Digital Commons Network^™

Embracing The Bot: Japan’S Love Affair With Ai Learning, Dan Rosen

UC Law SF International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Uncle Sam Plays Matchmaker: Intimate Encounters, War Brides, And Marital Policy In The Vietnam War Era, Daniel P. Ward

Dissertations

During the Vietnam War era, thousands of American GIs married Southeast Asian women who immigrated to the United States together. While considerable scholarly attention has focused on the political and social dimensions of the Vietnam era sex work industry, the regulation of marriage and immigration policies for Vietnamese American couples provide new perspectives to explore. Although intimate encounters with local women also pervaded other twentieth century conflicts, the Vietnam War saw the American military implement a new system to screen and regulate war bride marriages. In doing so, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) constructed the first interservice set of marriage …

Investigating The Use And Acceptance Of Information And Communication Technologies By University Faculty In Liberia And Its Implications To Sub-Saharan Africa, Michael K. Gray

Dissertations

This descriptive, non-experimental, correlational quantitative study examines the relationship between components of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), and Human Capital Development (HCD) in determining the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) among university faculty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). With the increasing importance of ICT in educational transformation across developing regions like SSA, understanding the underlying factors that influence ICT acceptance is essential for effective policy and implementation strategies. The researcher surveyed 336 university faculty in Liberia using a questionnaire designed to capture perceptions related to TAM constructs (perceived usefulness …

The Interactive Soap Opera: Deceit, Romance And Abuse, Grace Canfield, Sage K. Colon, Mollie M. Denholm, Ava Freese, Grace Salter, Abigail M. Saplak, Alex N. Skocic, Derek M. Williams, Richard M. Perloff

Student Scholarship

One of the most interesting aspects of adolescents’ use of social media is the dynamic drama that occurs between followers of social media influencers in the wake of controversial actions performed by social media influencers themselves. A content analysis of followers’ comments about influencers’ and social media personalities’ scandalous romantic entanglements indicated that close to 90 percent of commenters were female and, in keeping with followers’ loyalty to their favored influencer, the highest proportion of comments were negative to the influencer’s adversary in the romantic dispute. A detailed analysis of the moralistic aspects of followers’ comments offered additional insights.

Aging Is Not All Doom And Gloom: How Do Beliefs About Aging Moderate The Effects Of Mortality Salience On Ageism Attitudes?, Kristen Schwindt Edmondson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of the study is to examine how young adults’ beliefs about aging moderate the effects of mortality salience on their ageism attitudes. Past research suggests that ageism is, in part, due to the presence of elderly people reminding people of their own aging process and mortality (Martens et al., 2004). Little is known, however, about how individuals’ beliefs about aging may moderate the impact of mortality salience on their attitudes toward aging. Some people tend to perceive aging-related changes as relatively fixed (i.e., essentialist belief), whereas others perceive them as relatively malleable (nonessentialist belief). Would a more malleable …

Beyond Keeping The Lights On: Covid-19’S Impact On Lower Mississippi River Valley Museums And Public History Sites, Liz Skilton, Ian Beamish

Department of History

This article reviews the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public history sites and museums along the Lower Mississippi River Valley between 2020 and 2024. Constructed from interviews with sixty-seven sites across a four-year period, it uses a regional approach to examine how pandemic closures, reopening processes, and adaptations impacted public history sites and museums in the short-, medium-, and long-term, arguing that the pandemic created lasting changes through adaptation rather than large-scale closure of public history institutions. It concludes with an assessment of what can be learned from the pandemic period’s effect on public history.

More Than A Mirror: Investigating Social Media’S Role In Shaping Social Comparisons And Identity Around Perceptions Of Beauty, Janella Eshiet

Communication (PhD) Dissertations

The rapid expansion of social media has transformed interpersonal communication and the way that individuals engage in social comparisons in their daily life. While existing literature emphasizes the negative psychological effects of both social comparison and the use of social media platforms, there remains a need to better understand the positive experiences of users in these digital spaces. Guided by social comparison theory (SCT; Festinger, 1954) and social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), the current study applied an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA, Smith et al., 2022) to explore how social media users interacted with beauty-centered narratives and the …

Demographic Characteristics And Selected Personality Traits Of Women In Competitive Bodybuilding, Chloe A. Zeeuw

Master's Theses

This study investigated demographic characteristics and measures of personality (dimensions of performance perfectionism and five-factor model characteristics) in women in competitive bodybuilding between 18-25 years old. A total of 24 women completed an online survey which included a demographic questionnaire, the Five Factor Model Rating Form (FFMRF), and the Performance Perfectionism Scale for Sport (PPSS) inventories. Descriptive results for the FFMRF were Openness (18.17±3.12), Conscientiousness (25.58±3.33), Extraversion (19.96±3.46), Agreeableness (19.88±4.58), and Neuroticism (15.67±4.94), and for the PPS-S were Self-oriented performance perfectionism (20.96±3.53), Socially prescribed performance perfectionism (13.96±4.26), and Other-oriented performance perfectionism (10.54±4.23). Pearson’s correlation coefficients and Shapiro-Wilk tests revealed that …

Building Capacity For Born-Digital Archives Through Accessioning Workflows At The Friends Historical Library, Emily Higgs Kopin, J. Hutchison, James E. Truitt

Library Staff Works

Large archival institutions have contended with the challenges presented by born-digital materials for much longer than smaller institutions, with the latter only recently beginning their own attempts to manage these items. This case study details the process of starting a born-digital archival accessioning program and iteratively designing workflows scalable for a small institution. We review our approach to acquiring storage space and assessing our existing born-digital holdings and needs, lay out our initial accessioning workflow, discuss our processes of documentation and iteration, and reflect on tensions with archival education and best practices. By sharing this case study, we aim to …

Community Organizations, Immigrants, And Air Pollution Risks In Utah, Nowrin Fatema, Kirsten Vinyeta, Erin Hofmann

Publications

Over the past 25 years, Utah’s Wasatch Front, a metropolitan region along the Western flanks of the Wasatch Mountain Range that includes Salt Lake City, has emerged as a new international immigrant gateway (1). While in Utah, immigrants may find economic opportunity and safety relative to their home countries, they may also experience notable life-altering disparities, including disproportionate exposure to the region’s worsening air pollution. As some of the first and few institutions interacting with newly arrived immigrants and refugees, non-governmental community organizations are well positioned to serve as information hubs regarding regional air pollution risk. Yet our research, in …

Quantifying The Small Body Problem: A Meta-Analysis Of Animal Product Reduction Interventions, Elise Hankings, Andie Thompkins Phd, Allison Troy Phd

Diet

This research provides a meta-analysis to evaluate evidence of a substitution effect in interventions designed to reduce or eliminate animal products from participant diets in which small-bodied animals are substituted for large-bodied animals.

Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-To-Zion Journey Through Every National Park, Conor Knighton

Common Reading Experience

From CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Conor Knighton, a behind-the-scenery look at his year traveling to each of America's National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people our country has to offer.

When Conor Knighton set off to explore America's "best idea," he worried the whole thing could end up being his worst idea. A broken engagement and a broken heart had left him longing for a change of scenery, but the plan he'd cooked up in response had gone a bit overboard in that department: Over the course of a single year, Knighton would visit every national …

Improving Collaboration With Hospital Security And Nursing Staff, When Treating Patients In Acute Crisis, By Implementing A Modified Sbar Card., Yuna Choi

Doctor of Nursing Practice Papers

Inpatient psychiatric units provide assistance to patients experiencing acute mental health crises such as psychosis or suicidal ideation. Patients experiencing acute mental health crises can sometimes become agitated or aggressive towards staff, themselves, or other patients, which can pose a significant risk to everyone’s safety. The purpose of the project is to improve staff satisfaction and collaboration by standardizing the interdisciplinary communication between hospital security and nursing staff. Over a period of two weeks, the facilitator educated security and unit staff on a SBAR card during shift huddle to implement on the unit in the event of an acute mental …

Exploitation For All: The Factors That Enable Pig Butchering Schemes To Weaponize Cybersecurity's Weakest Link, Melaney Freeman

Boise State Graduate Student Projects

This paper discusses pig butchering schemes and how they leverage human weaknesses through advanced social engineering and manipulation techniques that are enabled through the use of human trafficking, forced labor, and government corruption in Southeast Asia. Details regarding scammer exploitation and the formation of a victim-offender identity is presented, followed by the explanation of factors that allow organized crime groups to exist. Essential tactics used by scammers are examined to understand how they weaponize people's vulnerabilities for the duration of the scam to build a relationship with the victim and earn their trust in order to financially exhaust them through …

From Awareness To Action: The Educational Pillar Of Capacity Building And Ace, Emna Akrout

COP30

No abstract provided.

Nations That Cannot Drown: Reimagining The Loss And Damage Fund For A World Already Lost, Salma Ahmed Mohamed Abdalrhem

COP30

No abstract provided.

Mantle Flow And Crustal Deformation Revealed By Seismic Anisotropy In The Subduction Zone Beneath Myanmar, Enbo Fan, Mingming Jiang, Yinshuang Ai, Stephen S. Gao, Kelly H. Liu, Yumei He, Yiming Bai, Guangbing Hou, Yuan Ling, Chit Thet Mon, Myo Thant, Kyaing Sein

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The oblique convergence of the Indian and Eurasian plates drives significant deformation in the crust and mantle beneath Myanmar. However, the crustal deformation in the Indo-Burman Ranges (IBR) and mantle flow beneath Myanmar and adjacent areas remain unclear due to limited studies. We utilized data from the newly deployed second phase of the China-Myanmar Geophysical Survey of the Myanmar Orogen array to perform shear wave splitting analysis of PKS, SKKS, and SKS (XKS) phases. Our results, together with previous findings, provide new insights into mantle flow and crustal deformation across central Myanmar. In the IBR, we observed a transition from …

Bootmaking Before Bootstrapping: Patterns Of Grit And Slack In Multicultural Nonfiction Picture Books, Kristine Mensonides Gritter, Wing Shuen (Alice) Lau, Yaru (Sarah) Zhou, Jiang Pu, Munyi Shea

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This investigation reports the findings of a critical multicultural content analysis of recent-award winning Orbis Pictus (non-fiction) picture books. The analysis examines patterns of grit and slack strategies across race and gender for historical characters of color as they overcame boundaries and accomplished long-term goals. Findings suggest that the concept of “grit” is not merely a universal construct of an outstanding individual who lifts themself up by their own bootstraps but that systems are important in allowing an individual to succeed to overcome boundaries. The bootstrap myth can be contested by critical readers, even young readers of picture books, as …

Public Services Annual Report 2024-2025, Amanda K. Izenstark

Public Services Reports

Annual report of the Public Services Department at the University of Rhode Island Libraries.

Assessment Of Social Media Use And Strategies For Combating Misinformation Among Extension Educators In Arkansas, Enoch Teye Kwao Ametepey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study assessed the use of social media by Extension educators in Arkansas and examines strategies for identifying and combating misinformation within agricultural extension services. Guided by the Uses and Gratifications Theory, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), and the Third-Person Effect Theory for objectives one, two, and three, this research employed quantitative and qualitative approaches, specifically, two quantitative cross-sectional surveys and a qualitative focus group study developed into a three article dissertation. The first article assessed the extent to which Extension educators utilize social media for professional activities, revealing that social media is predominantly used …

In A Nutshell (Aug.), Yannick L. Brookes

Office of Student Affairs

No abstract provided.

Mitigating Ai Bias With Prompt Augmentation, Verónica C. Gonzales

Faculty Scholarship

Large-language-model (“LLM”) outputs are inevitably shaped by assumptions, biases, and attitudes rooted in racism and other systemic inequities embedded in the civil-law tradition. This Equity-in-Justice CLE focuses on helping civil legal service providers recognize and work to eliminate biases in generative AI outputs through equity-centered prompt augmentation and engineering. These small, cost-free interventions re-orient LLMs assistance toward fairness, cultural competency, and client-centered outcomes. Participants leave with an action plan for embedding anti-bias safeguards in everyday research, drafting, and client communication tasks.

Issue 469: August 2025, The Local Voice

The Local Voice

No abstract provided.

High School Students’ Navigation Processes In An Internet Reading Task: A Descriptive Video Analysis, Hyeju Han, Kole Norberg, Byeong-Young Cho, Scott H. Fraundorf

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Most research on internet reading has identified skilled readers based on well-established theories of print reading. Nevertheless, an emerging body of work suggests that higher competency in print reading does not fully account for competency in internet reading comprehension. The authors conducted a descriptive video analysis of high school readers’ online navigation behaviors to identify characteristics that could account for differences in their internet reading outcomes. In particular, they focused on students with high grade point averages but diverging internet reading outcomes. The authors found that the participating students with lower outcomes tended to adopt a linear path of navigation …

Town Of Pawleys Island, Ally Murphy

Goal 15: Life on Land

No abstract provided.

Faculty Development Update, August 2025, Lindenwood University

Faculty Development Update

The Faculty Development Update is a newsletter created by the Lindenwood University Learning Academy.

New Graduate Nurse Retention: The Effect Of Financial Literacy On New Graduate Nurse Intent To Stay, Jenna Elizabeth Hluwood

Dissertations

New graduate nurses (NGNs) undergo a range of life changes during their transition from an academic environment to clinical practice. To decrease NGN role strain, burnout and attrition, nurse educators and managers must do their part to limit the effects of transition shock. Therefore, Judy Duchscher’s (2009) theory of transition shock was the theoretical framework for this study. An essential component of transition shock is the responsibility of financial management. With no literature available to detail the financial literacy of NGNs, original research in this area of study was needed. The purpose of this quantitative exploratory study was to determine …

Wearing The Keffiyeh: Solidarity, Resistance, Activism, Catherine Harper Ph.D, Tasnim Alahdal, Rawan Gamal Agha

Arts and Design

The Palestinian keffiyeh is a distinctly patterned black-and-white woven double-cloth, hand-stitched scarf, originally used by farmers of the region. It became a prominent symbol of Palestinian nationalism from mid-twentieth century. Adopted by Yasser Arafat in the 1960s, it became a masculinist icon of Palestine’s politics of resistance, extended by female Palestinian liberationist Leila Khaled’s hijabi-like use, and then mobilised by wider leftist, activist, even Israel-critical Jewish, protest groups in the West.

In recent years, keffiyeh-patterned scarves, accessories, even dresses and skirts – in a range of colours – have appeared periodically in Western fashion stores, on couture catwalks, and …

Enhancing Kenya's Climate Adaptation Governance: A Policy Framework For Evidence-Based Climate Finance Access, Anne Wanjiru Ngarachu

COP30

No abstract provided.

A Regional Strategy For Building Climate-Health Capacity In North Africa, Donia Khaled Badr Mohamed

COP30

No abstract provided.