Digital Commons Network^™

The Pastor As Romantic Author: Ai, Preaching, And The Unacknowledged Inheritance Of Authenticity, Daniel Plate, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This article interrogates contemporary reactions to sermons produced with generative technologies through a historical–conceptual lens, arguing that widespread judgments of such outputs as “soulless,” “generic,” or lacking a “beating heart” are best explained by an unacknowledged inheritance from nineteenth-century Romantic expressivism. Rather than treating resistance to machine authorship as a theological verdict on computational incapacity, the study reconstructs how Romanticism centered authorship in sincere self-expression and solitary genius, displacing earlier heraldic expectations that prized fidelity to a received message. Methodologically, the analysis combines intellectual history with discourse analysis of global Christian experiments in synthetic composition (2020–2025), denominational guidance, and media …

‘Invest!’: Liberty Bonds And Stock Ownership Over The Twentieth Century, Gillian Brunet, Eric Hilt, Matthew Jaremski

Economics: Faculty Publications

The Liberty Bond drives of World War I were nation-wide interventions aimed at increasing financial literacy and associating bond ownership with patriotism. Using data from the first year of the Survey of Consumer Finances, 1947, through 1971, we investigate whether exposure to the drives shaped investing behavior over the long run. We find that households residing in counties that had high Liberty Bond participation had greater stock and bond ownership rates in later decades, and held more favorable opinions towards retirement saving and stock investment. These effects are present only among cohorts actually exposed to the bond drives, and not …

Curiosity, Intention, And Reflection On Teaching And Learning Edps 967 Motivation In Education: A Teaching Portfolio, Mary G. Zeleny

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

The intention of this course portfolio is to reflectively explore more deeply the teaching and learning of the Educational Psychology graduate course, EDPS 967- Motivation in Education. This course provides a foundation of theories and concepts related to motivation from a psychological perspective, including the interrelatedness of affect and emotion, with an emphasis on the learning environment. The course focuses on different theories of motivation, motivation in education, and considering theoretical applications in education, as well as professionally and personally. The class explored motivation, including the impact of emotions in motivation, through reading, course activities, assignments, and discussion. Goals included …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Env 3070 (Agroecology), Benjamin Iuliano

Open Educational Resources

Our relationships with the food we eat are deeply personal, but also connect us to a wide array of people, plants, animals, and landscapes around the world. Encompassing a diversity of scholarly approaches, the field of agroecology seeks to understand the interactions among these components, draw attention to the consequences of our present industrial food system, and create the conditions for more sustainable and just futures. In this course, students will learn about the science, practice, and social movement of agroecology through lectures, course discussions, field trips, and hands-on activities.

J.A.M: What Epiphyte Load And Frugivore Abundance In Ficus Species Can Tell Us About Disturbance Regimes In Tropical North Queensland, Jordan Trinidad

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

The Wet Tropics Bioregion hosts a startling diversity of species, many of which are endemic and/or endangered. The habitats in which these species are found have been threatened by intensive logging post-European settlement, which has increased the susceptibility of the isolated remnant fragments to cyclone-related disturbances. In this study, we surveyed the visitation rates of frugivores to Ficus species between Cape Tribulation and Yungaburra in Northeast Queensland, Australia, as well as the epiphyte abundance supported by these trees. We found that in upland rainforest, the forces of cyclones and habitat fragmentation act in confluence on epiphyte abundance via the moderation …

Effects Of Provisioning On Two Species Of Rock-Wallaby (Petrogale Mareeba And Petrogale Assimilis) In North Queensland, Australia, Eve Oliker

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

Provisioning, the act of providing food, water, or shelter to wild animals, can lead to habituation, resulting in changes in behavior, abundance, and distribution (Newsome & Rodger, 2008). In North Queensland, a colony of Mareeba rock-wallaby (Petrogale mareeba) at Granite Gorge has been provisioned for over 45 years, mainly through direct hand-feeding, while a group of allied rock-wallaby (Petrogale assimilis) in Magnetic Island has experienced shorter and less consistent provisioning. This study investigated whether long-term provisioning causes more severe behavioral changes, higher aggression, and larger aggregation sizes. Approximately one week was spent observing each population. Scan sampling was utilized to …

Habits And Habitats: Activity Budgets Of Platypuses (Ornithorhynchus Anatinus) Across Varying Habitat Types And Environmental Conditions In The Hobart Rivulet, Wyatt Nowacek

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

The habitat preferences and activity budgets of platypuses (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) was recorded in the Hobart Rivulet in Hobart, Tasmania. Twenty-three sites were sampled for platypus presence over 21 days for a total of 784 surveys at various times between 6:00 and 20:00 during which current weather and river conditions were recorded. Fifty-eight platypuses were observed, and their behaviors were recorded in 15-minute periods for a total 5.86 hours of behavioral data. During observations the type and duration of their behaviors was recorded. The habitat assessment at the sites included factors that may impact platypus occurrence, behavior, or abundance such as …

Why Antimicrobial Resistance Pipelines Fail On Cyanobacteria: What Custom Databases Reveal Instead, Maeve Musselman

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

Harmful cyanobacterial blooms (C-HABs) are increasing as climate change and nutrient enrichment create favorable environments for cyanobacteria. Although bloom-forming cyanobacteria can persist in extreme and polluted conditions, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and metal resistance (MR) play significant roles in bloom persistence and response to treatments, both remain understudied. Currently, most AMR detection pipelines use clinical databases developed for human pathogens which routinely fail to detect resistance genes in environmental microbes. This study evaluated AMR and MR profiles in seven freshwater cyanobacteria using both clinical AMR pipelines (CARD, ResFinder, ARG-ANNOT) and a custom environmental resistance database specifically designed to include metal …

What’S On The Menu? An Observational Study Of The Predatory Ecology Of Pseudochromis Fuscus, Navya Mittal

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

Understanding the foraging behaviour of small reef predators is important for determining how they influence reef fish and cryptobenthic community structure. This study examined the predatory behaviour of Pseudochromis fuscus, a mesopredatory reef fish known to consume high numbers of juvenile damselfish recruits. In contrast to previous studies, no successful captures of juvenile recruits were observed, despite numerous attempted strikes. Instead, benthic invertebrates appeared to be the primary food source across all three time periods examined (full moon, mass coral spawning, and new moon). Behavioural differences were observed among periods, with significantly higher pursuit attempts during the new moon, likely …

Contradicting Effects Of Three Firefighting Chemicals On Batrachochytrium Dendrobatidis Infection, Naomi Meyers

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

The spread of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis around the world has led to the decline of many species; however, Australian amphibian populations are especially vulnerable to the effects of the fungus. The combination of endemism, small geographical ranges, and a climate that supports fungal growth has led to the presumed extinction of 6 endemic species since the disease was first discovered. In addition to this fungus, amphibians are also facing pressure from the increasing prevalence of wildfires. As wildfires become more common and more destructive, scientists are rushing to find chemicals that aid firefighters in slowing down and reducing the intensity of …

Presence And Change Of Fluorescence In Two Broadcast Spawning Hermaphroditic Coral Species Through Development From Egg To Early Settlement, Mollie Kroll

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

The Great Barrier Reef is home to a variety of hermaphroditic broadcast spawning coral species that only release gametes to reproduce once a year. The limited opportunity to collect these gametes to understand a scleractinian coral’s early ontogeny caps the knowledge on their development prior to early settlement on the reef substrate. Corals can produce green fluorescent proteins during their development, but the biological function for this fluorescence is still widely hypothesized. This study aims to track hermaphroditic broadcast spawning species fluorescence, Acropora millepora and Platygyra sp., during their development from egg to early settler. The expression of green fluorescent …

Relating Natural Dispersal And Expansion Of Mangrove Forests To Local Australian Restoration Methods, August Jones

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

The combined vulnerability and importance of mangrove forests have spurred efforts to preserve their remaining natural stage and restore their land area made unsuitable by storms or coastal development. Globally, both private and government organizations have participated in mangrove ecosystem recovery through standard methodology and principles such as replantation and ecosystem rehabilitation. However, research into the costs and outcomes of these programs has ruled that many of them suffer low success rates due to a lack of suitable areas for rehabilitation, citing a poor understanding of the ecosystem typology and lack of long-term measures to avoid eventual degradation. This study …

Way Kambas National Park: The Human-Wildlife Conflict Success Story Still In Need Of Improvement, Eleanor Lefkowicz

Indonesia: Arts, Religion, and Social Change

This paper investigates the negative interactions between humans and animals in Way Kambas National Park of Sumatra, Indonesia, and the prevention and mitigation tactics the community utilizes. The numerous villages surrounding the National Park suffer from elephant activity damaging their farms, while the elephants are frequently harmed by poaching within the park. Participate observations and interviews concluded that the Way Kambas community responds to human-wildlife conflict with a collaborative effort by locals, government park police, and non-governmental organizations to both deter elephant presence outside of the park and poaching activity within the park, as well as to mitigate the negative …

The Imperative Of Regeneration: Exploring The Dimensions Of Tourism And Agriculture In Bali, Ava Whitney

Indonesia: Arts, Religion, and Social Change

This research centers on the impacts of mass tourism, development, and modernization on the landscape and culture of Bali and investigates regenerative alternatives in agriculture and tourism. Regenerative thinking offers a vision of travel and subsistence that preserves the ecology of the landscape and the integrity of Balinese culture. Organic farming and permaculture principles are traditional agricultural practices in Bali that have existed for generations, imbued with the Tri Hita Karana philosophy of Balinese Hinduism. Agriculture is a facet of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) that transmits ecological and cultural wisdom to future generations about how to relate to the natural …

The Erasure And Resilience Of Tionghoa-Indonesian Culture And Identity, John Hines-Shah

Indonesia: Arts, Religion, and Social Change

Indonesia is home to the largest diaspora of Chinese people anywhere in the world. Yet, the experiences of Chinese-Indonesians reveal a sustained erasure, discrimination, and pressure to assimilate in the face of political and social tensions. Under Dutch colonial rule, they were placed in a racial hierarchy, placed between Europeans and Indigenous Indonesians, yet excluded from full participation in either group. This structure planted early seeds of mistrust and scapegoating that endured into the post-independence period. After 1945, state policies often sought to assimilate Chinese-Indonesians, restricting cultural expression, closing Chinese-language schools, and encouraging or even requiring the adoption of Indonesian-sounding …

Piping Up: Exploring Body Length And Density Metrics Of Dominant Pipefish Species Urocampus Carinirostris Across Spatially Distinct Sites In Moreton Bay, Qld, Leah Esser

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

The morphologically unique family Syngnathidae faces high levels of anthropogenic pressures in Moreton Bay Marine Park where seagrass beds, habitat to many syngnathid species, are increasingly vulnerable. Among these species, the pipefish Urocampus carinirostris is especially prevalent, making it a strong candidate as an indicator and model species. Threats to seagrass, including pollution and nutrient overload, largely stem from sources on the bay’s western banks. This study aimed to conduct a preliminary investigation of how U. carinirostris size, density, and site-level pipefish diversity compares across locations, with particular attention to differences between eastern and western sites. An exploratory comparison between …

Helping The Natural World Speak For Itself: Art's Role In Communicating Environmental And Sustainability Concepts In Sydney, Australia, Elizabeth Clark

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

Climate change and its broadening scope have made awareness of environmental issues, as well as ways to mitigate them, essential to securing our planet's future. Artistic venues, such as art galleries and even theatres, are becoming increasingly prominent in this conversation due to their ability to engage broad audiences and make scientific concepts more accessible. To understand the effectiveness of artistic efforts in science communication, it is necessary to assess the strategies by which both successful scientific venues, like zoos or natural history museums, and emerging artistic venues in science disseminate information. This project aimed to assess science communication strategies …

Blooming Questions: The Potential Impact Of The Ongoing Harmful Algal Bloom On Pinnipeds On Kangaroo Island, South Australia, Rose Cassidy

Australia: Rainforest, Reef, and Cultural Ecology

The ongoing harmful algal bloom in South Australia that began in March 2025, which resulted in over 106 marine animal mortalities across 550 taxa, was recently identified as having brevetoxins, which can harm marine mammals and human beings (Murray et al., 2025). This algal bloom is currently affecting Kangaroo Island, South Australia, a key habitat for the endemic Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea), as well as long-nosed fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) (Goldsworthy et al., 2021), (Goldsworthy and Shaughnessy, 1994). Because these pinniped species were observed eating algal bloom affected prey, previous research on other pinnipeds suggests that the subject pinnipeds …

Table Of Contents (V. 34, No. 1)

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Endorsement Test’S Early Years, 1983–1985: Notes From The O’Connor Files, Jay Wexler

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

One of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s signature contributions to U.S. constitutional law was the endorsement test, a subtle but critically important reformulation of the Court’s then prevailing approach to applying the Establishment Clause that focused on the message sent by government action supporting religion and the potentially harmful effects of that message on religious minorities and the political community. Now that the current Court has discarded the endorsement test, leaving the government freer than ever to support religion in a variety of ways, we should expect to see the harms that Justice O’Connor cared about become increasingly widespread and prevalent. …

Laboratories Of Judicial Ethics: A Comparative Analysis Of Judicial Conduct Commissions In Tennessee, Rhode Island, And North Carolina, And Their Implications For Regulating The U.S. Supreme Court, Johnny Galloway

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

It is hardly necessary to recite the recent ethics controversies that have embroiled the Supreme Court. In the last several years, several revelations have rocked the Supreme Court and led members of Congress, President Joe Biden, and the public to question the Court’s ethical standards and impartiality. Whether the Court’s partiality and imprudence are real or perceived, recent developments like these have spurred calls for a binding code of ethics to be either adopted voluntarily by the Court or imposed involuntarily by congressional action. Given the fierce debate over ethics regulation of the U.S. Supreme Court, it is noteworthy that …

The Overlooked Case Of October Term 2023: Implications Of Sec V. Jarkesy On Environmental Law, Hayden Miller

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In the summer of 2024, the Supreme Court published its opinion in SEC v. Jarkesy. In Jarkesy, the Court held that certain administrative cases must be adjudicated through Article III courts with juries instead of administrative law tribunals. The case involved fraud charges against George Jarkesy, Jr., an investment manager. After a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation, the agency alleged that Jarkesy had violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Subsequently, SEC Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) levied civil penalties against Jarkesy for securities fraud. On appeal, the Court held that securities fraud under the Securities Exchange Act …

Fall 2025

La Louisiane

The magazine of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The Impacts Of Sports Specialization On Youth Development, Madison M. Allen

Honors Thesis

To this date, there has been a rise in the professionalism of youth sports, which has increased the competitiveness and likelihood of early specialization in young athletes. While this allows youth athletes to have recognition at a young age, many athletes experience negative effects that inhibit their ability to make it to the elite level at a later age. Sports specialization can be defined as the participation and/or training of one sport year-round, typically excluding participation in all other sports. Current research suggests that sports specialization can contribute to injury and musculoskeletal disorders, impact motor skills and coordination, and cause …

Disability And Human Trafficking: Prevention Education And Professional Training, Andrea Nichols, Sarah Slutsker, Melissa Oberstaedt

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Aim: This pilot study aimed to explore the intersection of disability and anti-trafficking prevention and training efforts from the perspectives of human trafficking survivors with disabilities and the professionals who work with them to inform further research.

Methods: The current study draws from in-depth interviews with seven participants, including two survivors and five professionals who regularly worked with human trafficking survivors with disabilities. Data analysis involved independent co-coding of transcribed interviews by a three-member research team to identify core themes and subthemes.

Results: The results showed a lack of human trafficking prevention education for people with disabilities, as well as …

Entrepreneurship Over The Business Cycle, Ryan Rudderham, Miyu Aoki

Annual Student Research Poster Session

During economic recessions, individuals face a challenging decision: whether to seek traditional employment or start their own business. While recessions are a poor time for entrepreneurship due to reduced consumer spending and business productivity, these periods also feature high unemployment, which makes finding wage work difficult. This project developed a theoretical framework to study entrepreneurship over the business cycle by introducing labor market frictions, creating a tractable yet realistic structure for occupational choice. Traditional macroeconomic models struggle to capture entrepreneurial decision-making across business cycles. As such, this project looked at labor market frictions in building a theoretical framework. Over the …

Delving Into Invisible Semantics For Generalized One-Shot Neural Human Rendering, Yihong Lin, Xuemiao Xu, Huaidong Zhang, Cheng Xu, Weijie Li, Yi Xie, Jing Qin, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traditional human neural radiance fields often overlook crucial body semantics, resulting in ambiguous reconstructions, particularly in occluded regions. To address this problem, we propose the Super-Semantic Disentangled Neural Renderer (SSD-NeRF), which employs rich regional semantic priors to enhance human rendering accuracy. This approach initiates with a Visible-Invisible Semantic Propagation module, ensuring coherent semantic assignment to occluded parts based on visible body segments. Furthermore, a Region-Wise Texture Propagation module independently extends textures from visible to occluded areas within semantic regions, thereby avoiding irrelevant texture mixtures and preserving semantic consistency. Additionally, a view-aware curricular learning approach is integrated to bolster the model's …

Cross-Subject Mind Decoding From Inaccurate Representations, Yangyang Xu, Bangzhen Liu, Wenqi Shao, Yong Du, Shengfeng He, Tingting Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Decoding stimulus images from fMRI signals has advanced with pre-trained generative models. However, existing methods struggle with cross-subject mappings due to cognitive variability and subject-specific differences. This challenge arises from sequential errors, where unidirectional mappings generate partially inaccurate representations that, when fed into diffusion models, accumulate errors and degrade reconstruction fidelity. To address this, we propose the Bidirectional Autoencoder Intertwining framework for accurate decoded representation prediction. Our approach unifies multiple subjects through a Subject Bias Modulation Module while leveraging bidirectional mapping to better capture data distributions for precise representation prediction. To further enhance fidelity when decoding representations into stimulus images, …

Classical Shadows With Improved Median-Of-Means Estimation, Winston Fu, Dax Enshan Koh, Siong Thye Goh, Jian Feng Kong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The classical shadows protocol, introduced by Huang et al (2020 Nat. Phys. 16 1050), makes use of the median-of-means (MoM) estimator to efficiently estimate the expectation values of M observables with failure probability δ using only O ( log ⁡ ( M / δ ) ) measurements. In their analysis, Huang et al used loose constants in their asymptotic performance bounds for simplicity. However, the specific values of these constants can significantly affect the number of shots used in practical implementations. To address this, we studied a modified MoM estimator proposed by Minsker (2023 Proc. 36th Conf. on Learning Theory …

Writers Helping Writers: The Power Of Peer Feedback In Student Writing, Heather Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to improve students’ engagement with the writing process by focusing more intently on peer feedback. The study occurred in my sixth-grade classroom in an affluent suburb of a large U.S. city. As an insider to the setting, I used mixed methods to address a problem of practice, having noticed that students were not engaging in revision between their first and final drafts. Through the lens of social constructivism, I examined data collected through surveys, semi-structured interviews, and writing samples. Being both reviewers and recipients of feedback had positive yet distinct impacts on …