Digital Commons Network^™

World Settings, Elizabeth Meiklejohn

Masters Theses

Acoustical building materials, with their ability to absorb and diffuse sound, can reshape the character of interior spaces in profound ways. Woven textiles often perform as acoustical materials, whether by coincidence or by design; strategic use of textile structure and dimensionality can yield specific experiential qualities in homes, offices and shared spaces. The way certain materials manipulate sound can feel otherworldly, as if they break the laws of physics or the familiar parameters of one’s surroundings. The same properties can be found in emergent visual patterns and illusory lighting conditions, which provoke an investigative, deliberate way of looking.

In this …

Accidental Commensality Eating, Belonging, And Mazaa On The Streets Of Jaipur, Rini Singhi

Masters Theses

Commensality is more than just eating together at a shared table. "Who can eat with whom and what" is a divisive issue in India, where food and eating serve as functions of inclusion and exclusion. In this paper, I examine street food stalls in Jaipur as sites of eating together with strangers and ask, What forms of commensality do street food stalls enable? Can eating together on the street expand ideas about eating together in public? As part of my fieldwork in Jaipur, I observe the surroundings of street food stalls, participate in heritage food walks with guides, and document …

!, Nick Larson

Masters Theses

This thesis uses the exclamation point to represent a way of thinking and working methodology. The exclamation point in mathematics represents a factorial function, an operation for determining all possible orders of a set. Colloquially, the meaning of the exclamation point relies entirely on context. Within a yellow triangle, it means caution or danger, but at the end of a sentence delivering good news, it means excitement. In the context of this thesis, the exclamation point represents enthusiastically and exhaustively reordering objects, words, and processes to highlight shifting meaning.

Fertilizer Waste Mistreatment Facilities: Investigating The Barrier That Keep Waste In And Attention Out At Central Florida's Phosphogypsum Stacks., Harsha Devaraj

Masters Theses

This project investigates the physical and narrative barriers constructed by the phosphate mining and processing industry to dissuade public engagement with its phosphogypsum sites in Central Florida, USA. The barriers around PG utilize decades of misinformation, racial geographies, and misrepresentations of scale, origin, and risk to create powerful narratives about how we should imagine and relate to these materials. These barriers hinder sustained public attention to their sites, enabling extractive industries to expand while avoiding oversight and responsibility. Attention to how these barriers around phosphogypsum are constructed allows us to recognize these strategies at work in how we see and …

Other Realms, Louis Rakovich

Masters Theses

Can a system existing in rigid order be taken back to a state of malleability, a space of potential not yet actualized?

If creation reduces the infinite to produce the finite, then in the simplest sense, creation is the process of bringing something tangible, real, out of the ether—out of the primordial chaos of possibility. The technique of defamiliarization can be viewed as an agent of de-creation, the active reversal of creation, in order to make creation possible once again. As such it holds spiritual power in its own right.

In pursuit of this state of renewed potentiality, I use …

Openness, Qiwen Ju

Masters Theses

We perceive the world as flat when we close one eye. When both eyes are open, the world takes on a three-dimensional quality.

Our childhood, education, family, and environment form and bind our cognitive perspective. As the ancient Chinese proverb goes: “You can’t see Mount Tai by blinding your eyes with one leaf.” Truth is exceedingly difficult to discern. Like the obscuring leaf, there are blind spots in our vision. Prejudice is often the narrow leaf that obstructs perception, preventing us from seeing with greater dimension.

For actual comprehension, we can only see through the eyes, hearts, and minds of …

Connect: Translating Complexity Through Visual Simplification, Ilhee Park

Masters Theses

CONNECT: Translating Complexity through Visual Simplification brings complex data into concise visual systems that encourage ease of access. With a background in Human Factors Engineering, user engagement remains a central focus in my design. Whether reducing barriers to scientific information or untangling deeply complex data, design must contain intuitive concepts without the need for extended explanation. Using bold color and geometric shapes as the core design language to render pictorial narratives, this thesis maps my development as an information designer through modes of gathering, deciphering, and interpreting.

Rising To The Occasion : A Resiliency Strategy For Brickell, Miami, Stephanie Gottlieb

Masters Theses

As a result of climate change, there has been an increase in flooding all over the world, especially in coastal areas. The coastal city of Miami, Florida is about seventeen feet above sea level at its highest point, with much of the city at five feet or less above sea level. This study is focused in the neighborhood of Brickell. The neighborhood is on the coast and thus acts as a barrier between the Atlantic and other neighborhoods in Miami. The neighborhood has also been the center of a lot of recent growth and development and has become a cultural …

Youkoso Tokyo : Guidebook To A New Cybercity, Evelyn Ehgotz

Masters Theses

Tokyo exists in an urban Feedback Loop, a concept that takes from theories of post-urbanism and cybernetics. Essentially, there is a loop between the physical city and the image or representations of the city. Both versions of the city are accepted as valid, but by analyzing the image versions as heterotopias, there is a view into the social constructs and conceptions of the city. East Asian cities are especially impacted because of techno-orientalist tendencies of the West. Tokyo, being one of the most well-documented and temporal, has been imagined and reimagined as simultaneously high-tech and mysteriously ancient. This is most …

Towards A New Immersion, Kaijie Huang

Masters Theses

The rapid development of informational technologies and computational technologies in the past few decades had made previously expensive computational devices affordable for the general public. Personal computers in the 1990s and 2000s, Smartphones in the 2010s, and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets especially in recent years(2020s). The extraordinary immersive qualities of VR had sparked a new wave of exploration of this newly developed media.

The immersive medium has a long history in human society even before the invention of computers. It can take as many forms as literature, drama, painting, sculpture, photography, film, digital media and so much more. Depending on …

The Tails Of Two Avian Schistosomes: Paired Exposure Study Demonstrates Trichobilharzia Stagnicolae Penetrates Human Skin More Readily Than A Novel Avian Schistosome From Planorbella, Nathaniel J. Anderson, Curtis L. Blankespoor, Randall J. Dejong

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

A novel schistosome from Planorbella snails currently known as avian schistosomatid sp. C (ASC) was recently described as being capable of causing the papules associated with swimmer’s itch. We conducted a paired study with 24 human volunteers, exposing each of their forearms to five drops of water containing cercariae of ASC or Trichobilharzia stagnicolae, and examined the skin for papules 1–3 days later. A mixed effects model showed that only the parasite species significantly affected the number of papules, while prior experimental exposure, swimming history, and swimmer’s itch experience did not. The total number of papules produced by the two …

Three Gorges Dam: Friend Or Foe Of Riverine Greenhouse Gases?, Jinren Ni, H Wang, Tao Ma, Rong Huang, Philippe Ciais, Z Li, Yao Yue, Jinfeng Chen, B Li, Y Wang, Maosheng Zheng, T Wang, Alistair G.L. Borthwick

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Dams are often regarded as greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters. However, our study indicated that the world's largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD), has caused significant drops in annual average emissions of CO2, CH4 and N2O over 4300 km along the Yangtze River, accompanied by remarkable reductions in the annual export of CO2 (79%), CH4 (50%) and N2O (9%) to the sea. Since the commencement of its operation in 2003, the TGD has altered the carbonate equilibrium in the reservoir area, enhanced methanogenesis in the upstream, and restrained methanogenesis and denitrification via modifying anoxic habitats through long-distance scouring in the …

Awareness And Usage Of E-Resources Among Undergraduate In Fountain University, Osun State, Nigeria, Fausat Kehinde Adenariwo

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study aims at investigating the awareness and usage of electronic resources among undergraduates of Fountain University, Osun State, Nigeria. Three research questions were answered and three null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study and systematic sampling technique was used to select 1000 undergraduates. Simple percentage and frequency table was used to analyse the research questions, while Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMCC) was used for testing the hypotheses. The results obtained revealed that undergraduates of Fountain University are quite aware and highly use electronic information resources. The study also …

Schizophrenia And Social Stigma: How Society Views Those With Mental Illness, Rebecca Littrel

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Mental Illness is one of the most stigmatized diseases in the media today. Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia are more likely to have depression, more likely to commit suicide, and less likely to hold a job and be covered by insurance companies. How society views mental illness needs to change. Mental health professionals often feel stigmatized for their jobs as well.

Eating Disorders: Creating A New Standard, Bree Carlton

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Eating disorders are perhaps one of the most misunderstood diseases. Unlike other diseases, there has never been an epidemic of eating disorders. Rather, there has been an ebb and flow in the awareness surrounding them and the support for those that suffer. This research details eating disorders and the stereotypes regarding who falls victim to them, causes, the effect society has on eating disorders, and the effect disordered eating has on society. This study assessed the relationship sociocultural factors like culture, social media, and age have on eating disorders. Also assessed was the relationship between biological factors like gender and …

Tritons United: Against Gender-Based Violence Campus Programming, Mackenzie A. Chrun, Maggie M. Gross

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Tritons United Against Gender-based Violence is a programming grant funded by the Department of Justice office on Violence Against Women. This presentation will introduce the UMSL community to grant activities and the work I have supported throughout this semester as an undergraduate research assistant on the project. The project is led by a Coordinated Community Response Team (CCRT) that includes key members both within and outside the UMSL campus and in the surrounding community from professionals in areas of victim services, prevention & education, law enforcement/safety, and student conduct. The overall goal of Tritons United is to reduce gender-based violence …

Giving Of One’S Self: Perceptions, Experiences, And Motivations In United States Blood Donation, Allison Huene, Jamie Jones, Hayden Steingruby, Alexis Warnecke

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Through our research on blood donation, we hope to answer the following questions:

Why do people donate blood? Do they perceive it as an altruistic donation or gift?

Our methods include semiotic analysis, survey distributed online, semi-structured interviews, qualitative research over social media platforms, and participant observation done through donating blood ourselves. Through seeking to gain insight on blood donation as a type of standardized gift given in a market economy, as well as examining the way donors view themselves and their action of giving, we may be able to provide suggestions for how blood shortages could be alleviated, or …

Gender Dysphoria: The Widespread "Social" Disease Of The 21st Century, Aria Spencer

Undergraduate Research Symposium

There has been a supposed increase in the cases of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) in the past 10 years. The term ‘ROGD’ is a non medical phrase that has been widely adopted by members of anti transgender groups. This harmful classification has been the baseline for many anti transgender youth legislature that have been introduced in Americans states as recently as February of 2022. Gender dysphoria has been discredited as a ‘social media’ disease, and the fear of having LBGTQ+ people in communities has caused the harm and mistreatment of both the transgender youth and adults in America. Gender …

Cinema Exhibition In St. Louis, 1920: A Thriving Business, Sarah E. Boslaugh

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In 1920, St. Louis was the 6th largest city in the United States, with a population of 772,897, and density of 11,684/square mile (twice today's density). The population was primarily (90.9%) white, with 14.7% of the white population foreign born. The city had a dense trolley network, while private ownership of automobiles was relatively rare (15.8 residents per car). Cinema exhibition was a thriving business in the city, with 120 cinemas and 29 film exchanges (as compared to, for instance, 12 live theatres in the same year).

Cinemas were located throughout the city, primarily on or near trolley lines. This …

Bridging The Gap: Informal Sex Education On Tiktok, Anne Brown

Undergraduate Research Symposium

This study will explore the United States’ lack of adequate and explicit sex education policy, and how adolescent and young adults’ use social media to bridge their knowledge gap. I will perform content and discourse analyses of videos related to sex education on the online media platform TikTok. In particular, I will analyze the frequency and topic of videos and comments to understand how users interact in the platform. I expect to show how TikTok usage is representative of the evolution of informal sex education in the digital age. In particular, I expect that my analysis will allow us to …

Mythos Modernized: Echoes Of The Literary Past In Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse (2019), Kayla Burrows

Undergraduate Research Symposium

During a 2020 interview, Robert Eggers’ mentions his film The Lighthouse (2019) was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s unfinished short story of the same name. Although the critical reception of The Lighthouse was primarily positive, critics struggled to categorize this film about two lightkeepers stationed on a remote New England island in the 1890s within a specific genre. Indeed, the film consistently slips between reality and dream, and the mounting tension throughout the film culminates in a final haunting vision that is never explained. This paper explores Eggers’ literary inspirations for The Lighthouse, not only examining the obvious influences …

Resolving The Repression Pathway Of Virulence Gene Hila In Salmonella, Alexandra King, Lon Chubiz Phd, Brenda Pratte, Lauren Daugherty

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Salmonella is a relatively abundant, virulent species of bacteria that is most known for spreading gastrointestinal diseases through food. These illnesses result in approximately 1.35 million infections, including over 25,000 hospitalizations each year, in the U.S. alone (CDC.gov). As antibiotic resistance becomes an increasingly urgent public health problem, the importance of developing alternative treatment methods is only becoming more crucial. One of the genes responsible for this virulence is known as hilA. HilA is the main transcriptional regulator of Salmonella Pathogenicity Island-1 gene (UniProt). SPI-1 plays an important role in the invasion of Salmonella into epithelial cells. The proteins encoded …

“An Eternity Or Two Later”: Family Of Choice In Elaine Castillo’S America Is Not The Heart, Caroliena E. Cabada

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

Many of the challenges faced by environmental activists are issues of scale. How can vital changes be enacted and sustained over the necessarily long time scales of environmental restoration? Elaine Castillo’s America Is Not the Heart (2018) illuminates a possible avenue for activists engaged in environmental justice work. Parts of the book contains extensive flashbacks to Hero’s, the protagonist’s, time as part of a cadre of the New People’s Army in the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship. Though the NPA is not strictly an environmental activist group, the organization takes their cues from queer ecofeminist frameworks and the intersections between …

A New Politics Of Black Regality: Zora Neale Hurston And Alice Walker’S Monarchical Method, William Martin

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

Literary critics conducting a comparative study of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple diligently tend to the relationship between the two women, particularly at an intertextual level. This paper sheds light on an important third member of this relationship: Black women readers. An articulation of Black regality, which involves the incorporation of monarchical symbols and titles in characterizations of Black people, provides these readers with political tools poised to liberate Black women from hegemonic male authority and control. Examining the significance of adornment for the self exclusively to combat invisibility, the power …

Fantasizing A Free Black History: Post-Black Arts Movement Novels And Plays Re-Imagining Jim Crow, Wynter Lastarria

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

“Fantasizing a Free Black History: Post-Black Arts Movement Novels and Plays Re-Imagining Jim Crow” closely reads one novel and one play written in the early twenty-first century and set in the Jim Crow period. Analyzing how Toni Morrison’s novel Love (2005) and Lynn Nottage’s drama By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011) take up Jim Crow era Black history together, I find that both works intentionally offer incomplete, subjective and fictive narrations of black life during Jim Crow to deny readers a sense of realism. In doing so, these authors represent a group of African American novelists and playwrights that …

Session 1: Innovation In Legal Services, Steven W. Bender, Michael Cherry, Matthew Spencer

SITIE Symposiums

This panel featured two “disrupters” who detailed their experiences innovating in the legal services space. The first panelist spoke about data-driven regulatory reform and the other spoke as an entrepreneur whose product introduces artificial intelligence (AI) into the legal recruiting process. Two additional panelists provided commentary regarding the second panelist’s presentation.

The panel provided insight on the topics of: (1) the legal regulatory process at large; (2) how a data-driven and feedback-oriented sandbox provides an alternative regulatory process; (3) the legal hiring and recruiting process and (4) how AI allows law firms to consider alternative hiring metrics when assessing candidates …

My Journey With The Heartware Ventricular Assist Device- An Obituary, Georg M. Wieselthaler

The VAD Journal

None

Infographic: Leaving Teaching, Zoe Kaskamanidis

Teacher infographics

A new study from Monash University draws upon a 2019 questionnaire of 2444 Australian primary and secondary school teachers, revealing that only 41% of respondents intended to remain in the profession. We look at some of the findings from the analysis in this infographic.

Monkey Pox: Ignored Or Emerging Pathogen, Karoll J. Cortez

CHED Talks

No abstract provided.

2022-06-03, Board Of Regents, Murray State University

Board of Regents Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.