Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2014, Communication

The past decade has seen a large number of film co-productions between Hollywood studios and Chinese production companies. These co-productions reflect the continued rise of the Chinese box office, and a desire by Hollywood to cash in on the emerging market. Among these co-productions is Looper, a cinematic collaboration between Tri-Star Pictures and DMG Entertainment. Along with its co-production status, Looper is significant in its unique portrayal of a future featuring a dystopic United States and a prosperous China. Viewing the film as a "representative anecdote," this thesis argues that Looper represents United States cultural apprehensions towards China. By the circumstances of the film's production and its on-screen portrayal of the future, the film reflects the distinct American fear in which China is the dominant world economic power. The film accomplishes this through its appropriation of science-fiction cinematic conventions, particularly regarding utopia, dystopia, and "alienation of the familiar."

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2013, English/Literature

Science fiction has always been a genre that explores unimaginable worlds and possibilities. Jeanette Winterson does just this in her novel The Stone Gods. In this project, I suggest that Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods is a narrative metaphor for how acts that oppose social norms may disrupt the repetition of norms and allow for queer, alternative identities and cultures. I offer this argument as one approach to how queer politics can continue its endeavors to recognize alternative identities, including blended identities in gender and sexuality, as well as alternative communities, including queer groups that encompass multiple identity categories. I first examine the android, Spike, and posit that Winterson uses Spike to demystify gender binaries and present a possibility of a blended identity. This blended identity is ultimately a fusion of a binary. Furthermore, Spike demonstrates Butler's theory that subjects form an identity because of the social norms acting on the subject. Next, I posit that the novel also demystifies the romantic, subversive couple and instead explores how a queer collective might be more effective in subverting dominant society and norms. Here, Winterson presents a queer collective that aspires towards a queer utopia. As a result, the collective is able to imagine endless alternative communities for all identity categories. Ultimately, Winterson's The Stone Gods explores possible queer, alternative identities and communities and supports the value of the continued imaginings of these alternatives.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Dance Studies

Performing Objects: Ephemerality and Liveness in Contemporary Dance and Nonhuman Performance, 1975-2022 explores nonhuman objects' movement, mobility, performativity, and phenomenology to reframe the current discourse on cultural studies and social justice, representation politics, considers environmental justice as an integral component of social justice, and fills the gap of nonhuman research in dance studies. Performing objects as pivotal sites can simultaneously expand the boundaries of dance studies and facilitate critical interdisciplinary inquiries between dance studies and other fields within the humanities. By analyzing the works of dance artists like Eiko Otake, Shen Wei, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and Pina Bausch, I illustrate how performing objects redefine our notions of space, technology, and technique within both theater and site-specific dance. These performing objects include technological objects designed and created by humans and nonhuman elements such as animals, plants, and even the human body. I demonstrate how a nonhuman perspective alters our perception of the “other,” how nonhuman knowledge can dissolve binary oppositions within cultural representations, and how it challenges racism, colonialism, and sexism and contributes to the complexity of representation politics and intersectional social justice. In addition, my dissertation, which includes a historical component, delves into recognizing the “other,” otherness, and alterity, aligning with environmental justice and carving radical political possibilities from stage-based performances to everyday life and the broader natural environment.

MA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

Amid the current climate crisis and the scientific consensus on its anthropogenic causes, one task left to the humanities and social sciences is to understand why we humans have failed to effectively act on addressing the issue. I intend to show how the work of Edmund Husserl and Bruno Latour is especially relevant to this topic, bringing their ideas to bear on questions of the climate crisis and the lack of faith in science seen in certain populations in America. I will argue that the crisis of the sciences which Husserl identifies in his last work highlights the Modernist roots of our situation where we separate ourselves from nature, which sheds light on our lack of action. I will augment this analysis with Latour's studies of science and climate change, as well as work done on the phenomenon of lack of faith in science in America, to help furnish a better understanding of the global predicament we are in.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Educational Studies

While Perkins V legislation and newer career and technical education programs were designed to prepare students for success in both college and career pathways and modern career and technical education programs are supposed to expand college and career readiness outcomes for students, there is a lack of research examining supports that promote the academic engagement and success of Black male students in high school career academies. Career academies are a type of high school reform initiative that is designed to prepare students for college and careers in career fields such as engineering and informing technology (Fletcher & Tan, 2022; Fletcher et al., 2018). In the 1970s, career academies were designed as career-oriented schools that delivered college preparatory instructional curriculum, and operated as smaller schools within larger schools (ACTE, 2019; NAF, 2023). Comprehensive school reform efforts like career academies are likely to ensure that Black male students are prepared for college and careers with personalized resources and services such as trade and apprenticeship pathways, work-based learning, early career exploration, guidance counseling, and college-level examination programs. In this study, I described the need for research to examine college and career readiness of high school Black male students at a NAF (formerly known as the National Foundation Academy) Academy of Engineering. I utilized the theoretical frameworks of college and career ready by Stone and Lewis (2012) and culturally relevant pedagogy by Ladson-Billings (1992) to review the research questions, background of the problem, problem statement, purpose statement, and significance of the study. Since Black males are a vulnerable group of youth with lower academic achievement and performance and barriers to career prospects and access to higher education (Brown et al., 2019; Hines et al., 2014; Wright, 2019), I explored the role of career academies, culturally relevant education for Bla (open full item for complete abstract)

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Arts and Sciences: Political Science

Recent cases of hybrid warfare and other forms of ambiguous conflict present a challenge to crisis bargaining models, which describe crisis escalation as a three-part signaling process. First, states engaged in a policy dispute will make public demands about the disputed issue. Second, states follow with coercive threats if the demand is not met. Finally, states demonstrate resolve through increasingly hostile public behaviors that move the crisis closer to war. Thus, signaling is the primary strategic mechanism in crisis bargaining models. However, this traditional view of crisis escalation conflicts with some cases of international crisis. This presents a theoretical challenge to conventional bargaining and traditional views of escalation. To resolve this discrepancy, an alternative escalation model is presented below that attempts to resolve this theoretical and empirical discrepancy and explain cases of “hybrid warfare” without violating the foundational tenets of bargaining theory. The theory posits that states do not always utilize signaling as the primary strategic mechanism during an international crisis. Instead, they may utilize other strategic mechanisms to advance their interests. The model presented here, labeled “hybrid escalation,” describes one approach states take to crisis escalation that utilizes ambiguity. While escalating with military means, the hybrid state generates ambiguity by distorting information about the crisis using informational means like propaganda, censorship, proxies, disinformation, and other forms of deception. This allows the hybrid state to lower the traditional costs of escalation by exploiting various cost-lowering mechanisms that limit the typical material and political costs of escalation. To test the efficacy of this theory, I examine two recent conflicts associated with hybrid warfare. I test the data against two crisis bargaining models, traditional and hybrid escalation. I hypothesize that trad (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Political Science

In discussing the intersection between business and politics, Robert Dahl claimed that there is "no dearth of important and even urgent questions." This dissertation tackles one such question: How do economic firm intervention in the development of the state influence modern outcomes? I argue that when institutions are in transition, firms and state actors both face uncertainty, and as a result, they enter an arrangement in which the state actor consistently provides the firm with public resources in return for patronage. I define this as state capture. Across my three papers, I find that when we focus on the role of firms in political development, there are widespread and long-term consequences for the state and local populations when the state is captured. Across all three of these papers, I explore these ramifications in Appalachia Kentucky. State capture is not a novel concept, but its usage is uneven and unclear, and there is no cohesive intellectual conversation. The first paper ameliorates this by taking this literature and synthesizing a concept from which we can derive clearer implications. I use Kentucky and the Appalachian coal region to explore this concept. I collect archival data to test one observable implication of the concept---lack of democratic commitment and non-competitive elections. I find the inverse of what I expect to observe, elections in Appalachia Kentucky, for the locally elected sheriff and tax commissioner are more competitive than my theory predicts. I discuss this finding considering my concept and argue that this represents a need for understanding how economic firms can influence political outcomes. The second paper applies the conceptualization of state capture more deeply to the case of Appalachia Kentucky, to create a model to better understand the region's persistent economic underdevelopment. I argue that compared to previous Appalachian development models, understanding the region's local politics as captured is empiric (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2021, English

My dissertation draws on science fiction as a sometimes overlooked form of literature that demonstrates how its writers, editors, and fans not only address contemporary cultural and societal issues but also imagine the future - who does and does not belong there. Creators and consumers of science fiction, I argue, are compliant with absence; in other words, their vision of an ideal future all too often includes only able-bodied/minded, straight, white, and privileged occupants. Since science fiction exists long before the disability field coalesces, I examine texts for ideas and deployments of disability within the narrative, rather than pointing to a disabled character and declaring, "There is the disability in the book." Beginning with H. G. Wells's quintessential The Time Machine (1895) and his health status at the time, I argue that the genre develops alongside Wells's lived experiences with disability and, as such, it is possible to study Wells's vast oeuvre in the context of not only these lived experiences, but also "ideas about disability," found in time travel, Martians, dys-/utopia, and other science fiction tropes that pass down from Wells. Featuring texts by Octavia E. Butler, Judith Merril, Clare Winger Harris, William Gibson, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and David H. Keller, this dissertation examines representations of disability that highlight controversial topics such as which human lives are considered worthy of life or killable/murderable in light of both the chosen texts and the cases that appear in contemporary legislation. While the bulk of this work lies with the early eras of science fiction, I also include the more recent subgenre of cyberpunk as it relates to the emerging HIV and AIDS crisis and the developing connection between HIV and AIDS and the COVID pandemic. Lastly, I speculate on the visionary fiction of Octavia E. Butler that presages the current societal and political situation we (as readers, writers, and scholars) find ourselve (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Music

The Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree has been the terminal degree in music performance, composition, and conducting in North America since the early 1950s. Originally met with criticism, some of which continues to this day, the DMA continues to serve as the gateway for applied music-makers that wish to join the academy. This document investigates and echoes these criticisms surrounding the necessity and design of the DMA in Voice Performance, while submitting new criticisms based in curriculum theory, learning science (pedagogy), and educational psychology. A comparative look at DMA in Voice Performance programs at 57 American universities and conservatories provides context and inspiration for a much-needed consensus on the desired outcomes of this terminal degree in singing. This document responds to this need by proposing a new, revised, and ideal course of study that encourages the singing community to reconsider the limitless possibilities that exist for artist-teachers in the pursuit of a DMA. In so doing, it serves as a mindful guide that institutions may use to tailor their doctoral programs to their strengths, while following best practices that uplift, validate, and ensure the existence of such a degree.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Anthropology

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a holistic understanding of the uptake of telemedicine in Ghana. A year-long, in-depth ethnographic study where telemedicine projects had been occurring for nearly a decade provided an ideal setting to study the theoretical and practical applications of telemedicine. This research examines two systems of telemedicine: the Ghana Health Service's (GHS) national telemedicine program, and a parallel teleconsultation system occurring over WhatsApp. This dissertation has two overall aims. The first is to determine how telemedicine is being used for obstetric care provision in Ghana. Understanding how, when, and why telemedicine is used to handle obstetric cases can shed light on its usage for other, less common emergency cases. To situate the midwives' work and their interactions with telemedicine within theoretical perspectives, this dissertation draws from the anthropology of reproduction literature, particularly regarding conceptions and definitions of risk. It also draws from postcolonial science and technology studies (STS) literature that examines biomedicine in postcolonial contexts, as well as other STS literature that theorizes how technologies are adopted and adapted. The second aim of this research is to explore the complexities of technological and bureaucratic systems, like telemedicine programs and the GHS, which are both hierarchical and social in nature. This dissertation will discuss the intricacies that must be considered in order to successfully integrate a technological system such as telemedicine into a large health system. Ultimately, I argue that telemedicine is being integrated into a complex system with set hierarchies and it reinforces authoritative knowledge and power structures. Telemedicine appears deceivingly simple from the outside: everyone has cell phones, so why not use them for consultation in the health system? However, while implementing a technological solution may at the surface (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, American Culture Studies

With 171 million active users and a market value expected to climb to almost $17 billion in the next three years, Virtual Reality (VR) would appear to be a technology on the rise. Yet despite the public fervor for VR, our media landscape has long been marked by phobic depictions of the same—from William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984), to The Matrix (1999), to Black Mirror (2011-present), VR fictions always seem to dread its presence even as their audiences anticipate these feared technologies. How, then, can we explain the durability of fiction fearing VR, and what use might we find for that phobic response? While ample previous scholarship has explored how horror and other forms of genre fiction reflect specific cultural anxieties, to this point little work has been devoted to technophobic fiction as it represents and serves to manage cultural responses to new and emerging technologies. As VR grows increasingly common, such fiction might offer a powerful tool toward anticipating its uses—good and bad—as well as to influence the ends for which these technologies are taken up. Through textual analysis of Ready Player One (2018) and “San Junipero” (2017), I explore how fears of capitalist subjugation, disembodiment, and the limitations of the humanist self come to be displaced in VR's technological systems. This work clarifies the technosocial politics of VR as they penetrate what it means to be human, and how technophobia itself might be mobilized toward the creation of a better technological future.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2019, Anthropology

There is too much for individual physicians to know in biomedicine: countless drugs, differential diagnoses, and treatments, all based on the bottomless science of human health. In the face of this overwhelming amount of knowledge, how do physicians learn to make choices about what information they will prioritize, and what they will spare? Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with medical students in the American Midwest, this dissertation explores how future physicians are trained—implicitly and explicitly— to make conscious choices about what to know and what to ignore in the course of their studies. The author presents a novel theorization of these decisions, termed sufficient knowledge: the process by which medical students are socialized to make choices about what to know, and what to ignore, within both the classroom and the clinic. The author first describes how the field site curriculum conditioned medical student participants to be consciously and intentionally ignorant about some forms of knowledge; second, the author analyzes a series of factors that impact the choices medical students came to make about knowledge and ignorance at the field site, including time, specialization, teamwork, and access to information and material resources. This dissertation acts as a corrective to the extensive body of social scientific research on knowledge and competence in biomedical practice, suggesting that conscious ignorance is just as instrumental as expertise or skill in understanding the ways that biomedical knowledge is socially constructed.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Comparative Studies

Humans are not alone in this world nor have we ever been. This inter-disciplinary project develops an approach to understanding species difference through a phenomenology-informed, material-semiotic investigation human/cattle co-emergence. Cattle (Bos taurus) have been selected because of their outsized significance in the transformations that have defined contemporary human life. By identifying a select set of sites and developing a situated investigation around a “beastly figure” representative of each of them, this project demonstrates the co-productive and emergent qualities of our interspecies relationships and makes a case for situated co-emergence as an ethical and ontological paradigm for animal studies. Over the course of the text, I will consider several “beastly figures” each of which offers an example of co-emergent human/cattle processes. I come to these figures through a process of “tracing,” starting with my own situated position and moving toward an encounter (albeit a mediated one) with the world-making frame of another being. The dissertation begins with a “0” chapter on the wild aurochs, an animal predating or excluded from the human/cattle domestication relationship. Each subsequent chapter takes up a different figure of human/cattle entanglement to highlight a passageway of encounter between species or identify an emergent whole that the integration of our species creates. Chapter 1 follows the alphabet back to its beastly source, provides an overview of the tracing methodology, and makes a case for the importance of cattle specifically. Chapter 2 considers the medieval bestiary as a material object, a medium for encountering an animal other, and as a model for understanding projects of knowing animals. The next three chapters consider contemporary entanglements between humans and cattle and the emergent potentials of each. All this builds toward a conclusion, which pulls together the threads of each chapter to emphasize the ethical importan (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Leadership Studies

This concurrent mixed methods study examined how the experiences of being a woman in computing affects her self-esteem over the course of her undergraduate career and into professional employment. Self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale that applies both competence and worthiness constructs. General (global) self-esteem was compared to self-esteem within the context of computing (computing-based self-esteem). Female attendees (N=546) of ACM-W celebrations of women in computing were invited to complete a Computing Experience Survey (CES). Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed separately then mixed to validate findings. Quantitative results indicated that women reported significantly lower computing-based self-esteem than global self-esteem. Additionally, competence and worthiness significantly differed within computing-based self-esteem throughout one's college progression and into the profession. All measures of self-esteem (global, computing-based, competence, and worthiness) improve for professionals. Analysis of open-ended questions illustrated that competence and worthiness are intertwined in computing experiences, and positive and negative experiences often contained a social component. The following conclusions were presented: (1) context matters when measuring self-esteem; (2) competence and worthiness are separate but related dimensions of self-esteem; (3) computing-based self-esteem changes throughout a student's college career and into the profession; (4) experiences in computing provide explanations for these changes in computing-based self-esteem and shed light on persistence, career faithfulness, and leadership; and, (5) when worthiness is present, it is strongly tied to competence for women in computing.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2016, Antioch New England: Environmental Studies

Traditional citizen science projects have been based on the scientific community's need to gather vast quantities of high quality data, neglecting to ask what the project participants get in return. How can participants be seen more as collaborative partners in citizen science projects? Online communities for citizen science are expanding rapidly, giving participants the opportunity to take part in a wide range of activities, from monitoring invasive species to identifying far-off galaxies. These communities can bring together the virtual and physical worlds in new ways that are egalitarian, collaborative, applied, localized and globalized to solve real environmental problems. There are a small number of citizen science projects that leverage the affordances of an online community to connect, engage, and empower participants to make local change happen. This multiple case study applies a conceptual framework rooted in sociocultural learning theory, Non-Hierarchical Online Learning Communities (NHOLCs), to three online citizen communities that have successfully fostered online collaboration and on-the-ground environmental actions. The purpose of the study is to identify the range and variation of the online and programmatic functions available in each project. The findings lead to recommendations for designing these innovative communities, specifically the technological and programmatic components of online citizen science communities that support environmental actions in our backyards.

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2016, Political Science

This thesis attempts to investigate and advance understanding of polarizing leadership through a case study of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The study utilizes operational code analysis as the basis of investigation, examining Netanyahu through his speeches, interviews, and social media. Qualitative and quantitative methods are utilized, including applying George's operational code questions and running a sample of texts through VICS coding. Facial recognition technology is also used to demonstrate new methods of collecting data for the purpose of leadership studies. Though VICS coding results in fairly neutral results for most measures, both facial recognition software and qualitative analysis suggest that Netanyahu may harbor a more negative, conflictual operational code. Qualitative analysis also provides a much greater wealth of nuanced information that helps to understand Netanyahu's belief system and likely actions. In the process, this study provides evidence of information overlooked in VICS coding that should be better addressed moving forward. It also suggests that Netanyahu is best understood as a realist or pragmatic realist who is most concerned with maintaining security through a power imbalance. Conclusions drawn suggest that there is little chance for Israel to obtain peace with its neighboring countries under Netanyahu's leadership and may also provide broader implications and research directions regarding polarizing leadership as a whole.

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2015, Earth and Environmental Sciences

This thesis investigates how well ground vibrations can be detected at ladar or radar wavelengths and how the atmosphere may impact the observation of such activity. First understanding atmospheric hindrances at each of these wavelengths is helpful to prioritize by those yielding best transmission results. A prerequisite to the outdoor field experiment performed for this study involves analyzing atmospheric effects characterization at six probable wavelengths using the Laser Environmental Effects Definition and Reference tool (LEEDR) developed by the Air Force Institute of Technology's (AFIT) Center for Directed Energy (CDE). These wavelengths, selected from the shortwave infrared and microwave portions of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, are assessed to determine which provides optimal path transmission results allowing a sensor platform at an altitude of 1525 meters to sense induced ground vibrations. Selecting an altitude just above the typical atmospheric boundary layer (BL) allows further investigation of precipitation and cloud impacts on potential path transmission. The objective of performing the outdoor field experiment is to induce surface vibrations tracked by a 12 channel geophone spread linked to a seismograph at various locations along a horizontal path to determine if the signal can be detected by a 35 GHz radar. The contributory goal of this research is to realize new ways of monitoring otherwise invisible illegal or terrorist-like activities for the security of this nation. Additionally, the use of LEEDR could allow the atmospheric effects measured in the microwave part of the spectrum to be scaled for various platform altitudes and applied for atmospheric correction in other parts of the spectrum such as the visible, near-infrared, infrared, or submillimeter ranges. Experimental results indicate a 35 GHz radar is optimal and capable of detecting ground vibrations across short ranges when using a retro-reflector. How well seismic activity can (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2015, Environmental Studies (Voinovich)

Sustainability education (SE) is a pathway for creating a more socially, economically, and environmentally just and sustainable world. SE involves the incorporation of sustainability concepts into curricula using innovate teaching methods (i.e. place-based education, outdoor education, experiential education, nature-based education). This thesis explores the space for SE in Grade 5 science and social studies classrooms. Using the case study methodology, this study looked to practicing teachers for insights on how SE could be integrated into the public education system. This study investigated teachers' understanding of sustainability and practice of SE by analyzing their perceptions of sustainability, examples of SE lessons, and their sources of knowledge about sustainability. The results indicated that teachers' understanding of sustainability is largely focused on environmental aspects and that teachers' practice of SE also has an environmental focus. This study evaluated the feasibility of teaching SE in the classroom by outlining the challenges and opportunities for SE presented by teachers. While there are some factors that limit teachers' ability to teach SE (i.e. teachers' limited knowledge about sustainability, lack of training in SE, and institutional demands), with guidance and support from education institutions and community partnerships current and future teachers can provide SE for their students.

Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2014, Humanities

The purpose of this thesis is to explore healthcare for undocumented immigrants in France and the US in light of immigration policy, labor needs, and social values. While both countries have historically relied and continue to rely on undocumented labor, they treat irregular migrants differently when it comes to healthcare. While many hospitals in the US deport undocumented patients in a practice termed medical repatriation, the French government has legislated an illness clause that gives residency permits to severely sick sans-papiers who need medical care. To explore the reasoning behind these extremely contrasting treatments, the thesis studies the social values that underlie the healthcare systems in both countries. It concludes that in recognition of healthcare as a human right, France has concrete legislation for sans-papiers; in contrast, rights language is largely missing from the US healthcare system, resulting in a void of legislation that leads to practices like medical repatriation.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, English

My dissertation traces and analyzes the identifications with science that emerge in the rhetorical tradition of the multimodal exhibition of scientific objects, concepts, processes, and practices in the museum context. I demonstrate how multimodal exhibits in science centers have embedded implicit instruction in scientific method and its value; these identifications with science are further reinforced and complicated by wider cultural expectations and ambitions for science and science centers, and how those expectations and ambitions come to be realized in the built spaces of the science centers enclosing the exhibits themselves. I argue that the display of science exhibits within the context of science centers' built spaces reproduces a rhetorical tradition that encourages visitors to respond according to sense-making conventions that are historic in origins, and which privilege a “folk epistemology of common sense empiricism.” The compelling characterization of science as a process conducted through careful observation and inference was separated from the dominant definition of science when experimental science displaced analytical science and its practice moved from private homes and museums to university laboratories. In the twentieth century, through their reproduction of exhibits' “naked eye science,” museums—both natural history and the emerging institution of the science center—preserved the now-outdated theory of knowledge-making with objects. As cultural expectations and ideas about science changed during the twentieth century, the needs of local communities hosting science centers changed, and science center institutions and buildings were adapted to address new educational, economic and civic demands. While exhibits' sense-making functions remained based on the assumption that science is done through careful observation of past events, new architectures and built spaces enclosing those exhibits realized celebratory functions for their surrounding communi (open full item for complete abstract)