Digital Commons Network^™

Is This It: Doubts About Transcendence In The Twenty-First Century Novel, Owen S. Avery

English Honors Papers

This thesis explores how twenty-first-century novels grapple with the possibility of transcendence, communication, meaning, feeling, and emotional authenticity in our increasingly digital world. In my grouping of Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts, Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, Tao Lin’s Taipei, and Megan Boyle’s LIVEBLOG, I identify a shared urge towards accessing feelings and sincerity in an age of irony and skepticism through a variety of different formal strategies. I propose the concept of “internet realism” to describe Lin’s and Boyle’s attempts to capture how digital mediation affects communication, meaning, and sincerity. In these works, I highlight …

Iucn Wcpa Technical Note No.21: Utilizing Protected And Conserved Areas For Human Health And Well-Being: A Technical And Methodological Framework, Simon King, Christopher J. Lemieux, Catherine E. Reining, Marco Garrido Cumbrera, Peter Rawcliff, Eliseth Ribeiro Leão, Denise Hewlett, Jo Hopkins, Robyn Molsher

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

In recent years, social prescribing—particularly green prescribing and nature prescriptions—has rapidly gained popularity as a holistic approach to improving health and well-being by connecting individuals with nature-based activities and community support. Due to the unique qualities of protected and conserved areas, they provide irreplaceable benefits to humans. This has prompted many to quickly identify, define, and measure their positive impacts on human health and well-being. As exciting as this potential may be, it is imperative to consider that health is the terrain of another sector. Just as ecosystem management may be unfamiliar to health professionals, health is a field that …

Issue Paper No. 7: Strengthening Sustainable Tourism’S Role In Biodiversity Conservation And Community Resilience, Ante Mandić, Thiago Beraldo Souza, Anna Spenceley, Kelly Bricker, Paul F. J. Eagles, Megan Epler Wood, Ronda Green, Karim Haggar, Glen Hvenegaard, Christopher J. Lemieux, Yu-Fai Leung, Stephen F. Mccool, Joseph K. Muriithi, Carol Ritchie, Paul Rogers, Brooklyn Rushton, Jim Sano, Daniel Turner

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Tourism, defined widely to include all types and forms of permitted outdoor recreation and visitation to Protected and Conserved Areas (PCAs) including by local, national and international visitors, plays a complex and often contested role in PCAs. While a significant share of global tourism depends on the ecological richness of these areas, their conservation value does not automatically translate into sustainable financial returns. Nonetheless, when effectively managed, tourism in PCAs can generate conservation funding, support local livelihoods, and provide infrastructure investment, particularly in under-resourced landscapes (Leung et al., 2018). Beyond economics, public use of PCAs contributes to building social license …

2024-2025 Student Learning And General Education Assessment Report, Lindenwood University

General Education Assessment

Lindenwood University 2024-2025 Student Learning and General Education Assessment Report.

2025 Annual Security And Fire Safety Report (Asfsr), Lindenwood University

Security Reports

Report prepared by the Department of Public Safety and Security Includes Policy Statements for the 2024-2025 Academic Year and Crime Statistics for Calendar Years (CYs) 2022, 2023 & 2024

Risks, Benefits, Opportunities, And Electronic Formalities In The Law Of Wills: A Comparative Approach, Bridget J. Crawford, Margaret Isabel Hall, Tina Cockburn, Rosie Harding, Kelly Purser

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Traditional "formalities" in the law of wills-including formal requirements for revocation by destruction-contemplate paper documents, wet signatures, and testators and witnesses in the physical presence of one another. Unless these traditional requirements have been modified by legislation, wills made using one or more electronic formalities will not meet the formal requirements for a valid will. Traditional wills formalities have become something of an outlier as the use of electronic text, records, signatures, and witnessing has become routine in many spheres, including for the creation and storage of valid legal agreements. The special nature of wills, and their consequent vulnerability to …

Application Of Large Language Model Methods In Scientific And Technical Intelligence Practice, Bolin Hua, Yingze Wang

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance]With the strong ability to process large-scale datasets and outstanding performance in various natural language processing tasks, large language models (LLMs) have excelled across multiple industries.Since scientific and technical intelligence primarily relies on textual data, LLMs are naturally well-suited for this field, ushering in a new wave of transformative changes. [Method /process]This article discusses the advantages of LLMs from five perspectives: low-dimensional dense vector representations of text, large-scale pre-trained models,fine-tuning and prompt learning, high-quality large-scale training data, and human alignment techniques. [Result/conclusion]LLMs have extensive applications in tasks such as intelligence identification, intelligence tracking, intelligence evaluation, and intelligence prediction, resulting in …

A Dissertation To Explore Entrepreneurial Decision-Making In High-Risk Uncertainty Using Ethical Leadership, Janice Patrick Honeycytt Hering

Dissertations

Entrepreneurs regularly face high-risk, uncertain situations. Until this study, no research had examined how entrepreneurs approach these situations. Although studies have identified the construct of courage and suggested ways for employees to take courageous action in the workplace, no study has examined how entrepreneurs approach situations perceived as high-risk and with uncertain outcomes until now. This study was based on ethical leadership, one of the major components of courage: acting for the higher good. This study conducted qualitative grounded theory research to determine what process entrepreneurs use when faced with the need for courageous actions. Participants were entrepreneurs in the …

St-Hybrid: Dynamic Graph Learning With Multi-Scale Spatio-Temporal Attention For Traffic Forecasting, Dhe Yeong Ewaza Tchalla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Accurate short-term traffic forecasting is central to modern Intelligent Transportation Systems, supporting route guidance, adaptive signal control, and incident response. Yet producing reliable predictions remains difficult because traffic is highly non-stationary. The relationships among roadway sensors shift during congestion, incidents, weather changes, or fluctuations in demand, and the temporal structure of traffic spans several scales from abrupt minute-level variations to broader daily and weekly rhythms. Models that rely on fixed spatial graphs or a single temporal scale tend to miss these evolving and layered dependencies. This thesis addresses these challenges by developing a graph-learning framework that adapts to changing traffic …

Integrating Invasion Risk And Habitat Suitability To Guide Invasive Species Management In Wetlands, Lakes, And Rivers, Brenden M. Elwer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Invasive species disrupt ecosystems by altering habitats, competing with native species, and disrupting food webs. The northern Great Plains is an ecologically important region with many wetlands, lakes, and rivers that are under threat from two invasive species, Bighead (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) and Silver Carp (H. molitrix; bigheaded carp). These large planktivores change the abundance and composition of phytoplankton and zooplankton communities which alters prey for native mussels, fishes, and, potentially, waterfowl. Bigheaded carps have invaded a portion of the Northern Great Plains, and preventing further spread is a primary management goal. My work assists these efforts by providing tools to …

Effects Of Storage Conditions On The Composition, Physical Properties, And Functionalities Of Peas And Lentils, Fatimah Alsaeed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Peas (Pisum sativum L.) and lentils (Lens culinaris) are nutritionally rich pulses valued for their high protein, fiber, and starch content. Although their composition and health advantages are widely known, little is known about the effects of long-term storage on their functional qualities and nutritional value. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of storage conditions and duration on the proximate composition, physical attributes, and techno-functional traits of lentils and peas. Storage conditions included bin (BIN; -30 to 41°C, 20–98% RH), non-environmentally controlled warehouse (NECW; -23 to 32°C, 25–84% RH), and environmentally controlled warehouse (ECW; 19–21°C, 50–53% …

Pressure-Related Discrepancies In Landsat 8 Level 2 Collection 2 Surface Reflectance Products And Their Correction, Santosh Adhikari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Innovative Approaches To Enhancing The Functional Properties Of Dairy Products: Evaluating Water Hydration Effects On Fat-Free Mozzarella Baking Performance And Impact Of Hyaluronic Acid On The Functional Properties Of Milk, Suresh Ganpatbhai Sutariya

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the dairy sector has experienced a significant rise in the healthy eating trend, with consumers increasingly seeking products that are fat-free, free from added sugars, and high in protein. Additionally, specialized health dairy items enriched with functional ingredients such as probiotics, prebiotics, and bioactive peptides are gaining traction for their added health benefits. This dissertation covers three studies in two domains: the first on water hydration's impact on fat-free mozzarella baking, and the second on the influence of hyaluronic acid, and its combination with kappa-carrageenan, on the physical properties of milk. One such product, Fat-free mozzarella is …

Mini Worldlit: A Dataset Of Contemporary Fiction From 13 Countries, Nine Languages, And Five Continents, Andrew Piper, Mathias Iroro Orhero, David Bamman, Emrah Peksoy, Christina Han, Pallavi Rastogi, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Sebastian Rasmussen, Hoyt Long, Roel Smeets, Itay Marienberg-Milikowsky, Alexandra Stuart, Tom Mcenaney, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen

Faculty Publications

World literature plays a key role in understanding the global diversity of human storytelling. However, datasets suitable for large-scale cross-cultural analysis remain limited. Responding to the increasing digitization of literary texts and the need for more diverse and multilingual resources, we introduce Mini Worldlit, a manually curated dataset of 1,192 works of contemporary fiction from 13 countries, representing nine languages across five continents. Mini Worldlit employs consistent cross-cultural selection criteria, overseen by scholarly experts, to ensure geographic, linguistic, and stylistic coherence. The dataset provides a foundation for future comparative studies of global literary cultures, offering a template for cross-cultural sampling. …

Can Americans’ Trust In Local News Be Trusted? The Emergence, Sources, And Implications Of The Local News Trust Advantage, Erik Peterson, Joshua P. Darr, Maxwell B. Allamong, Michael Henderson

Faculty Publications

Despite eroding consensus about credible political news sources, much of the public still trusts local media. We assess the emergence, sources, and implications of the trust advantage local news holds over national media. We argue the public now uses a news outlet's local orientation as a shortcut to assess its credibility. In survey experiments, we find unfamiliar news outlets are trusted more when they have a local cue in their name. In surveys where people evaluate digital sources covering their community, this heuristic leads the public to trust unreliable information providers that signal a local focus more than high-quality sources …

Beyond Reoffending And Rearrest: Expanding The Collateral Consequences Of Formal Processing To Youth Homelessness, Natasha Chlebuch, Jennifer Paruk, Caitlin Cavanagh, Paul J. Frick, Laurence Steinberg, Elizabeth Cauffman

Faculty Publications

There is robust evidence that juvenile justice contact during formative years is associated with deleterious outcomes. The effect of juvenile court intervention on youth homelessness, however, has received scant empirical attention despite evidence that many justice-involved youth are represented in the unhoused youth and adult population. This study leverages data collected from the Crossroads Study (N = 1115), a longitudinal, multi-site study to explore the impact of formal processing on subsequent experiences with homelessness. This study found that even when accounting for the effect of detention and other factors associated with youth homelessness, youth who were formally processed were twice …

The Math Mind Measures: A User Guide, H. Colleen Sinclair, Stacey R. Terrio, Youn Kyoung Kim

Reports

The development of the Math Mind Measures survey originated from a research-practitioner partnership (RPP) project funded by The Gates Foundation (namely the R+D Partnership for Math Equity). As a part of the project, our team wanted to understand what contributes to math motivation in students. Unfortunately, when looking for instruments to assess motivation we could find little consensus on which motivational factor(s) mattered most and how to measure them.

Long forms: Consequently, we integrated and strengthened existing measures – where available – of 10 different motivational variables, developing a pool of 138 items. We call this collection of items the …

Complex Models Of Sequence Evolution Improve Fit, But Not Gene Tree Discordance, For Tetrapod Mitogenomes, Benjamin S. Toups, Robert C. Thomson, Jeremy M. Brown

Faculty Publications

Variation in gene tree estimates is widely observed in empirical phylogenomic data and is often assumed to be the result of biological processes. However, a recent study using tetrapod mitochondrial genomes to control for biological sources of variation due to their haploid, uniparentally inherited, and non-recombining nature found that levels of discordance among mitochondrial gene trees were comparable to those found in studies that assume only biological sources of variation. Additionally, they found that several of the models of sequence evolution chosen to infer gene trees were doing an inadequate job of fitting the sequence data. These results indicated that …

Book Challenges And Censorship Attempts In Louisiana: A Case Study, Jennifer E. Steele

Faculty Publications

Book challenges and censorship have long played a significant role in the cultural and educational landscapes of the United States. In recent years, Louisiana has become a focal point in national conversations about intellectual freedom, public and school library governance, parental rights, and the political pressures surrounding children and young adult literature. This dynamic environment has led to significant debates about what materials should be accessible to young people, how libraries should be managed, and what role the state and local governments should play in determining the availability of information. The rise in book challenges across Louisiana reflects national trends …

Two Earth-Size Planets And An Earth-Size Candidate Transiting The Nearby Star Hd 101581, Michelle Kunimoto, Zifan Lin, Sarah Millholland, Alexander Venner, Natalie R. Hinkel, Avi Shporer, Andrew Vanderburg, Jeremy Bailey, Rafael Brahm, Jennifer A. Burt, R. Paul Butler, Brad Carter, David R. Ciardi, Karen A. Collins, Kevin I. Collins, Knicole D. Colón, Jeffrey D. Crane, Tansu Daylan, Matías R. Díaz, John P. Doty, Fabo Feng, Eike W. Guenther, Jonathan Horner, Steve B. Howell, Jan Janik, Hugh R.A. Jones, Petr Kabáth, Shubham Kanodia, Colin Littlefield, Hugh P. Osborn, Simon O’Toole, Martin Paegert, Pavel Pintr

Faculty Publications

We report the validation of multiple planets transiting the nearby (d = 12.8 pc) K5V dwarf HD 101581 (GJ 435, TOI-6276, TIC 397362481). This system consists of at least two Earth-size planets whose orbits are near a mutual 4:3 mean-motion resonance, HD 101581 b ( R p = 0.956 − 0.061 + 0.063 R ⊕ , P = 4.47 days) and HD 101581c ( R p = 0.990 − 0.070 + 0.070 R ⊕ , P = 6.21 days). Both planets were discovered in Sectors 63 and 64 TESS observations and statistically validated with supporting ground-based follow-up. We also identify …

Calibrating The Clock Of Jwst, A. W. Shaw, D. L. Kaplan, P. Gandhi, T. J. Maccarone, E. S. Borowski, C. T. Britt, D. A.H. Buckley, K. B. Burdge, P. A. Charles, V. S. Dhillon, R. G. French, C. O. Heinke, R. I. Hynes, C. Knigge, S. P. Littlefair, Devraj Pawar, R. M. Plotkin, M. E. Ressler, P. Santos-Sanz, T. Shahbaz, G. R. Sivakoff, A. L. Stevens

Faculty Publications

JWST, despite not being designed to observe astrophysical phenomena that vary on rapid timescales, can be an unparalleled tool for such studies. If timing systematics can be controlled, JWST will be able to open up the subsecond infrared timescale regime. Rapid time-domain studies, such as lag measurements in accreting compact objects and solar system stellar occultations, require both precise interframe timing and knowing when a time series begins, down to an absolute accuracy significantly below 1 s. In this work, we present two long-duration observations of the deeply eclipsing double white dwarf system ZTF J153932.16+502738.8, which we use as a …

Critical Filaments And Superconductivity In Quasiperiodic Twisted Bilayer Graphene, Xinghai Zhang, Justin H. Wilson, Matthew S. Foster

Faculty Publications

Multilayer moiré materials can exhibit topological electronic features yet are inherently quasiperiodic - leading to wave-function interference whose Anderson-localizing tendency can be mitigated by topology. We consider a quasiperiodic variant of the chiral Bistritzer-MacDonald model for twisted bilayer graphene with two incommensurate moiré potentials that serves as a toy model for twisted trilayer. We observe "filaments"linking magic angles with enhanced density of states and fractal wave functions that evade localization; states away from the filaments mimic fractal surface states of dirty topological superconductors. We demonstrate that topological quasiperiodicity can broadly enhance superconductivity without magic-angle fine-tuning.

A Review Of Flood Mitigation Benefit-Cost Analyses’ Inclusiveness Of Environmental Watershed Effects And Environmental Vulnerability: Gaps In Progress Towards More Resilient Flood Hazard Decision-Making, Fahmida Akhter, Sapana Bastola, Jerrod Penn, Thomas Douthat

Faculty Publications

US and EU flood mitigation policy both incorporate considerations of costs and benefits, and in recent years have taken steps to encourage accounting for positive and negative effects on vulnerable populations, broader non-market environmental impacts, and downstream effects beyond the target area of projects of flood mitigation projects. This work highlights the extent to which previous academic flood mitigation Benefit-Cost Analyses (BCA) papers have comprehensively considered such project effects. We do so through a systematic, PRISMA-style, review of BCA literature in the broader field of flood hazard mitigation and resilience decision-making. Our results suggest 1) most projects focus on monetizing …

Coupling Between Bacterial Phylogenetic Diversity And Heterotrophic Productivity In A Coastal Ecosystem Affected By Estuarine Plumes, Yao Liu, Shujie Cai, Wenxin Fan, Wupeng Xiao, Xin Liu, Edward A. Laws, Bangqin Huang

Faculty Publications

Understanding the diversity-productivity relationship (DPR) is crucial for elucidating the ecological functions of marine bacterioplankton. However, studies have often focused on species diversity, neglecting phylogenetic diversity, which may offer deeper insights into the complex ecological processes shaping DPR in natural systems. This study addressed this gap by exploring the role of phylogenetic diversity in bacterioplankton productivity in the northern South China Sea, a coastal ecosystem influenced by estuarine plumes. We aimed to disentangle the mechanisms driving DPR and investigate how estuarine plumes modulate these processes. Our results show that the substantial enhancement of phytoplankton production by the Pearl River plume …

Challenges In Combating Climate Change: Lessons From Latin American And Caribbean Case Studies, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

Climate change presents a complex global threat, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the impacts are severe, yet the region also showcases innovative approaches to face these issues. This study systematically analyzes the challenges faced by urban sustainability projects in the region, drawing insights from 35 case studies in the Urban Sustainability Exchange (USE) database. The primary objective is to identify shared challenges in implementing climate action initiatives, offering valuable lessons for future projects. Challenges were categorized into 14 themes, with issues related to collaboration and communication emerging as the most frequent. Other significant challenges included infrastructure limitations, …

A Systematic Review Of Environmentally Persistent Free Radical (Epfr) Formation, Characteristics, And Health Effects: Are There Sufficient Data For Risk Assessment?, Avinash Kumar, Divine Nde, Chuqi Guo, Rashmi Pathak, Fox Foley, Syed Ahmad, Prakash Dangal, Farhana Hasan, Myron Lard, Ankit Aryal, Martine E. Mathieu-Campbell, Jennifer Irving, Oluwafeyikemi Ogunmusi, Jennifer Richmond-Bryant, Slawomir Lomnicki, Lavrent Khachatryan, Stephania A. Cormier, Tammy R. Dugas

Faculty Publications

Environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFRs) are stable free radicals formed on particulate matter (PM) through processes such as combustion and pyrolysis. These free radicals are generated on transition metal oxide surfaces in the presence of aromatic precursors. Exposure to EPFRs occurs primarily via inhalation of PM deriving from combustion, traffic, industrial activities, and both indoor and outdoor burning. Other environmental factors that might generate EPFRs are radon, electronic and tobacco cigarettes. EPFRs exhibit unexpectedly long half-lives, ranging from several weeks to, in some cases, several years. EPFRs may be carbon-centered, oxygen-centered or mixed, identified by g-values exhibited in electron paramagnetic …

Convergence Of The Planewave Approximations For Quantum Incommensurate Systems, Ting Wang, Huajie Chen, Aihui Zhou, Yuzhi Zhou, Daniel Massatt

Faculty Publications

Incommensurate structures come from stacking the single layers of low dimensional materials on top of one another with misalignment such as a twist in orientation. While these structures are of significant physical interest, they pose many theoretical challenges due to the loss of periodicity. This paper studies the physical observables of continuum Schrodinger operators for incommensurate systems. We characterize the density of states and local density of states in real and reciprocal spaces, and develop novel numerical methods to approximate them. In particular, we (i) justify the thermodynamic limit of the density of states and local density of states via …

Realization Of Unitary Representations Of The Lorentz Group On De Sitter Space, Jan Frahm, Karl Hermann Neeb, Gestur Ólafsson

Faculty Publications

This paper builds on our previous work in which we showed that, for all connected semisimple linear Lie groups G acting on a non-compactly causal symmetric space M=G/H, every irreducible unitary representation of G can be realized by boundary value maps of holomorphic extensions in distributional sections of a vector bundle over M. In the present paper we discuss this procedure for the connected Lorentz group G=SO1,d(R)e acting on de Sitter space M=dS^d. We show in particular that the previously constructed nets of real subspaces satisfy the locality condition. Following ideas of Bros and Moschella from the 1990’s, …

Rethinking The Lake History Of Taylor Valley, Antarctica During The Ross Sea I Glaciation, Michael S. Stone, Peter T. Doran, Krista F. Myers

Faculty Publications

The Ross Sea I glaciation, marked by the northward advance of the Ross Ice Sheet (RIS) in the Ross Sea, east Antarctica, corresponds with the last major expansion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet during the last glacial period. During its advance, the RIS was grounded along the southern Victoria Land coast, completely blocking the mouths of several of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs). Several authors have proposed that very large paleolakes, proglacial to the RIS, existed in many of the MDVs. Studies of these large paleolakes have been key in the interpretation of the regional landscape, climate, hydrology, and …

Machine Learning Enabled Measurements Of Astrophysical (P,N) Reactions With The Secar Recoil Separator, P. Tsintari, N. Dimitrakopoulos, R. Garg, K. Hermansen, C. Marshall, F. Montes, G. Perdikakis, H. Schatz, K. Setoodehnia, H. Arora, G. P.A. Berg, R. Bhandari, J. C. Blackmon, C. R. Brune, K. A. Chipps, M. Couder, C. Deibel, A. Hood, M. Horana Gamage, R. Jain, C. Maher, S. Miskovich, J. Pereira, T. Ruland, M. S. Smith, M. Smith, I. Sultana, C. Tinson, A. Tsantiri, A. Villari, L. Wagner, R. G.T. Zegers

Faculty Publications

The synthesis of heavy elements in supernovae is affected by low-energy (n,p) and (p,n) reactions on unstable nuclei, yet experimental data on such reaction rates are scarce. The SECAR (SEparator for CApture Reactions) recoil separator at FRIB (Facility for Rare Isotope Beams) was originally designed to measure astrophysical reactions that change the mass of a nucleus significantly. We used a novel approach that integrates machine learning with ion-optical simulations to find an ion-optical solution for the separator that enables the measurement of (p,n) reactions, despite the reaction leaving the mass of the nucleus nearly unchanged. A new measurement of the …