Digital Commons Network^™

Statistical Evaluation Of A New Orleans Historic Rainfall Dataset (1840–1893), Arielle C. Filostrat

LSU Master's Theses

This study evaluates the climatic credibility of a newly identified historical rainfall dataset for New Orleans, Louisiana, spanning 1840–1893. The New Orleans Historical Dataset (NOHD) is compared to a modern observational record from the Audubon rain gauge (1893–2024) to determine whether nineteenth-century rainfall observations are consistent with known precipitation behavior in the region. Establishing the reliability of early records is critical for extending climatological baselines and improving understanding of long-term rainfall variability.

Historical rainfall observations were first evaluated through archival review using the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal and other nineteenth-century meteorological records to verify notable rainfall events. Daily …

Amplifying Change For Adolescent Girls In West And Central Africa Through Economic Empowerment, Mame Soukeye Mbaye, Sarah Engebretsen, Maty Dia, Karen Austrian

Adolescents and Young People

The Girls’ Futures in Focus: Evidence from West and Central Africa series examines the challenges facing adolescent girls in the region and highlights evidence-informed approaches to improving their lives. This brief summarizes the evidence on adolescent girls’ economic empowerment—income, livelihoods, savings, financial inclusion, agency, transition to work, or all of the above—in West and Central Africa, drawing in particular on evidence from the GIRL Center’s priority countries. The brief points to what shifts adolescent girls’ economic trajectories in the region, especially in fragile and low-resource settings.

The Degree Of Inclusion Of 21st Century Skills In The 12th Grade Geography Curriculum From The Perspective Of Teachers In The State Of Kuwait And Its Relationship To Their Teaching Performance, Huda Salem Alazmi

Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies

The present study aimed to identify the degree of inclusion of 21st-century skills in the 12th-grade geography curriculum from the perspective of teachers in public education in the State of Kuwait, and to examine its relationship to their teaching performance. The study adopted a descriptive correlational approach. A questionnaire was used to identify the degree of inclusion of 21st-century skills in the geography curriculum, while an observation checklist was employed to assess teachers› teaching performance. The questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 327 geography teachers in secondary public schools in Kuwait. Additionally, 38 observation checklists were applied to …

Understanding The Forest School Experience: A Conceptual Exploration Of Benefits And Barriers, Ziad F. Dabaja

Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies

Forest School, a form of outdoor nature-based education, has increasingly gained international attention, particularly, its educational and developmental benefits are well documented. While existing literature highlights positive outcomes for children, families, and educators, it also identifies a range of challenges that can hinder effective implementation. This paper adopts a conceptual study design and synthesizes findings from three peer-reviewed literature reviews, collectively examining 40 international studies, to develop an integrative concept map of the Forest School experience. Using a thematic synthesis, evidence from the reviewed studies was analyzed to identify overlapping and complementary themes, which were categorized into benefits, implementation challenges, …

Perceptions Of Research Participation Among Underrepresented Groups: Insights Using Freelisting Methodology, Tamar Klaiman, Jasmine Silvestri, Emma Britez Ferrante, Dorothy Sheu, Adina Lieberman, Erich Dress, Modele Ogunniyi, Neal Dickert, Meghan Lane-Fall, Rosemary Frasso, Rachel Kohn

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Low enrollment and retention in clinical research disproportionately impact Black, Hispanic or Latinx, women, and rural populations, undermining generalizability and perpetuating health disparities. However, few studies have compared mechanisms driving underrepresentation across populations. Freelisting is a qualitative methodology that elicits lists of terms, explores perspectives about domains, and identifies common themes within groups with shared characteristics; however, it has not been systematically applied to understand research participation across underrepresented populations.

OBJECTIVE: To explore perspectives on clinical research participation across underrepresented populations using freelisting methodology to ultimately inform culturally-responsive recruitment strategies.

METHODS: We conducted a web-based freelisting survey among adults …

Feedback Loop Intensity Monitoring And Automatic Intervention For Recommendation Systems, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods are described for monitoring recommendation feedback loops and automatically intervening in live ranking. A feedback loop intensity (FLI) for a user and topic is computed as a ratio of a user-conditional topic serving proportion to a global topic serving proportion over a rolling window. An organic interest score is computed from non-recommendation-channel evidence including one or more of search, direct navigation, creator following, or external engagement. An adjusted FLI is generated by dampening the raw FLI as a function of organic interest. When adjusted FLI exceeds configurable thresholds, a controller applies topic-specific, tiered interventions in the ranking …

The Woman In Hijab: A Performance Autoethnography Of Intersecting Identities In Arabic Language Teaching, Sayonara Tomoum

Journal of Educational Research and Innovation

This performance autoethnography inhabits the pedagogical encounter between a North African Muslim woman in hijab teaching college-level Arabic and an African American Muslim student whose Islam traveled a different racial and geographic history. Race and religion move through every exchange, shaping who holds authority, whose Arabic counts, and how bodies are racialized and read through religious markers. This work draws on Della Pollock’s (2007) concept of error as a site of possibility and her performative question “What now?” to name pedagogical rupture as the moment when the conditions shaping the encounter become legible as knowledge. Through performative writing, this autoethnography …

Snap Challenge In Teacher Education, Eric Hogan, Sean Forbes, Carey E. Andrzejewski

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here.

Training pre-service teachers often focuses on educating them about issues they will see in their own classrooms. One such issue is food insecurity. Food insecurity is defined by limited or uncertain access to nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (Rabbitt et al., 2023a). This article focuses on pre-service teachers' experiences while engaging in the SNAP Challenge to learn more about food insecurity while also learning how food impacts student learning and motivation. Participants in the study discussed how living off the …

Teaching Evelina With Digital Humanities, Hilary Havens

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Digital humanities, an interdisciplinary field that applies digital methodologies and technologies to the humanities, is an excellent lens through which to approach the eighteenth century.  I integrate digital humanities tools and workshops alongside primary source readings in all of my eighteenth-century British literature classes to help students better understand those texts and the world in which they were created.  In my upper-level undergraduate class on late eighteenth-century literature, I teach four digital humanities tools to students, two of them (StoryMapJS and Voyant) in connection with Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778). These tools train students how to uncover historical and geographic contexts …

The Secret(S) To Success: Genlis’S Guide To Raising A Foolproof Daughter, Jennifer Law-Sullivan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Abstract: “The Secret(s) to Success: Genlis’s Guide to Raising a Foolproof Daughter”

Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis’s Adèle et Théodore ou lettres sur l’éducation, first published in 1782, is an epistolary conduct novel that examines the question of how best to educate girls. Attempts to answer the question were exceedingly in vogue in the late 18^th century and can be traced back to Fénelon’s 1681 Traité de l’éducation des filles. Genlis’s novel offers a robust critique of previous education treatises, Rousseau, and a patriarchal society that did little to educate girls and mothers. She couches her critique in a …

Shifting Frameworks And Continued Influence: Grassroots Environmental Movements In Los Angeles, Matthew Chin

Voces Novae

No abstract provided.

"I Don’T Know That You Can Do That Anywhere Else": The Role Rural College Towns Play In The Formation Of Queer Identity, Amy Mcdowell, Ryan J. Parsons, Julia Kraus

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

Challenging dominant narratives suggesting that rural spaces are inhospitable to LGBTQ+ identities, this study examines how queer individuals navigate space, rurality, and queerness in Oxford, Mississippi, a historically conservative college town. Drawing on oral histories from the Queer Mississippi digital archive, we argue that rural institutions of higher learning (rural IHLs) and the college towns they are embedded in serve as critical sites of queer identity formation. The rural college town provides a unique space where LGBTQ+ individuals from both within and outside the South navigate self-discovery, social networks, and belonging. We highlight the transformative role of these spaces in …

Masking Colonial Imposture: When Mardochée Writes Back Against Charles De Foucauld’S Narrative, Ahmed Aziz Houdzi

SOROUD: The journal of Literacy Criticism

Charles de Foucault is probably one of the most famous explorers who travelled through pre-colonial Morocco. His achievement is still considered as a milestone in the colonial historiography. However, surprisingly enough, the success and fame of this explorer considerably hide the essential role and the fundamental contribution of his travelling companion Mardochée Aby Serour. This article will examine, through Mustapha Kébir Ammi's novel “Mardochée”, the guide's position regarding the mission in which he undertook together with Charles de Foucault, alias Youssef Aleman. In “Mardochée” (2011), Kébir-Mustapha Ammi gives voice to this character which remained silent and deprived of the right …

A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Working with Fredric Jameson’s influential discussions of utopia and world literature, the essay suggests that the prospect of utopia is frightening and also possibly boring insofar as it threatens to drain away the already waning possibility of experience in a postmodern, globalized world. In this world, resentment of the present seems to go hand in hand with a nostalgia for a fictitious past, underscoring the difficulty of conceptualizing new social, cultural, and economic arrangements. Viewing world literature as a possible source of a new utopian thought, a utopia unlimited to its contemporary dystopian guises, the essay retraces Jameson’s pronouncements on …

Zheng Zhenduo And The Problem Of Priority In World Literature, Daniel M. Dooghan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay investigates how Zheng Zhenduo (郑振铎 1898–1958) developed a theory of world literature in response to threats to China both politically from without and culturally from within. Centered on an analysis of his 1922 article “A View on the Unification of Literature” (Wenxue de tongyiguan 文學的統一觀), the essay argues that although Zheng believed like many of his contemporaries in the transformative effects of reading world literature in translation, that does not constitute the entirety of his theorization of world literature. Instead, he accepted the first-move advantage of other national literatures in defining both world literary standards and literature …

Beyond The Great Wall: Zheng Zhenduo’S “Unification” Of World Literature At The Juncture Of China’S May Fourth And Post-World War I Era, Wenxin Liang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article examines Chinese literary scholar Zheng Zhenduo’s 1922 essay “A View on the Unification of Literature” (Wenxue de tongyiguan 文學的統一觀) as a counter-narrative to both imperial isolationism and post-World War I nationalist fragmentation. Writing at the intersection of China’s May Fourth Movement and the global post-war crisis, Zheng developed a theory of world literature that challenged both Goethean Eurocentrism and the compartmentalization of comparative literary studies. Through systematic analysis of Zheng’s theoretical writings, editorial projects, and pioneering work on folk literature (suwenxue 俗文學), this article demonstrates that Zheng’s project of “the unification of literature” operated on three …

Factors Influencing Maritime Boundary Delimitation: Particular Reference To The Case Of The Sultanate Of Oman, Abdullah Elhabeeb A. Almahjoub

Sultan Qaboos University Legal Studies Journal

This research aims to clarify the maritime zones of coastal states subject to boundary delimitation under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the extent to which this delimitation is influenced by several factors, most notably geographical, economic, political, and security considerations. These factors typically form the core of negotiations between adjacent or opposite coastal states regarding the delimitation of their maritime boundaries. This research focuses on the practical application of these factors by examining them and applying them to several cases in international practice, particularly the Omani case, to demonstrate their impact on maritime …

Śaṅkha-Dvīpa And The Swahili Littoral: Reconstructing India–East Africa Contacts Before The Common Era, Narendra Vijayasimha

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This article is the first focused attempt to explore India–East Africa relationships in the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, approximately two to three millennia before the Common Era (3000–300 BCE) from a puranic perspective. While extensive scholarship exists on medieval and later Indo–African exchanges, the pre-Common Era period has remained underexplored. Drawing on Purāṇic cosmographies, Greco-Roman geographical accounts, African archaeology, and Indian Ocean trade studies, this research reconstructs possible networks of contact facilitated by monsoon navigation and long-distance exchange. Methodologically, the article integrates textual exegesis, comparative cosmography, and archaeological correlation. The findings suggest that Indian conceptions of Śaṅkha-dvīpa reflect …

A Case Study Of Sport And Racism In Australia: A Qualitative Document Analysis, Vegneskumar Maniam, Kristy O’Neill

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

Australia is well known as a ‘sporting nation’ with outstanding elite sporting achievements and grassroots-level sports participation. The reality for Australia’s First Nations people and those from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds, however, tends to differ from the mainstream Australian population. One of the contributing factors being argued within this paper is the prevalence of historical and contemporary racism in Australian sport. This study focuses on four of Australia’s most popular community-participation sports, including Australian Rules Football (ARF), Cricket, Netball, and Swimming. Using a Qualitative Document Analysis method, this research investigates both primary and secondary sources for instances of …

A Tale Of Two Policy Regimes: A Comparative Analysis Of Migrants’ School-To-Work Transition In Hong Kong And Taiwan, Pakorn Phalapong

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

Foreign professionals have been frequently viewed as a remedy for labor shortages and as catalysts for economic development, prompting many governments—including Hong Kong and Taiwan—to facilitate their immigration for education and employment. Consequently, this study endeavors to identify a general pattern and plausible conditions that underpin the promotion of school-to-work transition policy regimes in a migration context. Using case-based analysis and the Most Different Systems Design (MDSD), secondary data were collected for the analysis. The findings reveal that, despite markedly differing political systems, both jurisdictions adopted a school-to-work policy regime in response to comparable conditions: the demographic changes, the influx …

Anthropology 230 "Culture And Crime": Syllabus, Assignments And Brightspace Quiz Files, Eliza Darling

Open Educational Resources

As part of a project to convert online asynchronous sections in John Jay’s fully online program to OER, Dr. Eliza Darling compiled all of her materials for a 200-level anthropology course, “Culture and Crime,” into a single PDF that can be easily converted to other file types. The assignments and lessons make frequent use of open pedagogical principles. Dr. Darling has also included 14 quizzes as ZIP files that can be imported directly into any LMS, including Brightspace, Canvas, and Blackboard. Because these quizzes are already packaged for LMS import, instructors can add them directly to a course shell without …

Close To Home? Five Key Facts About Child Care Customer And Worker Commutes, Gabrielle Pepin, Jonathan Borowsky, Elizabeth E. Davis, Aaron Sojourner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Parents often cite location and convenience as important factors in choosing a child care provider. We use data on individual mobility from GPS in cell phones to study commutes to each licensed early childhood care and education (ECE) provider in 14 states separately for center customers, center workers, and customers of home-based child care providers. We document five key facts about ECE customer and worker commutes. One, center customers and workers commute farther than home-based customers to ECE providers. Two, substantial shares of customers and workers commute 10+ miles to their ECE provider. Three, commute distances to ECE providers vary …

Quality Of Life Indicators In Historic Urban Spaces: A Case Study Of Al-Mustansiriya Madrasa, Baghdad / Iraq, Israa H. Karam Ali, Shireen I. Khazaal

Al-Esraa University College Journal for Engineering Sciences

Historic urban spaces play a central role in shaping social interaction, environmental comfort, and collective identity in cities with deep cultural heritage. Despite this importance, empirical assessments of their performance in terms of Quality of Life (QoL) from the perspective of contemporary users remain limited, particularly in the context of Baghdad. This study examines Quality of Life indicators within a historic urban space through a case study of Al-Mustansiriya Madrasa, one of Baghdad's most prominent historic educational complexes. A descriptive–analytical approach was adopted, integrating a structured questionnaire survey, systematic on-site observation, and spatial analysis based on Space Syntax techniques. The …

Interaction Design In Museum Architecture: A Contemporary Developmental Vision For The Iraqi Museum, Afaf Abdel Sahib Mohammed, Enas Salim Abdulahaad

Al-Esraa University College Journal for Engineering Sciences

The Iraqi Museum's remaining architectural form and traditional display techniques do not allow for enough interaction between visitors and the items, despite the museum's great heritage and cultural value. This between visitors and the exhibits. Additionally, the museum does not include interactive technologies and contemporary architecture, which are now essential components of modern museums around the world.This invites the question of how to optimize the Iraqi Museum's visitor experience by applying the principles of interaction design in museum architecture within a contemporary developmental vision. In order to revive the architectural spaces within the Iraqi Museum, the research aims to generate …

Melodrama And The Ecological Imagination: K-Dramas And Thai Lakorns As Instruments Of Soft Environmental Diplomacy, Antonio P. Contreras

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

This paper examines how Asian serialized dramas, particularly Korean television dramas (K-Dramas) and Thai Lakorns, function as cultural texts that shape ecological imagination within the Philippine media environment. Using interpretive visual-textual analysis of Crash Landing on You, My Mister, 2gether: The Series, and Bad Genius: The Series, the study explores how visual aesthetics, emotional atmospheres, and narrative structures encode environmental values such as balance, restraint, and care. Rather than measuring audience impact, the paper interprets Filipino online audience commentary as illustrative reception discourse reflecting how viewers emotionally interpret these mediated landscapes. Anchored in theories of soft power, cultural proximity, and …

Russian Language In An Interdisciplinary Setting: A Case Study, Foreign Area Studies At The United States Naval Academy, Joan Chevalier

Russian Language Journal

Russian language enrollments have been dropping in recent years at colleges and universities in the United States. In contrast to this national trend, the number of students studying Russian language at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) has remained robust over the past decade and is poised to increase in the near future as a relatively new interdisciplinary major, Foreign Area Studies (FAS), is expanded and revised. This paper traces recent developments at USNA that have led to the development and expansion of Foreign Area Studies, integrating language study into an interdisciplinary curriculum featuring courses related to nations and cultures …

Microbiome And Health: Exploring Saudi Arabia's Microbial Identity, Turki S. Abujamel

Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Medical Sciences

The human microbiome comprises a diverse community of microorganisms residing in and on the human body, and it plays a central role in maintaining health and contributing to disease. This review synthesizes current global and regional research, with a particular focus on microbiome characteristics in Saudi Arabia. It addresses the microbiome's established roles in digestion, immunomodulation, metabolic regulation, and mental health through the gut-brain axis.
Factors such as diet, geography, ethnicity, and environment significantly shape the microbiome. The Saudi population, due to unique cultural and environmental influences, exhibits microbial profiles that differ from those reported in Western cohorts. However, studies …

Coastal Landforms Analysis Of Al-Kharrar Lagoon And Rabigh Coast Using Aster (Ast_L1t) Imagery, Western Saudi Arabia, Omar A. Alharbi

Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Marine Science

The current study sought to examine the coastal geomorphology throughout the entire length of the Al-Kharrar Lagoon, in addition to the coastal region of Rabigh City, situated on the western coast of Saudi Arabia. The mechanisms underlying the formation of the wide variety of natural land features were also studied. These include sandy, pebble and rocky beaches and sand dunes; intertidal areas; salt flats (sabkhas) and marshes; elevated, terraced or fringing coral reefs; water inlets; and the deposition of terrigenous or alluvial materials, all reflecting the swift transformation that has impacted the region. Evaluation of the ASTER (AST_L1T) data enabled …

Metabolic Markers And Gut Microbiota In Big Cats: A Relationship Between Diet, Health And Environment, Javeria Saman, Saima Sharif, Bushra Nisar, Shagufta Naz

Journal of Bioresource Management

The wild animals that occupy large territories were found to adapt less easily to captive environments compared to those with small home ranges. Among big cats, captivity posed a range of challenges, with stress emerging as central factor influencing overall welfare. Transition into captive environment was shown to alter both behavior and physiological processes, largely due to changes in their natural habitat, environmental complexity and diet. Several health issues reported in big cats including alopecia, gastrointestinal issues, neuromuscular disorders such as hindquarter paralysis were associated with underlying metabolic dysregulation. Metabolic health was recognized as critical component of overall well-being, closely …

Social Complex Systems In Virtual Thirdspaces Of Global Education: Sites Of Structural Inequalities And Radical Pedagogical Possibilities, José Luis Jimenez-Figarotti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

While Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and Virtual Exchange (VE) are celebrated as democratizing tools fostering intercultural understanding, this techno-utopian narrative obscures a complex reality: the virtual classroom is a contested social field where global inequalities are reproduced and amplified. This dissertation interrogates this paradox, exploring how structural inequalities, digital divides, and epistemic hierarchies are negotiated within the Virtual Thirdspace of global education. Integrating Structural Inequalities (Galtung, 1969; Farmer, 2004; Tilly, 1998; and Young, 2008), Critical Environmental Justice (Pellow, 2018), Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), World-Systems Analysis (Wallerstein, 1974), and Thirdspace theory (Soja, 1996), the study examines this terrain as both a …