Digital Commons Network^™

Cyclodextrin Impedimetric Biosensors For The Detection Of Hydrophobic Metabolites, Zahra Panahi

Doctoral Dissertations

Sepsis is a complicated medical emergency and critically ill patients suffering from infectious diseases are at a high risk for developing and dying from sepsis. According to a recent (2019) cohort study from six United States hospitals, suboptimal care (e.g., delay in antibiotics, inappropriate antibiotic therapy) is responsible for 22.7 % of in-hospital sepsis-associated deaths. In September 2020, the World Health Organization called on the scientific community to develop rapid, effective, and affordable tools to improve diagnosis, surveillance, and treatment of sepsis. Our long-term goal throughout this project is to develop a cyclodextrin (CD) impedimetric tongue that can provide early …

A Case For Re-Commoning: The (De)Commodification Of Food In Lewiston, Maine, Sophie Worsh-Farnum

Standard Theses

The enclosure of land and food production technology that began during Western colonization in what is now called Lewiston was part of a larger global movement towards the commodification of food through Western notions of capital and private ownership. The contention of this paper is that this historical context has produced our current food crisis: a paradox where, despite production of more than enough food to feed the world’s population, hundreds of millions of people do not have access to adequate food. The Lewiston community experiences high rates of food insecurity despite the presence of food organizations battling hunger. Through …

Constructing Temporality And Contextualizing The Passing Of Time: How Native Foods Operate As Timekeepers / How The Modern American Food Market Manipulates Their Functionality, Robert Francis Sheils

Standard Theses

There is extensive evidence that suggests that Indigenous groups in the Northern Hemisphere (specifically in the Northern areas of what is now known as the United States) have held empirical knowledge of food and food systems to help conceptualize the passing of time. In conjunction with seasonal weather changes and evolving moon patterns, certain foods have acted as annual landmarks in which tribes could better understand their calendar year as having a cyclical design; in addition to organizing moments of the year, dishes are also made to celebrate the environments from which their ingredients were foraged from. Thus, food can …

Mapping The Impacts Of Climate Change On Mediterranean Viticulture, Zoe A. Knauss

Standard Theses

Climate change will have a profound impact on viticulture across the planet in the coming decades. Viticulture in the Mediterranean Basin will be disproportionately affected, as it is considered a climate change hotspot. This study focuses on how the vineyards of three notable wine regions in southern France will be affected by projected changes in average annual temperature, total annual precipitation, average length of droughts, and average volumetric soil water (VSW) content in layer 1 soils due to climate change. Vineyard soils will also be affected by climate change in this region, indirectly impacting grape cultivation as well. A GIS …

The Environmental Implications Of War: Analysis Of The Spectacular And Slow Environmental Violence Inflicted Through Russia’S Deliberate Targeting And Weaponization Of Ukrainian Environments, Alexander Campanile Sheikh

Standard Theses

The presence of war and armed conflict can cause extreme effects in the long and short term, but war as a concept holds an inherently anthropocentric bias. Among human activities causing severe changes to the environment, war’s consequences are both intensive and far reaching, and while war is incited, perpetrated, and fought specifically by humans, these conflicts come at the expense of all, including a silent victim: the greater environment in which wars take place. Today, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is the most significant confrontation in Europe in decades. Public attention and outrage, however, tends to focus on …

Inclusive, Accessible, And Successful: Is It Possible? ​A Case Study Analysis Of How To Curate An Enduring Justice-Centered Farmers Market In Lewiston, Me​, Annie Cc Conway

Standard Theses

Food Security is the physical and economic access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food at all levels of society to ensure a healthy and happy lifestyle for all people; this theme intersects with other topics such as food justice, food deserts, and food sovereignty. In the United States, 11.4 % of the population receives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits (SNAP) while in Maine, 12.1% do and in Lewiston, this number more than doubles, with 24.4% of the local population receiving SNAP benefits. Thus, Lewiston, Maine provides an interesting locale to understand how the national, regional, and local food system impacts local …

Exploring Tensions Between Two Maine Landscapes: Toxic And Pristine, Caitlyn Elizabeth Hanley

Standard Theses

This thesis juxtaposes a historical account of environmental toxicity in Maine against the popular notion of Maine as a “Vacationland.” Maine is famous globally for its pristine aesthetics, iconic coastline, and vast wilderness. Because of this, tourism is amongst the largest economic sectors for Maine, much different from the complex industrial history that once drove the economy and built a strong foundation for the state. Public discourse advertises Maine as a “Vacationland,” capitalizing on its natural features while ignoring and even marginalizing the toxic history of Maine which is still impacting communities today. This idyllic visage of Maine contradicts the …

A Rare Presentation Of Concomitant Lung Disease And Hepatitis After Rituximab Treatment: A Case Report, Linda Albusoul, Hussna Abunafessa, Vrushali Dabak

Hematology/Oncology Articles

Rituximab (RTX) is a chimeric monoclonal antibody that is a standard component of treatment for all B-cell malignancies. The most common adverse events related to RTX are infusion-related reactions, such as fever, chills, urticaria, flushing, and headaches. However, RTX-induced lung disease (RTX-ILD) is a rare but potentially fatal adverse reaction, and diagnosing RTX-ILD is challenging, especially when accompanied by other rare adverse reactions, such as hepatitis. Here, we report a case of RTX-ILD with concomitant RTX-induced hepatitis in a 55-year-old man with follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma who was on maintenance RTX therapy. The patient presented with a subacute, persistent dry …

Nonprofit Marketing And Communication Personnel Job Satisfaction: The Effects Of Role Conflict And Role Ambiguity, Rachel L. Swink

Communication Theses - Archive

Job satisfaction is becoming increasingly important in efforts to retain employees across all sectors. The nonprofit sector is facing greater challenges than ever before in competing for and retaining adequate talent. The nonprofit sector provides unconventional benefits such as hybrid office models, paid time off, and others to improve job satisfaction. While nonprofits receive high job satisfaction, turnover is a big issue, even among marketing and communication teams which are often underfunded, understaffed, and unappreciated. Marketing and communication teams play a unique role within nonprofits, as they are frequently pulled in different directions to accomplish tasks that may not necessarily …

Community Engagement Newsletter, May 2023, University Of Northern Iowa. Office Of Community Engagement.

Community Engagement Newsletter

Contents:

--- Award Recipients
--- PROJECT HERE
--- Iowa Nonprofit Alliance Launching in the Cedar Valley
--- Community Transit Survey
--- Summer Opportunities with Campus Compact
--- UNI Engaged Podcast
--- See you next fall, but in the meantime…

A Community U-Knighted: Developing A Community Engagement Program For Student-Athletes, Jensen Kitrel

Undergraduate Theses

Student-athletes are expected to fill multiple roles and balance both athletic and academic responsibilities while facing other stressors. In some cases, student-athletes are further tasked with engaging with their communities as university representatives. Past research has shown that the motivation to participate in these initiatives is low due to lack of time and has acknowledged burnout among college athletes (Martin, 2019; Huml, 2019). However, few studies have taken a creative approach to address this important challenge. Utilizing functionalist theory and marketing strategies, the current research develops a program to increase volunteerism and community engagement among collegiate athletes.

Medical Falsity: The False Claims Act’S Quagmire For Medicare And Medicaid Claims, Jordan R. Einhorn

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Forget Escapism, I Read For The Badass Heroines, Camille Norman

RhetTech

"Forget Escapism, I Read for the Badass Heroines" is a personal narrative exploring female entrapment in love stories and marriage plots. Through the 21st-century adventure of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, the author recognizes the value of female representation in stories where romance takes the role of a mere subplot. In doing so, the author rebuilds her relationship with postmodern female archetypes by reanalyzing 18th-century Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights and sympathizing with her proto-feminist attributes. Far from a pessimistic rejection of romance stories, this essay calls for a "yes, and..." approach to female representation in a broader range …

The Forest, Pari Patel

RhetTech

The Forest' is a piece of descriptive writing, scaffolded with figurative language, vivid imagery, and a stark contrast between the beginning and the end. The forest the narrator is in starts off seeming divine and pure, and later transitions into appearing evil and sinister, symbolizing how people are often deceived by the true nature of things or other people around them.

Online Luxury Resale Platforms And Customer Experiences: A Text Mining Analysis Of Online Reviews, Chuanlan Liu, Sibei Xia, Chunmin Lang

Faculty Publications

There are long-standing arguments that challenge the resale business as a circular fashion model. Considering the whole fashion industry and market, luxury resale is still quite small. To scale the industry, it is critical to attract more consumers to embrace fashion resale and circular fashion. However, many of the customers most likely to embrace resale might have already opted into the market, indicating that online or in-store resale businesses are competing for a limited pool of customers. As a result, it is challenging for the industry to scale. Therefore, it is imperative to understand how consumers engage with luxury resale …

Gifts And Commodities: A Dialectical Thought Experiment For Sublation, Ruirui Zhang, Joseph D’Andrea, Chunmin Lang

Faculty Publications

The core motivation for this study is the realization that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) encounter temporary obstacles, conflicts, or inconsistencies that impede progress and generalization. According to the authors, sustainable development across social, environmental, and economic dimensions is unlikely to occur without redefining the meaning and recalibrating the metrics used to measure commodities. These meanings and metrics must align with values such as general reciprocity, morality, and the common good, going beyond mere calculations of means and ends and personal preferences. The research has three primary objectives: first, to compare and reassess the meanings and responsibilities assigned to “items” …

Examining Generation Z Consumer Online Fashion Resale Participation And Continuance Intention Through The Lens Of Consumer Perceived Value, Chuanlan Liu, Jeremy M. Bernardoni, Zhongjie Wang

Faculty Publications

The fashion industry has recently embraced a circular economy due to the increased consumer awareness of environmental issues, especially among younger generations. However, it is unclear if younger consumers, especially Generation Z, are willing to consistently engage in sustainable consumption patterns, such as buying and selling pre-owned fashion products through online resale platforms. This research specifically focuses on Generation Z consumers’ online fashion resale participation continuance. A research model was proposed with perceived benefits, pro-environmental beliefs as antecedents to attitude and continuance intention, and consumer perceived value as a moderating factor shaping the specified direct and mediating relationship. An online …

Redbird Buzz Episode 23: Jane Lynch '82, May 1, 2023, Rachel Kobus, Jane Lynch

Redbird Buzz (2022-2025)

Actor, comedian, singer, host, and producer Jane Lynch '82 sits down with Redbird Buzz to discuss the latest addition to her long list of titles—director. Lynch is visiting the Illinois State University campus this spring as an artist in residence, directing School of Theatre and Dance students in a staged reading of the Neil Simon comedy Lost in Yonkers.

Lynch is best known for her Emmy Award-winning role as Sue Sylvester on the musical TV comedy hit Glee, but she rose to fame with her breakout role in Christopher Guest's mockumentary Best in Show. She has played numerous roles on …

Between The Stacks, 05-2023, Anna Swearengen, Michelle Dry, Carl Hess, Accessibility Committee

Between the Stacks

The May 2023 edition of the University Libraries monthly newsletter presenting a calendar of events for the month, library announcements, photos and information from the recent Tennessee Library Association (TNLA) conference, information on the University Libraries annual gathering, and an article from the Accessibility Committee on accessible events.

The Mediational Role Of Motivation In The Model Of Motor Development In Childhood: A Longitudinal Study, Cristina Menescardi, An V. De Meester, Octavio Álvarez, Isabel Castillo, Leen Haerens, Isaac Estevan

Faculty Publications

The aim of this study was twofold: first, to examine the stability of the hypothesized conceptual model of motor development (without and with including various types of motivation) when children are followed up one-year later, and second to examine longitudinally whether changes in one model variable predict changes in other variables, according to the hypothesized pathways in the model. A sample of 361 Spanish students (50.7% girls, 8–11 years old) voluntarily participated in this study. In relation to the first aim, structural equation modeling revealed the expected positive relationship between the model variables in both measurement times. That is: actual …

Religion, Discrimination, And The Future Of Public Education, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions regarding the free exercise of religion threaten fundamental changes to public education. On their face, these decisions are relatively narrow. They prohibit states from explicitly excluding religious schools from participating in states’ tuition subsidy programs, otherwise known as private school vouchers. But school choice advocates and some scholars argue that the rationale in these cases also extends to religious organizations that want to operate public charter schools.

While these changes would drain enormous resources from an already underfunded public education system, even more important interests are at stake: antidiscrimination and basic core curriculum. More specifically, …

Myth-Busting Restorative Justice: Uncovering The Past And Finding Lessons In Community, Aparna Polavarapu

Faculty Publications

A common narrative about modern restorative justice is that it is a revival of historic and indigenous justice practices that have been practiced around the world. Critics of this narrative call it a myth, arguing that the claim is overbroad and unsupported by existing evidence. Embedded in this conversation are questions about how to respect the contributions of indigenous traditions and avoid whitewashing. Such an overwhelmingly broad claim tends to lead to romanticization and whitewashing of indigenous traditions, serving the needs of largely white, Western advocates in yet another colonial endeavor. But ignoring the indigenous contribution to restorative justice altogether …

The Racialized Violence Of Police Canine Force, Madalyn K. Wasilczuk

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Patriarchal Violence, Rona Kaufman

Law Faculty Publications

For over a century, feminist theorists and activists have sought equality for women. They have aimed their efforts at the many distinct and related causes of women's inequality, among them gendered violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, and violence against women. Recognizing the need to understand problems in order to solve them, feminist theorists have devoted decades to conceptualizing various manifestations of such violence, ranging from private acts, such as sexual assault and intimate partner abuse, to public acts, such as the incarceration of mothers and the criminalization of pregnancy. In this article, I argue in favor of conceptualizing the many …

Histological Evaluation Of Offspring Kidneys Following Prenatal Vaping Exposure., Lucas Georges

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

A variety of nicotine-containing products have been making their way to the market as alternatives to cigarette smoking. These include, but are not limited to, cigars, pipes, smokeless tobacco, and electronic cigarettes, with the last one being more prevalent than the others. With these alternatives, there are more tobacco users now than ever, with an increase from 1990 to 2017, which contrasts with the reduction in number of smokers observed by the Surgeon General in his Smoking Cessation report between 1990 and 2017, meaning that more and more tobacco users are using these. Pregnant women are advised to switch from …

Diversification And Convergence Following The Transition From Saltwater To Freshwater In Stingrays., Autumn D. Magnuson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

One of the most fundamental questions in biology is why some groups of organisms are more diverse than others. Classic hypotheses for explaining differences in diversity consider distinctions in time, place, resources, and competitors as the staging grounds for differential diversification. Freshwater and saltwater environments have similar levels of diversity despite significant differences in size, so studying transitions between the two systems can provide insights into evolutionary processes. Despite the challenges associated with this transition, stingrays have invaded freshwater habitats multiple times across different continents, making them useful for better understanding these systems. In this study, I evaluated the frequency …

The Lost Cause And The Commonwealth: The United Daughters Of The Confederacy And Forging Civil War Memory In Kentucky., Emma Donaghy

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

For over a century, the Kentucky division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy has worked to instill the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy in the state’s public schools, libraries, and places where a white child could learn about the past. Few scholars have studied the activities of the Kentucky division of the UDC, although some of the organization’s most influential work took place in the state, and the organization’s national founder, Caroline Meriwether Goodlett, was born in Todd County, Kentucky. This honors thesis offers an in-depth examination of the work of the Kentucky division, drawing from the rich …

Does Using Clicker Questions Before Instruction Improve Students' Conceptual Understanding., Edward "Walker" Goshorn

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Active learning can be incorporated into STEM classrooms in multiple ways. With exploratory learning, students explore a novel activity before learning the concepts or procedures. With personal response devices (e.g., clickers), students respond to real-time questions posed during lecture. The current studies examined whether, and how, clicker questions can be used as exploratory learning, to improve students’ conceptual understanding and engagement over traditional instruction. Biology professors integrated clicker questions into a lecture, and either closed the clicker poll prior to (Restricted Clicker Experiment, N = 164) or after (Extended Clicker Experiment, N = 188) giving feedback to the class. Undergraduate …

The Philosophy Of Activism And Its Paradox., Omar Arar

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Activist organizations have been at the forefront of countless progressive efforts, seeking to ameliorate social injustices, expand the rights of marginalized people, and strengthen democratic institutions. However, the efforts of activists always seem to lead to incremental victories or a minimal change to the status quo. In this paper, I argue that the primary cause of this largely stagnant social justice landscape is the professionalization of activism. Activism in its professional form, as people who make a living out of their activist efforts, brings with it numerous issues, the most problematic among them is the manifestation a paradox. Namely, professional …

Other Bodies: Deconstructing Visual Binaries By Subverting Visual Representations Of The Other., Amaiya L. Crawford

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The goal of creating my sculptural work, The Avian, is both to broaden the visual categorization of sentient bodies, as well as to deconstruct binary thinking regarding the way that bodies display racialized, gendered, and sexualized characteristics. The Avian does this by subverting visual and aesthetic tropes that construct labels like human, monster, and animal. Subversion acts as the main design influence that illustrates how the display how othered bodies can be used to highlight the constructed nature of how we construct humanity. This paper posits that by acknowledging an expansion in visual categorization, in addition to further pushing opportunities …