Digital Commons Network^™

Unbroken Sovereignty: Land, Water, Education, And Nakoda And Oc̣Eti Ṡaḳowiŋ Tribes Of The Fort Peck Indian Reservation, 1850–1935, Richard Joseph Maska

History ETDs

This dissertation explores the intersection of sovereignty and development among the Nakoda (Assiniboine) and Oc̣eti Ṡaḳowiŋ (Sioux) Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Methodologically, it draws on a critical reading of archival sources in conjunction with community input. It traces the emergence of reservation policy, government sponsored education, the imposition of allotment policy and private landownership, and the impact of state-sponsored irrigation and other development projects. I argue that the Tribes forged webs of affiliation and kinship to both assert their nationhood and navigate their involvement in such projects. These expressions …

On Food, Politics, And The Power Of Representation In The American History Museum, Mason A. Bright

Museum Studies Theses

This study explores the political implications of foodways-related interpretation at American history institutions, situating it within current partisan discourse. Using an “Anthropology of Museums” framework, I place literature from the fields of food history, human geography, and museum studies in conversation with interviews with three curatorial professionals from the National Museum of American History, the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, and the New Mexico History Museum. I understand the ways these professionals navigate politically engaged interpretation through the lens of ethnographic refusal, a phenomenon drawn from the anthropology subfield of resistance studies. I argue that the connections between food …

Gradients Of Abandonment, William Tatman

Geography ETDs

As urban-rural disparities drive depopulation in rural areas worldwide, local strategies emerge as pathways for resilience. Research on Ojika, a Japanese island that has lost 75% of its population since the 1960s, reveals an Abandonment Gradient: a nuanced pattern of disuse adapted to modern polycrises. Extending the concept of "lying fallow" to homes and infrastructure, this thesis focuses on abandonment practices that reflect complex realities of labor, capital, and climate uncertainty. Rather than viewing depopulating communities as passive victims of out-migration, this paper argues they are critical sites for generating crisis response. Communally crafted attitudes toward unused space and more-than-human …

Who Bears The Burden: Tax Incidence And Water Governance In The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (Mrgcd) Within Bernalillo County, Michael W. Wilson

Economics ETDs

This study examines how property-value-based assessments within a large western irrigation and flood-control district distribute fiscal burdens across property owners. The empirical analysis is restricted to Bernalillo County within the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), using parcel-level administrative data from fiscal year 2025 merged with 2021 irrigation service records and geospatial information. The analysis classifies 34,397 parcels by irrigation status, agricultural valuation enrollment, and primary use to evaluate whether non-irrigating residential and commercial parcels, including renter-occupied properties that lack direct irrigation access, bear a disproportionate share of financial responsibility for a district whose first listed priority under their primary …

Timelines Over Tokens: Summarization, Prompting, And Explainable Fine-Tuning For User-Level Suicide Risk Detection, Aditya Tekale

Master's Theses

This research presents a two-stage pipeline for user-level suicide risk detection from Reddit: first, inference-only prompting with summarization; second, fine-tuned encoder classification with explainability and expert validation. The data are user-level: each of the 500 C-SSRS Reddit items is one user’s chronologically concatenated posts and comments (a user timeline), annotated by psychiatrists. Stage one: six prompting strategies zero-shot, few-shot, chain-of-thought, tree-of-thought, least-to-most, and self-consistency are evaluated across six LLMs on multi-class and binary formulations; simple zero-shot achieves the highest balanced accuracy (0.53 multi-class). Error analysis shows longer inputs associate with misclassification (p = 0.002); domain-specific summarization (timelines >2,000 tokens) reduces …

Good Impressions At Work: Exploring Gendered Labor In The Middle Rio Grande, Nm Ad 1100-1500, William F. Marquardt

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation investigates changes in the gendered division of labor among potters in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico (MRG) between A.D. 1100 and 1500. During this time, diverse groups coalesced into some of the largest communities seen in the region until the industrial era. New architectural, technological, religious, and trade practices emerged to help knit these communities together during a dynamic period of change. Pottery making practices changed alongside other developments transforming from manufacture for local consumption to surplus production for exchange. Previous research on gendered divisions of labor have largely portrayed gendered labor as static rather than …

Understanding The Long-Run Effect Of Historical Redlining Practices, Yujian Lu

Geography ETDs

Historical redlining practices initiated by Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s have produced enduring persistent socioeconomic and environmental disparities in U.S. cities. This dissertation examines their long-term impacts on social vulnerability, urban flood risk, along with public discourse about redlining practices. Results indicate that neighborhoods with HOLC grade A (greenlined) exhibit the lowest overall social vulnerability, while those graded D (redlined) face the highest across U.S. cities. In Chicago, associations between redlining practices and flood risk disparities are stronger than in Los Angeles, reflecting place-specific characteristics among environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic factors shaping flood risk disparities in long …

How Forest Structure And Climate Influence Snowpack For Water Resources In The Southwestern United States, Lindsey L. Rotche

Geography ETDs

Climate change, declining snowpack, and increasing wildfire risk have profound impacts on water availability in the southwestern United States. Because the southwestern United States is a global hotspot for freshwater vulnerability, and snowpack provides much of the region’s freshwater, understanding how climate and forest structure influence snowpack dynamics is increasingly important. In this dissertation I aim to better understand and communicate these dynamics through empirical data collection and the development of a simple vegetation driven temperature-index snow model: SNOW-17(VEG). I then implement the model at a watershed scale using remotely sensed imagery to create vegetation zones and climate simulations to …

Load Balancing Algorithms For Cloud Computing Systems, Mark Rakesh Christian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Cloud computing depends on load balancing to allocate user requests among virtual machines (VMs), affecting response time, utilization, and scalability. Round Robin, Equally Spread Current Execution, and standard Throttled scheduling are widely used; however, standard Throttled selects among eligible VMs using an implementation-dependent order with no explicit preference. This thesis proposes the Weighted Throttled Load Balancing (WTLB) algorithm, which introduces an explicit, deterministic selection priority among eligible VMs, implemented by modifying the Throttled scheduler within CloudAnalyst.

Evaluated under an identical six-region, multi-data-center configuration against Round Robin, ESCE, and standard Throttled, WTLB preserves the aggregate response-time, processing-time, and cost profile of …

Gig Workers' Identity Construction In Pakistan's Platform Economy, Zubair Ahmed Pirzada, Shoukat Ali Mahar, Muhammad Haneef Gambhir

Business Review

The rapid expansion of Pakistan’s platform economy has introduced digitally mediated labor arrangements that fundamentally restructure occupational identities and the meanings workers attach to their work. Based on constructivist grounded theory, this study delves into the process of gig workers' self-negotiated and self-built occupational identities in the gig economy in the city of Karachi in Pakistan. Through in-depth interviews with 43 platform workers in Karachi (25 ride-sharing drivers and 18 food delivery riders), the analysis produced the Adaptive Identity Construction Framework, theorizing identity construction as a simultaneous process across temporal, algorithmic, and sociocultural dimensions. Four types of identity were formed: …

Recommendations For Hiv Testing Locations To Reach Youth And Emerging Adults: A Qualitative Study, Henna Budhwani, Gerard Thomas Hogan, Alexis Micheau, Angulique Y. Outlaw, Michael J. Mugavero, Mallory O. Johnson, Robert A. Oster, Lisa B. Hightow-Weidman, Sylvie Naar, Janet M. Turan

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Youth and emerging adults aged 18-29 year are one of the few groups with rising rates of new HIV infections in the United States (US), with those in the southern US being more vulnerable and at elevated risk of acquisition. This is dues to a confluence of factors including but not limited to low HIV testing rates, high levels of stigma, and high rates of poverty in the region. Thus, understanding where and how to reach youth and emerging adults in the under resourced southern US for prevention is essential for advancing the Ending the HIV Epidemic goals.

Methods: …

Spatial Heterogeneity And Temporal Trends Of California Extreme Heat Using High-Resolution Earth System Model Simulations, Eleni Konstantelos

Master's Theses

Extreme heat threatens California’s diverse landscapes and populations through intensifying and geographically shifting patterns. This study examined the temporal trend and spatial heterogeneities of California’s extreme heat for 1994–2015. The analysis was based on the fully coupled Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 2 (E3SMv2), specifically its 25-km regionally refined configuration. While the Desert/Inland region exhibited the highest number of days ≥ 35 °C and the highest heatwave severity, Central Valley showed the fastest increase in the number of days ≥ 35 °C and heatwave events, as well as the fastest increases of days exceeding various heat index thresholds over …

Mountains And Mythology: Folklore In The Alps, Arya Karki

Honors Projects

From nature spirits to secret doorways, an air of mystery and magic surrounds the mountains of Austria. All over the world, mountain ranges inspire rich folklore, each set of tales unique to its respective culture. The purpose of this Honors Project is to answer the question: how does mountain-inspired folklore mirror cultural values and fears? A comparative analysis between Austrian Alpine and American Appalachian folktales is conducted in order to isolate the variables that cause folklore to differ region-to-region. Through research consisting of primary-source folklore anthologies, secondary texts on mountain theory, and direct observation from a study abroad experience, this …

Rewriting The Plan: Environmental Justice, Community Resistance, And Governance Power In Hollister, California, Rolan Resendiz

Dissertations

This dissertation examines how community-led resistance in Hollister, California, challenged environmental injustice and infrastructure governance through grassroots civic action. Focusing on the Hollister Guardians, a coalition of primarily Latinx residents who organized in response to concerns about the city’s sewer system, this qualitative case study introduces the Critical Just Sustainability Policy Praxis (CJSPP) framework, developed by integrating Critical Policy Analysis and the Just Sustainability Paradigm with a praxis-oriented focus on community action. Using critical document analysis of city council meeting minutes, local media coverage, and community-authored texts mainly from 2023 to 2025, the study explores how policy discourse, institutional decision-making, …

Construct Overlap Inflates Apparent Economic-Capacity Alignment: Evidence From A Hebei City Panel, 2014–2023, Shuo Pang, Jianguang Hou, Danlin Yu

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Index-based urban sustainability studies often ask whether urban resilience and economic development evolve harmoniously, but the answer is unreliable when the two constructs contain the same economic indicators. A targeted audit of recent Chinese coupling studies shows that economic variables are commonly embedded in urban-resilience systems without a reported construct-overlap weight check. Using Hebei, China, as a measurement-validity test rather than as another provincial economic-growth case, this study analyzes a balanced 2014–2023 panel of 11 prefecture-level cities. Duplicated economic concepts account for 44.4% of the baseline resilience-index entropy weight and 88.2% of the baseline economic-index weight, indicating substantial mechanical exposure …

A Tropically Hot Late Jurassic North American Sundance Sea: Evidence For The Oxfordian Warm Interval, R. W. Reynolds, R. Jerrett, A. Marca, M. Davies, S. M. Bernasconi, R. B. Paxton, G. Nowell, P. Dennis, U. Balthasar, G. D. Price

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The Late Jurassic greenhouse climate was characterized by elevated atmospheric CO₂ (pCO₂) at 600–1,000 ppm and sea-surface temperatures substantially warmer than today. These conditions peaked during the Oxfordian, when extensive epicontinental seaways, including the North American Sundance Sea, dominated mid-latitude paleoceanography. We present clumped isotope (Δ₄₇) and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr analyses of Oxfordian belemnite and Gryphaea fossils from the Sundance Sea to reconstruct paleotemperatures (tΔ₄₇) and assess the balance between open ocean and terrestrial inputs. The data reveal (a) a mean tΔ₄₇ of 30.6°C (±1.6 1SE), or 27.6°C (±1.6 1SE) if …

From Transactions To Institutions: The Lawyer’S Role In Building Markets And Trust, L. Viswanathan

National Law School Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judges, Speaking Of Death: Criminal Sentencing As A Socio-Cultural Practice In India’S Trial Courts, Ashna Devaprasad

Socio-Legal Review

What role does language play in legitimising the exercise of judicial discretion during sentencing? And what can a judge’s linguistic choices tell us about the wider sentencing culture of a criminal justice system? Sentencing outcomes have long attracted considerable attention in criminal law scholarship, but the process of sentencing – the logics judges use, the narratives they construct, and the audiences they seek to persuade – has received much less empirical scrutiny. Building on ideas from “law and culture” and organisational sociology literature, this Article proposes studying sentencing as a “socio-cultural” practice; one that qualitatively examines the judicial function of …

Orc Road Trip; Or, We’Re Taking The Hobbits To Isengard!, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Mythcon

“Leg it!” Ever wanted to “foot it through the Horse-country” with Uglúk? Cross the Great River with Grishnákh? Travel with goblin messengers “to and fro between all their cities, colonies, and strongholds,” by “tunnel or under dark,” to “Gundabad of the North,” their “capital”? Or perhaps you can “slip off” with Gorbag and “a few trusty lads” to places “where there’s good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses”? It might be enough to join those who’ve just “come all the way from the Mines” to “avenge our folk” and “then go back north”? And if you’re feeling a …

Raymond Rodriguez V. Loyal Source Government Services

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

Hospital-Acquired Infections Among Hispanic Diabetic Patients: Considering Geographic And Substance Use Factors In Southern Puerto Rico, Fabian A. Ramirez Rivera

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) remain a major cause of preventable morbidity, mortality, and healthcare utilization among hospitalized patients. Limited research has examined the relationship between diabetes and HAIs in Puerto Rican populations. The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional study was to examine the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and its association with HAI characteristics and hospitalization outcomes among patients in southern Puerto Rico. The chronic care model provided a framework for evaluating whether diabetes status, geographic location, and substance use were associated with outcomes. Data were obtained through retrospective review of electronic health records from N = 846 patients …

“He Had Named Himself The Stranger”: From 'Germanic' Heroic Hospitality To Elvish Memorial Mediation In Tolkien’S Book Of Lost Tales, Paolo Pizzimento Dr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article examines the narrative functions of strangeness and hospitality in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Book of Lost Tales, focusing on Eriol’s transformation from foreign traveller into listener, witness, and transmitter of Elvish tradition. Through a comparative reading of selected Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon texts—particularly Hávamál, Gylfaginning, and Beowulf—it identifies recurrent literary configurations in which hospitality regulates admission, identity, reciprocity, danger, and access to knowledge. The comparison is morphological rather than genetic: it does not posit direct derivation or a uniform Germanic code. Drawing on Jan Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, the article argues that Tolkien redirects …

To Defer Or Not To Defer, That Is The Question: Whether It Is Better To Follow The Bia's Interpretation Of Deportable Crimes Or Conduct An Independent Analysis Of Applicable Criminal Statutes, Kristen Dant

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.

Words Of War: The Rhetorical Weapons Of Folklore After October 7, Steve Siporin

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

The chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” became well known after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War (October 7, 2023) due to its widespread use at anti-Israel demonstrations and on news broadcasts, social media, and YouTube videos. A retort that mocked the inability of demonstrators who espoused the slogan to answer the questions “Which river? Which sea?” also circulated widely. Noncombatants on the domestic front relied on these two items of folklore (among others), a chant and a retort, to support their aims and satisfy their emotions. This essay traces the origins of each of …

Folk Narratives Of “The Wandering Jew” (Atu 777) In Latvian Folklore, Svetlana Pogodina

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

This essay reports field-collected texts of “The Wandering Jew” (ATU 777) recorded in the twentieth century in Latvia to determine if they are distinctive within the global tradition of the folk narrative. The Archives of Latvian Folklore (Latviešu folkloras krātuve) collection contains versions of the narrative recorded in the 1920s and 1930s. These texts have not previously been published in English translation. An interpretation is made that the narratives borrow elements from Jewish stereotypes that exist in a local folklore tradition. Comparing the Latvian material to the European and Slavic versions of the story of the Eternal Jew, a major …

Introduction: The Folklore And Ethnology Of Antisemitism, Simon J. Bronner

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

A global rise in incidents and beliefs in the twenty-first century that monitoring and polling organizations label “antisemitic” raises several questions addressed by contributors to this special issue. A basic one is definitional regarding discourse about the shifting meaning of antisemitism in light of post-Holocaust events and digital age communication. A historical question is whether contemporary forms of antisemitism are connected to or a break from the term’s nineteenth-century roots. Related to that issue in modern discourse is whether antisemitism is an umbrella concept or separate from anti-Judaism, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionism movements. The materials of folklore—both as esoteric forms …

Reviews, . .

Marvels & Tales

No abstract provided.

Plant Diversity Modifies Multi-Trophic Interactions In Croplands, Grasslands And Forests, Nian Feng Wan, Muyao Li, Siyuan Shen, Jun Xiang Zhou, Yu Tong Zhu, Ben A. Woodcock, Yue Qing Hu, Shinichi Nakagawa, David Tilman, Andy Hector, Michel Loreau, Peter B. Reich, Matteo Dainese, Forest Isbell, Bernhard Schmid, Kris A.G. Wyckhuys, Geoff M. Gurr, Linsheng Wan, Nico Eisenhauer, Yann Hautier, Anu Eskelinen, Richard D. Bardgett, Paul Kardol, Lauchlan H. Fraser, Qi Su, Shiyun Qiu, Yavanna Aartsma, Ramon Albajes, Matthias Albrecht

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Multitrophic interactions can strongly influence the structure and functioning of ecosystems, but how plant diversity influences the direction and predictability of multitrophic interactions across agricultural and natural ecosystems remains unclear. Using 149 field studies across five continents, we found that, on average, increasing plant diversity tended to exert differential top-down and bottom-up effects in croplands versus grasslands and forests. Organic and nonorganic croplands exhibited 846 and 148% higher invertebrate natural enemy-to-herbivore abundance ratios under increased plant diversity, consistent with top-down control patterns where predator gains cause herbivore declines, enhancing crop outcomes. In grasslands and forests, increasing plant diversity was associated …

Trust, Participation, And Power: Community Perspectives From The Equity In Public Health Initiative, Shaniece Criss, Roger S. Abim-Karmon, Jody Teel, Vanessa Rodríguez, Adia Bennon, Sally Wills, Sarah Gonzales, Dalmondeh D. Nayreau, Vaishnavi Bharadwaj, Hannah G. Kim, Jennifer Woollery, Melissa Fair

Health Sciences Publications

Health disparities arise from unequal power relations shaping resource allocation, governance, and community agency. Community power is a key mechanism for addressing disparities. This study examines how visible, hidden, and invisible power operate within a U.S. county to inform inclusive governance. We conducted seven focus groups with Black and Hispanic residents (n = 68) and sixteen semi-structured interviews with elected officials, government staff, and advocacy leaders in Greenville County, South Carolina. Data were collected between March and December 2024. Transcripts were collaboratively coded in NVivo and analyzed using thematic analysis guided by Heller et al.’s Three Faces of Power …

From The Forests With Hopes Of Paradise: Malay Muslims In The Victorian Imagination In Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, M Irfan Zamzami, Rifka Pratama

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

This article examines how Lord Jim constructs and reconfigures Muslim identities within the discourse of British imperialism. While previous scholarship has explored the novel’s colonial politics, less attention has been paid to how its representations of Malay Muslims reveal the instability of Orientalist categories. Using Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism and Homi Bhabha’s theory of colonial ambivalence, the study applies close textual analysis of two key narrative moments: the omniscient narrator’s description of the Muslim pilgrims aboard the Patna and the depiction of Malay Muslims in Patusan. The analysis demonstrates that the Patna pilgrims are initially represented through familiar Orientalist …