological reference material for ENMs to support analytical method validation. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) were introduced into rainbow trout via cardiac perfusion, with the gills and liver collected as target tissues. Tissues were homogenised using a …

Rooted Or Restless: Retaining Teachers From Urban And Suburban Backgrounds In Rural Texas, Martha Saucedo Ms.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rural school districts across the United States continue to experience persistent challenges in retaining teachers, particularly those from urban and suburban backgrounds who transition into geographically isolated rural communities. These educators often encounter professional isolation, cultural adjustment, and limited access to resources, which influence their long-term commitment to rural schools. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how teachers from urban and suburban backgrounds experienced geographical and professional isolation in rural schools within a Texas Education Service Center region in a rural area and how leadership practices influenced their sense of belonging, place attachment, and retention. This …

Can Financial Literacy Enhance Esg Disclosures?, Xiaoran Jia, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Kiat Bee Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using an international sample of firms and two country-level measures of financial literacy, we find robust evidence of a positive relation between financial literacy and firms' Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosures. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that the effect of financial literacy in enhancing ESG disclosures is more prominent in poorer information environments, weaker legal institutions and weaker ESG reporting environments. Lastly, we find that financial literacy also enhances ESG performance. Our study contributes to and extends the literature by providing strong evidence that citizens' financial literacy enhances firms' ESG disclosure and the associated ESG performance.

The Citizen And The Smart City: A Global Comparison Of Institutional Logics, Tim Bunnell, Zachary Spicer, Byron Miller, Teresa Abbruzzese, Paolo Cardullo, Sangwon Chae, I-Chun Catherine Chang, Greig Charnock, Ming-Kuang Chung, Kwon Heo, Sue-Ching Jou, Andrew Karvonen, Olga Kordas, Kong, Lily, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, Haeran Shin, Orlando Woods

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Crucial urbanists’ placement of smart city initiatives in Western Europe or North America mostly on the “low” rungs of participatory ladders or scaffolds does not mean that smart urban development necessarily connotes democracy-eroding neoliberalization everywhere. This article offers a more globally variegated and dynamic understanding of the relationship between citizens and smart cities. We apply an institutional logics framework to the citizen-smart city nexus in seven cities spanning three world regions, considering the interplay of citizen-centric logics with techno-innovation-oriented and bureaucratic/managerial logics. Appreciating contextually specific institutional orders helps to explain why similar initiatives and intentions yield different outcomes across time …

Weather Rescue At Sea: Recovering Historical Weather Observations From 19th Century British Naval Ships, Praveen Teleti, Ed Hawkins, Clive Wilkinson

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Ship logbooks represent a critical source of historical meteorological data, providing valuable observations of barometric pressure, air temperature, sea surface temperature, wind force and direction, and other variables. Substantial quantities of these records are unavailable to climate science as they have not yet been transcribed. We present ‘Weather Rescue at Sea’, a citizen-science project which transcribed millions of weather observations contained in 19th Century UK Royal Navy ship logbooks. We describe the logbook structure and weather observation-taking instructions and discuss significant challenges with the translation of handwritten text into accurate data due to errors arising from ambiguous handwriting, historical terminology, …

Beyond Anomaly Detection: Classifying Attacker Automation Level From Ssh Honeypot Behavioral Signatures, Ashley Alt

Theses

The proliferation of AI-assisted offensive tools has introduced a new category of cyber attacker that combines the speed of automation with the adaptive reasoning previously associated only with skilled human operators. Despite the richness of behavioral data captured by SSH honeypots, existing analyses treat interaction logs primarily as evidence of malicious activity rather than as a dataset capable of distinguishing between attacker types. This thesis investigates whether human-driven, traditionally automated, and AI-assisted attackers produce distinguishable behavioral signatures within SSH honeypot interactions, and whether machine learning techniques can reliably classify attacker behavior from session-level features. A controlled experimental architecture was developed …

Education And Training In Water Operator Certification And Its Role In Water Utility System Performance, Heath A. Edelman

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Access to safe and reliable drinking water is a foundational component of public health and environmental protection. The United States drinking water sector is highly regulated and increasingly challenged by workforce shortages, aging infrastructure, and variability in operator training requirements across states. Despite the federal mandate for operator certification under the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of certification policies in improving regulatory compliance outcomes remains limited.

This study examined the relationship between operator certification policies and drinking water compliance outcomes under the Safe Drinking Water Act, with particular attention to differences across violation …

The War Poetry Map Project: Exploring The Physical And Emotional Geography Of Conflict, Colin D. Halloran

English Theses & Dissertations

There can be no question that war is shaped by and has shaped cultures, and yet as an object of study it is rarely looked at from a cultural studies perspective. It is the great epics of war that form the cornerstones of Western literary tradition. It is the impact of war that gave rise to fields like trauma and memory studies. It is the propaganda produced, the hijacking of cultural industries, that help perpetuate wars. The War Poetry Map Project and accompanying written dissertation seek to move beyond historical and political contexts and view war as a cultural object. …

The Role Of Autonomy And Motivation On Teacher Retention: A Mixed Methods Study, Jordan Overton

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

Teacher retention remains a persistent concern in the United States, with nearly 13% of classrooms unfilled by licensed teachers. Grounded in self-determination theory and basic psychological needs theory, this mixed methods sequential explanatory study examined the relationship between teacher autonomy, motivation, and intentions to leave, while also exploring the contextual factors that shaped teachers’ perceptions of autonomy within their work environments.

In the quantitative phase, survey data were collected from 123 elementary and middle school teachers across three school divisions in Southeastern Virginia. Measures included teacher autonomy, work motivation, and intentions to leave one’s school or division and the teaching …

Women's Displacement And The Reclamation Of Identity: Navigating Landscapes Of Contestation In The Postcolonial Novel, Carol P. Harvest

English Theses & Dissertations

Landscapes affected by colonial domination are contested landscapes—places not only in danger of environmental destruction through colonial and neocolonial violence but also landscapes of struggle for people who survive in these precarious spaces. Historically, separate postcolonial and ecocritical literary analysis addressed contested landscapes; postcolonial critique centered on the lasting devastation of colonial violence on people and place, while ecocriticism, in its infancy, enjoyed the privilege of ignorance, focusing on endangered species and the preservation of land, but it did not consider the impact of landscapes on the very people who were largely forced to either leave or cross “natural” spaces. …

Empowering Change: Building Environmental Sustainability Initiatives And Becoming A Sustainability Champion, Amanda C. Karls

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

In an era marked by escalating environmental challenges and an urgent need for sustainable development, higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly positioned as critical actors in advancing sustainability within the communities they serve. Regional comprehensive universities (RCUs), in particular, occupy a distinctive position as access‑oriented, community‑embedded public institutions; yet sustainability efforts at these institutions often unfold under conditions of limited resources, diffuse responsibility, and informal governance. This dissertation examines how individual actors at RCUs effectively advance environmental sustainability initiatives in the absence of centralized infrastructure or formal authority.

Guided by the overarching research question—How can individual actors at regional comprehensive …

Social Capital In The Puerto Rican Deaf Community, Javier Figueroa Quintana

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

There is limited literature regarding the social capital of deaf individuals in the United States (U.S.). There are few studies on deaf individuals in Puerto Rico (P.R.), and none explicitly examines deaf Puerto Ricans’ social capital. This qualitative study aimed to understand and capture the experiences of the deaf Puerto Rican community by focusing on how deaf Puerto Ricans utilize social capital to achieve success. The two main research questions guiding this study are: How have deaf Puerto Ricans utilized social capital to achieve success? What are deaf Puerto Ricans' perceptions of success? This study centers around Yosso's (2005) Community …

Sino-Indian Competition And Small-State Responses In The Western Indian Ocean: The Cases Of The Seychelles And Mauritius, Sidhyendra Sisodia, Manoj Kumar Mishra

Journal of Strategic Security

The India-China rivalry, once concentrated on their contested land border, has now spilled decisively into the maritime domain, with both powers competing for influence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Much of the existing literature focuses on Sri Lanka and the Maldives, leaving the Seychelles and Mauritius relatively underexplored. This article addresses that gap by examining how India and China have expanded their engagement with these small island states across security, infrastructure, and political domains. Drawing on defense cooperation, infrastructure projects, and contested basing proposals, it shows that both islands adopt selective hedging, albeit in different forms. Mauritius practices asymmetrical …

Post-Ukraine Fallout: How Azerbaijan’S Break With Russia Reflects The Strategic Consequences Of A Weakened Kremlin, Hasan Alisoy

Journal of Strategic Security

This article analyzes how Russia’s declining power, accelerated by its military overextension in Ukraine, triggered a historic rupture in Russia–Azerbaijan relations, culminating in the 2025 Yekaterinburg incident. It argues that the deaths of two Azerbaijani citizens in Russian custody—and the retaliatory actions taken by Baku—did not cause the diplomatic collapse, but rather crystallized a long-term realignment rooted in Azerbaijan’s post-conflict assertiveness and Russia’s unraveling regional leverage. Drawing on the 2024 downing of an Azerbaijani airliner by a Russian missile, the premature withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Karabakh, and Azerbaijan’s evolving alliance with Türkiye, the article positions this realignment within a …

Navigating Power Play: Sri Lanka’S Strategic Role In Indo-Pacific Geopolitics, Neeraj Singh Manhas, Jyot Shikar Singh, Tilak Raj Sharma

Journal of Strategic Security

The Indo-Pacific’s geopolitical significance has surged due to China’s assertive rise, prompting the QUAD nations to counterbalance Beijing’s influence. Sri Lanka, a strategically located island state, emerges as a key hub for global trade and security. It examines how Sri Lanka navigates its geopolitical position to achieve national goals while balancing the interests of larger powers. Lastly, Colombo’s strategic engagements with major powers and regional frameworks highlight efforts to assert agency and amplify the voices of smaller island states. Despite its strategic importance, Sri Lanka’s agency is constrained by power asymmetries in the Indo-Pacific, contributing to understanding small-state geopolitics.

Setting Research Priorities For The Use Of Digital Technology In The Self-Management Of Heart Health: The Results Of The James Lind Priority Setting Partnership, Lis Neubeck, Simon Nichols, Nicola Straiton, Louise J. Dunford, Amitava Banerjee, Susan Dawkes, Donna Fitzsimons, Maria Hayes, Alistair Lawson, Abigail A. Lyons, Mary Mcauley, Jill Mclaggan, Richard Mindham, Nicholas L. Mills, Rakesh Modi, Alice Pearsons, Amanda Pitkethly, Fiona E. Strachan, Coral L. Hanson

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Aims: There are wide inequalities in access to cardiovascular care, and risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, and physical inactivity are often not well managed. We aim to identify the most important questions about how digital technologies can help people and their carers prevent cardiovascular disease and improve access to care. Methods and results: A priority setting partnership that aimed to generate a top 10 list of research priorities for the use of digital technology in the prevention and management of heart disease and heart conditions in the UK and Ireland, with equal input by people with lived …