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Barriers Asian Adoptees Face In Screening For Inheritable Conditions Due To A Lack Of Family Medical History, Anna Shea

Honors Projects

Adoption has been increasingly common in the United States, with more than 7.8 million people in the United States adopted (Wexler et al., 2025) and over 280,000 children in the United States adopted internationally (Orr et al., 2024). Despite this, those who are adopted, especially internationally, often face medical disadvantages compared to those biologically related to their family. The differences in treatment between adoptees and those who are biologically related are largely due to the knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of the individual’s family medical history and genetic information. Genetic or inherited disease screening is often only completed or covered …

Moral Emotions Within The Habituation Of Virtue, Hannah Starr Grubbs-Oechsle

Dissertations (1934 -)

In this dissertation, I examine how moral emotions feature within the habituation of virtues. I suggest that their primary role within the moral life is epistemic: emotions grant agents perceptual access to evaluative properties in the world. I argue that their perceptual function within habit formation is normatively indispensable. I proceed through five methodological movements. I begin by presenting the three historical accounts of emotion I take as most influential on contemporary Western beliefs about emotion and as most dominant within the philosophy of emotion. To that end, I trace Stoic and Kantian accounts of emotion as representative of the …

Ghosts Of The Shelves: A Sequential Quantitative Study Of Book Banning And Libricide In The United States, Gregory A. Wadsworth

Doctoral Works at the University of New Haven

The United States is entrenched in a new era of censorship and libricide, characterized by unprecedentedly high rates of book banning, legislatively mandated restriction, and the disproportionate censoring of works authored by and prominently showcasing sexual and racial minorities. This ongoing perpetration of libricide, the prolific characterization of literature as a cultivator, and the societal structure which manifests and promotes literary restriction has thus far received little empirical attention. The current study represents a sequential quantitative study of book banning and libricide in the United States. Mirroring Gerbner’s (1998) method for establishing cultivation effects, the present study (1) utilized open-source …

Reducing College Dropout Rates Of People With Autism In Hillsborough County, Florida, Jennifer Warren

Selected Social Change Portfolios in Prevention, Intervention, and Consultation

Goal Statement

Significant barriers exist for neurodivergent individuals when they try to access higher education and these barriers continue to disrupt their ability to persist and obtain a college degree or secondary professional education. By implementing targeted academic supports and increasing authentic inclusive education practices on campuses and in online education spaces, barriers can be reduced or eliminated. With clear actionable steps and intentional buy in from institutions, barriers present for teens and young adults with autism are removed and higher education.

Significant Findings

College students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are a growing population in higher education, but they …

Beyond Barriers: A Universal Design Guide, Sydney F. Bunk

Masters Projects

Research has shown that students with reported visual impairments are continuously underrepresented in study abroad programs, despite institutions promoting study abroad as a high-impact practice that benefits students of diverse backgrounds. Although study abroad participation has been increasing in recent years, students with disabilities, and particularly those with visual impairments, engage at disproportionately low rates. A lack of comprehensible information about program environments and available accommodations are contributing factors to this trend. This project is intended to improve the clarity of study abroad program materials through the development of a Universal Design for Study Abroad Guidebook. Guided by the principles …

Handgrip Strength, Handgrip Endurance And Bmi: A Comprehensive Approach To Health Assessment Among The General Population Of Madikeri, Dr Asha S. Das, Dr Ravikiran Kisan, Dr Suhas Y. Shirur, Dr Narasimha Rai K, Dr Sanjay Bhagoji

Digital Journal of Clinical Medicine

Introduction: Being physically fit is essential for lowering the risk of illness and enhancing longevity. While Body Mass Index (BMI) is frequently used to evaluate body composition, Hand Grip Strength (HGS) and Hand Grip Endurance (HGE) are important indicators of general well-being. Goal: To assess BMI, HGS, and HGE and ascertain how they correlate in a selected group of subjects. Methods: Fifty participants between the ages of 20 and 40 years participated in a comparative cross-sectional study at the Department of Physiology, Kodagu Institute of Medical Sciences, Madikeri. Participants were divided into three BMI groups after anthropometric measurements were taken. …

Thinking Towards The Future: Reflections On Engaging With Ai For Visual Data Presentation In Qualitative Research, Chloe Le, Anh Ngoc Quynh Phan

The Qualitative Report

This article reports our experience of exploring the use of ChatGPT to artistically present a segment of qualitative data in a visual form for one of our previous studies. We recounted our engagement with ChatGPT and reflected on our emotions and thoughts throughout the interactive process with this AI-powered tool for image generation. Our narrative analysis highlights the agency of ChatGPT as an active contributor to the creative endeavor and emphasizes our critical role as researchers in interpreting the data and in critically evaluating AI-generated images within the context of our research. The paper suggests that AI-text-to-image function can potentially …

Global Institutions In The Colonial Conquest Of Palestine, Zeeshan Uddin

Student Scholarship

Spring 2026 SOCI 232: Social Policy and Global Issues course.

Research questions:

Question 1: How has Western imperialism historically and contemporarily dominated global policy?

Question 2: How have global institutions (ie. the League of Nations, UN, ICJ, IMF, etc.) shaped and contributed to the ongoing colonialist/imperialist project in Palestine?

Coordinated Telehealth For People With Parkinson’S Disease: A Qualitative Comparison Of Providers’ And Patients’ Experiences, Erin J. Bush, Reshmi L. Singh, Josephine Cox, Merrill R. Landers, Annalisa V. Piccorelli

The Qualitative Report

Telehealth increases access to allied healthcare in rural areas. People with Parkinson’s disease (PD) need improved access to health care, and from a patient-centered perspective, the coordination of their healthcare should be a priority. Four speech-language pathologists, two physical therapists, two pharmacists, and two study coordinators provided a coordinated allied healthcare intervention for people with PD in rural Wyoming and Nevada. Both the providers of the intervention, as well as the participants who received it, were interviewed about their experiences with the eight-week intervention and asked about aspects that were successful or unsuccessful. Through a naturalistic paradigm using a qualitative …

Beyond Victimhood, Expanding Narratives: A Generative Inquiry With Trafficking Survivors, Giacomo Chiara, Celiane Camargo-Borges, Diego Romaioli, Alberta Contarello

The Qualitative Report

This study is a generative inquiry with survivors of trafficking from a social constructionist perspective. Inspired by the principles of Appreciative Inquiry, its focus is collaboration between researchers and trafficking survivors with a view to shaping and understanding their trafficking experiences together, expanding understanding of the topic and co-constructing a relational space in which counter-narratives on victimhood can be generated. It consisted of 10 interviews with women survivors of trafficking at the Italian Anti-Trafficking System. These women were from a range of nations and their experiences of exploitation varied. Taking a constructionist approach to research, we formulated an episodic-generative interview …

Advancing Sustainability In The Indonesian Oil Field Services Landscape, Firmansyah Arifin, Sudarso Kaderi Wiryono, Sylviana Maya Damayanti, Gatot Yudoko

The Qualitative Report

This study examines sustainability practices in Indonesia's drilling and oil field services (OFS) industry, addressing a critical research gap from a business and management perspective. Using a qualitative case study approach, ten in-depth interviews with industry leaders identified key performance variables and developed a sustainability model specifically designed for the OFS drilling sector. The findings highlight three core dimensions: Internal Variables (e.g., Employee Health and Safety, CSR Initiatives, ESG Performance, Cost Savings, Energy Efficiency, Carbon Footprint Reduction), External Variables (e.g., Green Financing, Stakeholder Engagement, Community Welfare), and Performance. Novel contributions include operationalizing advanced HSE technologies like cyber rigs and tailored …

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Neurodiverse Secondary School Educators Transitioning To Online Teaching During Covid-19 Pandemic, Leane Pupo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic affected individuals, families, communities, and a variety of workplaces across the world. Many studies have addressed the impact of the emergency transition from on-ground to online on educators, students, and their families. However, while there is emerging literature on the impact of COVID-19 on neurodiverse individuals and on neurodiverse individuals in the workplace, there is little or no research on neurodiverse teachers. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of neurodiverse educators who transitioned from on-ground to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bandura’s social cognitive theory of self-efficacy and Garmezy’s theory of resilience …

A Machine Learning Framework For Ddos Attack Detection In Sdn-Enabled Mobile Wireless Networks, Ishita Sharma, Satyam Agarwai, Shashi Shekhar Jha, Sumit Chakravarty

Faculty Articles

Attacks on network components and devices pose a significant threat to service continuity, necessitating robust detection mechanisms. This paper presents a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack detection framework tailored for heterogeneous mobile wireless networks within a Software-Defined Networking architecture. A two-tier model is proposed: localized attack detection at access points (APs) using a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier, and centralized detection under mobility at the controller using a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model. The system incorporates novel traffic features such as flow count, speed of source IP, source and destination IP address entropy, proportion of bidirectional flows, and handover frequency, …

La Mujer Como Objeto De Consumo. Análisis Crítico De La Representación Femenina En Los Anuncios De Moda Vaquera, Ana Vicens Poveda

Congresos y Conferencias

El poder de la publicidad para asentar símbolos y perpetuar mitos es de sobra conocido. Para los estudios feministas es especialmente relevante la representación de la mujer en la publicidad por contribuir a reforzar estereotipos sexistas y dañinos para la imagen femenina. Dentro de la publicidad, este artículo se centra en los anuncios de moda de prendas vaqueras, por ser contenido dirigido a un público femenino joven, más vulnerable a la hora de asimilar y analizar estas representaciones arquetípicas de la mujer. Se presenta así un estudio audiovisual y comparativo de campañas comerciales que buscan, a través de la sexualización …

Preparing For The Workforce: An Analysis Of Employability In Business Education, Maddie Quintanilla

Masters Projects

Research has shown that undergraduate business students are not prepared for the workforce upon graduation. When it comes to career readiness, there is a gap between employers, universities, including Grand Valley State University, and students. This project investigates employers' expectations of universities and graduates, as well as the critical skills and strategies that graduates require to be employable after graduation. A comprehensive experiential learning course must address academic, career, and personal readiness while acknowledging the complexity of this transition, including the change from college to the workplace. The Business Internship Course is intended to assist undergraduate business students in their …

The Oppression Of Transgender People Across The World, Dheeraj Swaminathan

Student Scholarship

Spring 2026 SOCI 232: Social Policy and Global Issues course.

This paper will analyze:

1. How do cultural belief systems and biases such as religion affect transgender people and a country’s perception of transgender people?
2. What historical and political context affects the oppression of transgender people as well as the betterment of transgender rights?

The Role Of Interactions In Moiré Quantum Materials, Liangtao Peng

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Moiré quantum materials have emerged as a highly tunable platform for studying strongly interacting electrons in low dimensions. By twisting or lattice-mismatching atomically thin crystals, one can generate long-wavelength moiré superlattices that reconstruct the electronic bands, produce narrow bandwidths, and greatly enhance the importance of Coulomb interactions. As a result, these systems host a wide range of correlated phenomena, including symmetry breaking, magnetism, and superconductivity. This dissertation develops and applies Green's-function-based many-body methods to understand the role of interactions in moiré quantum materials. This dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter introduces moiré quantum materials and reviews the basic …

What Multiple Theories Can Illuminate In Qualitative Research, Sherry Marx, Rachel Billings, Taylor Dexter, Mark T. Lewis, Patrick Ocran, Douglas Weber

The Qualitative Report

Our aim in this paper is to help scholars better understand theory’s purpose in qualitative research, how it is employed in data analysis, and the strengths and limitations of the insights it can reveal. We do this by sharing our practice using multiple theories to make sense of a common data set in an advanced doctoral class focused on theory in qualitative research. For the class final project, students chose different theories to analyze one common data set: A brief historical article on the Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots. Student-chosen theories included constructivism, actor-network theory, symbolic interactionism, critical race theory, …

Simulated Subjects, Real Responses: Surveying Decision Judgments Across Biological And Artificial Agents, Alara Karatuna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Silicon participants are large language model generated research participants who are embedded with demographic information, as well as personality measures. The use of silicon participants in the behavioral sciences field is underexplored. This current study generated silicon participants based on human data (N=514), where each silicon participant matches their human counterpart. Both samples were asked to respond to seven decision-making dilemmas that are written from scratch. The dilemmas differ in their severity and represent the ambiguity of social life. Responses of the silicon participants were generated using ChatGPT 4.0. This is the first study that embedded personality traits …

Design Of A Scalable Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Variable Ballast System, Megan Corbari, Cooper Newton, Olin Guck, Conor Sweeney, Nick Abreu, Michala Abela

Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Projects

This project presents the design, development, and preliminary validation of a scalable variable ballast system for an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV), conducted in collaboration with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC). The objective of the system is to enable controlled buoyancy adjustment, allowing the vehicle to submerge, maintain depth, and resurface efficiently without reliance on continuous propulsion. Existing small and mid-sized UUVs often utilize propulsion systems, reducing operational flexibility and efficiency. The project addresses these limitations through a simplified and adaptable ballast system design.

The system consists of a central ballast tank that passively floods through dedicated inlet openings, with …

All-Sky Search For Long-Duration Gravitational-Wave Transients In The First Part Of The Fourth Ligo-Virgo-Kagra Observing Run, A. G. Abac, I. Abouelfettouh, F. Acernese, Teviet Creighton, Mario C. Diaz, Raul A. Espinosa, J. Lawrence, Francisco Llamas Villarreal, Soma Mukherjee, Volker Quetschke, Miriam Ramos Arevalo, Wenhui Wang

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

We present an all-sky search for long-duration gravitational waves (GWs) from the first part of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA fourth observing run (O4), called O4a and comprising data taken between May 24, 2023, and January 16, 2024. The GW signals targeted by this search are the so-called “long-duration” ( ≳1  s) transients expected from a variety of astrophysical processes, including nonaxisymmetric deformations in magnetars or eccentric binary coalescences. We make minimal assumptions on the emitted GW waveforms in terms of morphologies and durations. Overall, our search targets signals with durations of ∼1–1000  s and frequency content in the range 16–2048 Hz. In …

The George-Anne Daily, Georgia Southern University

George-Anne Media Group: Newsletters & Magazines

No abstract provided.

Slow Librarianship For Healthier Libraries And Library Workers, Meredith Farkas

Bryant Jackson Lectureship

We live in an individualistic achievement society that encourages people to chase external validation by putting the focus on innovation and competition over collaboration and collective care. Many of these dynamics are at play in the library and information science profession, leading to toxic cultures of scarcity, low morale, burnout, and disproportionate harm to BIPOC library workers and patrons. We have the power to imagine new futures that will equip us to better serve our patrons and support our collective well-being. Slow librarianship focuses on relationship-building, values-driven work, quality over quantity, solidarity, antiracism, and reflective practice.

Farkas is a faculty …

How Survivors Of Exploitation Who Use Drugs Navigate Systems Of Care: An Analysis Of Survivor Insights Using The Intersectional Risk Environment, Theresa Anasti, Hilary Thibodeau, Nathaniel A Dell, Kathleen Preble, Lauren Grimes, Lindsay B Gezinski

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Drug-related risks such as adverse health outcomes, overdose, and violent victimization vary across populations due to the marginalization of identities, structural inequities, and differing environments. Discrimination and criminalization exacerbate drug-related risks specifically for survivors of sexual exploitation who use drugs. This study aims to understand how survivors who are not currently utilizing intensive treatment services perceive their risk environment, including available resources, and identify possible mechanisms to address health equity. Emphasizing the role of harm reduction and the expertise of lived experience, this paper encourages innovative approaches to supporting survivors.

METHODS: A research team conducted seventeen semi-structured interviews with …

B Cell Expression Of An Enzymatic Intermediary In Ether Lipid Biosynthesis Promotes Antibody Responses And Germinal Center Size, Sung Hoon Cho, Marissa A Jones, Kaylor Meyer, David M Anderson, Sergiy Chetyrkin, M Wade Calcutt, Richard M Caprioli, Clay F Semenkovich, Mark R Boothby

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The qualities of antibody (Ab) responses provided by B lymphocytes and their plasma cell (PC) descendants are crucial facets of responses to vaccines and microbes. Metabolic processes and products regulate aspects of B cell proliferation and differentiation into germinal center (GC) and PC states along with Ab diversification. However, there is little information about lymphoid-cell-intrinsic functions of enzymes that mediate ether lipid biosynthesis. Imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) results had indicated that concentrations of a number of these phospholipids were substantially enhanced in GC compared to the background average in spleens, but it was unclear if biosynthesis in B cells was …

Open Education On Social Entrepreneurship: A Comparative Study Between Mexico And Bolivia To Scale Up Complex Thinking, Inés Alvarez-Icaza, Benito Javier Martinez-Briones, Liz Katherine Marco-Torrez, Evelyn Rondon-Jara

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: This study examined the effectiveness of an open digital educational platform for developing complex thinking competencies through social entrepreneurship education among higher education students in Mexico and Bolivia. Specifically, it assessed changes in perceived systemic, scientific, critical, and innovative thinking and compared learning outcomes across both contexts.

Method: A quasi-experimental pre-post design was implemented with 601 participants (Mexico, n = 509; Bolivia, n = 92). Participants completed a validated 25-item, Likert-scale instrument assessing systemic, scientific, critical, and innovative thinking before and after engaging with the digital platform. Within- and between-group differences were analyzed using permutation-based statistical tests, complemented by …

Creating Sustainable School And Home Gardens: Zooming Into Nature With Digital Microscopes, Rita Hagevik, Kaitlin Campbell, Kathy Cabe Trundle, Lawrence Krissek

All Current Publications

This fact sheet provides information about using digital microscopes in the garden. It discusses how they work, choosing the right digital microscope, uses in the garden, and activities. It is part of the Creating Sustainable School and Home Gardens resource sheet series from Utah State University Extension and Smart Foodscapes.

Ai-Driven Detection Of Failure Modes In Thermoplastic Composites Using Acoustic Emission Techniques, M. M. Shahzamanian, Li Ai, Paul Ziehl

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Composite materials in aircraft structures can suffer impact damage that leaves barely visible yet structurally significant defects, which degrade mechanical performance, especially under compressive loads. Existing methods for identifying failure modes in compression after impact (CAI) tests using acoustic emission (AE) data are limited in accuracy and scope. This study introduces an approach combining AE sensing with a heterogeneous ensemble convolutional neural network (CNN) to detect and classify failure mechanisms in impacted composite specimens. The novelty of this work lies in employing Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) wavelet images, produced through continuous wavelet transform (CWT) of AE signals, as inputs …

A Corporation For Artists, Or An Artist’S Corporation?: An Analysis Of Colorado Bill 26-133, Andrea Yang

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

Trade and art have been interlinked since the beginnings of artistic creation. Throughout history, one of the core tensions in the world of creativity has been between the creation of artistic work and economics of survival. With the advent of the internet and social media, democratization in access to the arts has demolished many of the classic gatekeepers that have historically prevented artists from creating and sharing their work. However, artists, musicians, and writers still face significant barriers in obtaining and retaining capital to support their livelihoods, frequently turning to alternate professions to sustain their work.