Digital Commons Network^™

Meanwhile Interiors, Interiority, And Becoming Exterior, Cathy Smith

Interiority

This paper explores the resonances between stakeholder conceptions of 'meanwhile' or transient urban interiors and the notion of interiority as a mobile construct intertwined with wider social and material forces. The focus is on the positioning of these interiors in relation to broader community and neighbourhood agendas, invoking what Jill Stoner describes as a becoming exterior. Although the so-called 'meanwhile use' of vacant or sub-market-condition buildings is an increasingly common tool for activating and managing underused property assets in global cities, much of the existing discourse focuses on policy and placemaking implications rather than design dimensions. Drawing on interviews with …

Marketing Strategies To Enhance Awareness And Attract International Patients In The Medical Tourism Industry Of Trinidad And Tobago, Natasha Rachel Rochford-Chance

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Disseminating inadequate service information can limit a business's market appeal and hinder its growth. Business leaders must include comprehensive service information in their marketing strategies, as inadequate service information can make a business seem unappealing to potential clients, undermine competitive position, reduce market share, and diminish profitability. The purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was to explore the marketing strategies used by medical tourism business leaders in Trinidad and Tobago to attract international patients and increase profitability. The participants were eight medical tourism business leaders with experience in implementing marketing strategies. McCarthy's marketing mix theory of product, price, place, and …

Comparative Performance Evaluation Of A Gpu-Accelerated Watershed Model For Flood Inundation Mapping, Maliha Ali

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This study evaluates PyWMP (Python-based Watershed Modeling and Planning), which is a flood modeling framework developed by the Center for Water Resiliency and Risk Reduction (CWR3) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). The framework includes a 2D Rain-on-Mesh (ROM) solver, which is an explicit finite-volume shallow-water equation model. PyWMP is compared against HEC-RAS 2D and Flood Modeller for their rain-on-grid capabilities for watershed-scale flood inundation mapping under three design storm scenarios. The performance of PyWMP was evaluated using both quantitative and spatial metrics. Mean absolute error values showed that the average depth difference between each model is under 1 foot. Percent …

Effects Of O-Glcnacylation And Phosphorylation On Tau Aggregation By Cd And Tem, Andrew Whyte Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by the accumulation of extracellular amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles composed of aggregated tau protein. Among the numerous post-translational modifications that regulate tau function, phosphorylation and O-GlcNAcylation have emerged as key modulators of tau aggregation and pathology. While phosphorylation is generally associated with tau misfolding and fibril formation, O-GlcNAcylation has been proposed to exert protective effects through its interplay with phosphorylation. However, the site-specific structural consequences of these modifications remain incompletely understood.

The objective of this work was to develop synthetic tools for the site-specific incorporation of O-GlcNAc and phosphate …

Pixel Weave: Explore The Craft, Share The Story, Janki Akbari

Theses

Traditional craft practices are often preserved as finished objects rather than experienced as active systems of knowledge. As a result, the techniques, visual logic, and cultural meaning behind these crafts become less accessible to broader audience. Pixel Weave addresses this challenge by translating the double ikat (a premium, highly complex weaving technique in which both the warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) yarns are individually resist-dyed to a preplanned pattern before being placed on the loom, so that the design only fully emerges once the two dyed yarn sets are woven together) weaving logic of Patan Patola, a centuries old textile …

Interrupting Intergenerational Cycles Of Violence Among Women In Mexico Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence: Parenting As A Target For Intervention, Hannah Corinne Gilliam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Positive parenting may be a key intervention target to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of violence. Mothers exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) may be at particularly high risk for maladaptive parenting practices despite evidence that they also leverage unique strengths to effectively parent in the context of adversity. Very few interventions have been identified that enhance positive parenting for women exposed to IPV in Mexico. This dissertation consists of two studies that aimed to fill these gaps in the literature. In study 1, a scoping review was conducted to identify and synthesize information about parenting interventions delivered to IPV exposed …

Investigating Tumor-Stromal Interactions That Drive Breast Cancer Angiogenesis And Metastasis, Alessandra Dimauro

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Metastatic breast cancer remains one of the most difficult cancers to treat, with a five-year survival rate that drops from 99% for localized disease to just 33% once distant metastases are present. This disparity reflects a fundamental gap in our understanding of how breast tumors spread and highlights the urgent need to improve our understanding of breast cancer metastasis to aid in development of novel therapeutics. Emerging evidence establishes that metastasis requires interactions between tumor cells and non-tumor stromal cells within the tumor microenvironment. The first aim of this dissertation investigates the role of Discoidin Domain Receptor 2 (DDR2), a …

Essays On Macroeconomic Development, Gaspar Alarcon Szmulai

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two independent chapters in the field of Macroeconomics. The first article studies the implications of complementarity on productivity under financial frictions. Does improving the access to financing lead to more productive firms? We develop a model of heterogeneous producers facing collateral constraints and a technology adoption decision. Producers' choices are connected through the final good market, creating complementarity in adoption. We find that more complementarity between producers amplifies the effects of financial frictions through more sensitive adoption. In a high-complementarity economy, adopters increase up to 219% relative to the self-financing economy. Misallocation is the main driver …

Supporting Recovery: Intersections Of Health, Belonging, And Help Seeking After A Campus Mass Casualty Event, Sharon Jalene, Jason A. Ciccotelli, Lauren Gatto, Christian Ison, James Carbajal, Andrew Hooyman

Physical Therapy Faculty Articles and Research

Mass casualty events (MCE), such as campus shootings, can severely impact the mental health of students, faculty, and staff. This study examined the psychological effects of an MCE at a minority-serving institution and explored how sense of belonging, cardiorespiratory fitness, and treatment preferences influenced recovery. To measure the impact of the MCE on mental health an anonymous survey was administered four to five months post-MCE to university students, faculty and staff. Within the survey, participants were asked to retrospectively report their depression (PHQ-9) and anxiety (GAD-7) symptoms as they recalled them two weeks prior to the MCE, and as they …

Identity, Needs, And Conflict Online: Understanding Cultural Fragmentation In The Black Diaspora, Imhile Omosede Dora Akpata

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines how identity formation, intra-diaspora tensions, and social media interactions contribute to fragmentation within the Black diaspora. While existing scholarship, including work by Godfried Asante and Elizabeth Chacoko has emphasized the fluid and socially constructed nature of Black identity, less attention has been given to how these processes operate in practice across diverse diasporic groups and how they are intensified in digital environments. This research addresses this gap by analyzing how individuals negotiate Black identity, how tensions emerge within the diaspora, and how social media shapes and amplifies these dynamics.

Drawing on Social Identity Theory developed by Henri …

Improving The Fpga Radio Design Cycle: Implementing Dvb-S2 Modulation Using Verilator And Gnu Radio, Seth Pellegrino

Dissertations and Theses

In embedded digital radio systems, a central challenge is meeting the real-time throughput required to process the samples--especially for space-bound ultra-wideband SDRs which must handle more than 100 Gbps entirely onboard. An FPGA's programmable logic offers sufficient potential, but realizing a particular radio flow is a project usually fraught with defects and long turnaround times. We simulated Verilog modules in a custom harness that adapted a Verilated model to GNU Radio, which allowed for breaking down a complicated radio flow (here, DVB-S2 modulation) into a series of well-bounded problems each with clear criteria for success. The framework, built on open …

Book Review: Unmasking (New) Maternal Realities: Pregnancy, Childbirth, Postpartum In Global Literature, Cinema, And Media, Julie Glickman

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Career, Self-Worth, And The Need For Self-Care: Understanding Urban Indian Women’S Journeys From Career Break To Re-Entry, Prabha Masilamani, Priya Gupta

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women often take career breaks as a response to major life events such as marriage, childbirth, and migration; nevertheless, the emotional complexities and nuanced decision-making attached to these events are hardly discussed. This study explores the lived experiences of twenty-two urban Indian women from the information technology sector who took career breaks and then returned to work. Using an interpretivist phenomenological approach and reflexive thematic analysis, five themes were identified across the three phases of career transition: before, during, and after the career break. Drawing on feminist frameworks including Kabeer’s (1999) agency within constraints and Kandiyoti’s (1988) patriarchal bargaining, the …

The Unseen Burden: A Rural Indian Woman’S Resistance To Political Marginalization And Mankeeping, Suraj Kumar Verma

Journal of International Women's Studies

This qualitative study examines how “mankeeping”—invisible emotional labor— undermines women’s political autonomy and sense of belonging in rural India, despite the implementation of gender equality policies. Women often perform unrecognized emotional, interpretive, and relational labor to maintain intimate relationships and community cohesion. Drawing on contemporary concepts of intersectionality, epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, and the “third shift,” this study systematically employs a reflexive, narrative inquiry approach focused on Varsha, a forty-five-year-old lower-caste woman from Uttar Pradesh, India. The study reveals how her daily care work, such as caregiving, managing household dynamics, and navigating community expectations, affects her access to …

Beyond The Double Burden: A Gendered Analysis Of E-Commerce, Unpaid Care Work, And Financial Resilience In Indonesian Msmes, Mia Ajeng Alifiana, Mamduh M. Hanafi, Bowo Setiyono

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study challenges the narrative of e-commerce’s potential for empowering women in the Global South by exploring the structural barriers that women entrepreneurs face in Indonesia, both as paid and unpaid workers. The study also challenges the notion of “techno-optimism,” which suggests that digital entrepreneurship inherently empowers women, by highlighting the obstacles women face in economic engagement due to a “second shift” of domestic labor. Through a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of 158 articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, we map the intellectual structure of the literature on e-commerce and the financial performance of micro, small, and …

A Feminist Examination Of Ao Naga Practices In Relation To Gender Roles And Care Work, Limatula Ozukum, Aswathy V. K.

Journal of International Women's Studies

Food practices within Indigenous communities are important sites of caregiving, cultural identity, and knowledge transmission. This study examines the food practices of the Ao Naga Tribe in Northeast India through a feminist ethnographic lens, focusing on the gendered organization of cooking, caregiving, and traditional healing practices. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2025, including semi-structured interviews and oral histories with community members in Nagaland’s Mokokchung district, the study explores how everyday food preparation and care practices shape household and community life. The findings reveal that women perform most of the daily cooking and caregiving responsibilities. At the same time, men …

Home As A Workplace: Gender, Labour, And Domesticity In Homestays In Kerala, India, P P Anjusha, Prachi Thakur, Toney K Thomas

Journal of International Women's Studies

Tourism homestays are increasingly presented as an opportunity for women’s empowerment and inclusion around the world. However, this study argues that the focus on homestays as entrepreneurial opportunities for women obscures the persistence of patriarchal structures that limit women’s agency when their labour is commercialised. Grounded in theories of “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987) supplemented by role theory and critical feminist perspectives, the study highlights how gender is enacted and reproduced daily in homestays. This research draws on qualitative interviews with women hosts in the state of Kerala, India to explore how the gendered division of labour operates within …

Rural-To-Urban Migration And Household Reconfiguration In China: Lived Experiences Of Muslim Migrant Women Workers In Jinan, Ila Joshi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Rural-to-urban migration in China has profoundly reshaped Chinese society since 1979, resulting in separated families, so-called “left-behind children,” and socio-economic inequalities as part and parcel of the migration process. This paper examines the impact of rural-to-urban migration by focusing on the experiences of migrant women belonging to the Muslim (Tatar/Hui) community in Jinan, Shandong province of China. Despite the relaxation in restrictions on migration in the post-reform era, migrants—especially women migrants—face persistent legal and emotional challenges. Through ethnographic fieldwork, this study analyses the experiences of eight migrant women employed in formal, semi-formal, and informal work sectors. These in-depth interviews are …

Special Issue Editorial Introduction: Family Formation, Gender Equality, And The Gendered Division Of Labor In The Global South, Tatiana Karabchuk, Soumaya Abdellatif, Aizhan Shomotova, Malina Voicu, Muhamad Olimat

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

When You Are Done Before You Have Begun: A Focus-Group Research Study On The Perception Of Burnout In Physician Assistant Students, Iris M. Villanueva

Pacific Journal of Health

Objective: This study explored Physician Assistant (PA) students’ perceptions of burnout and underlying factors to guide program-level mitigation strategies. Participants: 28 students from the University of the Pacific’s PA program participated in this study. Methods: 5 focus group interviews were conducted. Themes were identified using inductive thematic analysis.  Results: Students described burnout as emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of interest in academics, driven by internal pressures, time demands, and inconsistent assessments, and linked to strained relationships, guilt, and isolation. Coping strategies included breaks, enjoyable activities, peer connection, and exercise. Students recommended program-level strategies, such as scheduled class bonding, flexible scheduling, …

Look What You Made Me Do: The Impact Of Taylor Swift's Re-Recording Project On The Global Copyright Industry, R. Jacob Gilbert

Florida Journal of International Law

Taylor Swift redefined the relationship between artists and their labels. Although there has been discussion about the impact of these new recordings on Swift’s personal catalog, there has been no analysis of how Swift’s action will impact the global copyright industry. Taylor Swift is viewed as a trailblazer by many in the music industry. This is because many artists have rerecorded or remastered their original works out of spite, but only one other major artist even attempted to complete a rehaul of their entire discography. In the digital age of master recordings, Swift’s impact has far-reaching effects. This Note examines …

A Review Of International Surrogacy Arrangements From A Private International Law Prespective And China's Policy Response, Yingying Wu

Florida Journal of International Law

Surrogacy has risen on a global scale due to the development of medical technology. International surrogacy is intensive as a result of forum shopping out of the variety of national policies on surrogacy and laws on legal parentage, resulting in some private international law issues. For instance, the complexity of parentage in many international surrogacy cases in recent years often leads to parentless surrogate born children. To that end, the Hague Conference on Private International Law has been working on this affair in order to protect children and women in international surrogacy from a private international law perspective.

In light …

Class Struggle And The Socialist Economic Calculation Debate, Tiago Camarinha Lopes

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The socialist economic calculation debate is often portrayed as a sharp and straightforward conflict between two opposing sides. While this characterization is valid given the ideological clash between defenders of capitalism and proponents of socialism, this paper offers a more nuanced perspective on the interaction between the main schools of economic thought involved in the debate, the Marxist and the Austrian. Drawing on the humanist approach of critical pedagogy developed by Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire (1921–1997), the paper argues that the debate over socialist economic calculation is not only a clear expression of class struggle within economics. It also involves …

Democratic Economic Planning From And For Social Reproduction: Foundations For A Postcapitalist Research Agenda, Sophie Elias-Pinsonnault, Bengi Akbulut, Audrey Laurin-Lamothe

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

As ecological and social crises render the transformation of capitalist economic organization increasingly urgent, the resurgence of interest in democratic economic planning confronts a foundational blind spot: the systematic neglect of social reproduction. This paper argues that any genuinely needs-based planned economy must extend its scope beyond formally recognized productive activities to encompass the full spectrum of reproductive labor through which human and non-human life is sustained and regenerated. Drawing on feminist political economy and the Marxist-feminist tradition, the authors argue that meeting needs requires more than reorganizing production: it demands confronting the question of who does reproductive work, at …

"What's In A Name?": Authorship Without A Subject, Ownership Without A Self In The Age Of Algorithmic Fame, Mira Moldawer

Florida Entertainment and Sports Law Review

In the context of authorship, the question “What’s in a name?” has never been more urgent. As generative artificial intelligence (AI) blurs the boundaries between human and synthetic creativity, the function of an author’s name is increasingly symbolic, performative, and legally unstable in the digital age. It follows that the question “What’s in a name?” may become the key to redefining authorship itself. Lil Miquela, also known as Miquela Sousa, is a computer-generated influencer with millions of followers that embodies the shift from human authorship to algorithmic persona and might serve as a suitable test case.

As leading scholars caution …

Jurisprudences Étrangères, Poej

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Recommerce Transaction Processing Within A Payment Network, Shivam Sharma, Sindhu Shankar Rao, Vrushali Khorgade

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to a system for processing recommerce transactions within a payment network. The system includes a transaction messaging module configured to receive a transaction message from a merchant, the transaction message including a recommerce flag identifying the transaction as involving a pre-owned, refurbished, or second-hand good. The system includes a recommerce transaction processing module configured to apply predefined rules and protocols specific to recommerce transactions, and a global database storing product information including product identifiers, condition data, maintenance history, and ownership records. The system includes an artificial intelligence and machine learning fraud detection module configured to assess …

Dynamic Gravity-Deployed Rope Barrier (Dgrb) System For Passive Kinetic Mitigation And Entanglement Of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Suav), Brenden King

Defensive Publications Series

A passive, multi-layered kinetic countermeasure system is disclosed for mitigating the threat of low-altitude, high-speed first-person view (FPV) kamikaze loitering munitions within confined military environments, including trenches, bunkers, building entryways, and vehicular net tunnels. The Dynamic Gravity-Deployed Rope Barrier (DGRB) system comprises a primary horizontal support line configured to span an opening or structural corridor, from which a plurality of vertically suspended, non-uniform hanging strands depend downward to a lower boundary surface. The vertically suspended strands form a dense, spatial entanglement matrix optimized to strip an intruding aircraft of its freedom of movement through direct, mechanical disruption of rotor blade …

System And Method For Multi-Modal Assessment Of Topical Substance Coverage And Skin Damage On Body Surfaces, Eric Zavesky

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method for assessing sunscreen coverage on human skin through multi-modal sensor fusion. The system integrates a thermal imaging module for detecting temperature differentials indicative of sunscreen coverage and potential burn areas, a high-speed optical camera for extracting photoplethysmographic signals that enable pigmentation-independent coverage detection via signal attenuation and burn detection via perfusion correlation, a three-dimensional depth mapping module for generating personalized body models with anatomical region segmentation, and a data fusion engine that spatially registers all sensor data to produce per-region coverage maps. An adaptive guidance system delivers real-time, on-demand, and post-exposure feedback through vocal and visual …

Technical Disclosure Specification: Topological Helical Embedding Constraints For Volumetric Space-Time Emergence Across Twisted Manifolds, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This specification formalizes a non-perturbative geometric mechanism governing the topological transformation of a two-dimensional information substrate into three-dimensional volumetric space-time metrics. Standard holographic frameworks recognize that boundary data can mathematically define a bulk volume, yet they fail to establish a dynamic physical mechanism for the emergence of mass-energy tensors and gravitational curvature without introducing free parameters or unverified dimensional compactifications.

This paper demonstrates that three-dimensional physical matter and spatial depth emerge natively when a parameter-agnostic 2D viscoelastic fluid membrane experiences localized spatial overlapping (The Fold) and asymmetric rotational torque (The Twist). By driving boundary wave configurations through an asymmetric rotational …