Understanding the Appeal of ISIS

The Islamic State, or ISIS, has proven to be persistently successful in attracting people from all over the globe to join in its state-building and state-defending enterprise. This article explores the messages it has crafted, from the utopian to the militarily defensive, and the techniques it uses to propagate these messages (including on social media), which includes some historical comparisons to communism and Nazism. It goes on to provide initial research findings from the field to show how their message is working among (a small percentage of) the target audience, sketching the theory of identity fusion to argue that it is a sense of belonging to one group above all others that persuades people to travel to another country to kill and die for a cause

Consumer Choice and Beads in Fugitive Slave Villages in Nineteenth-Century Kenya

This study analyzes the consumption of European glass beads at two fugitive slave villages in nineteenth-century Kenya, Koromio and Makoroboi. The consumer choices of Koromio and Makoroboi residents reveal a strategic and symbolic material language. Specifically, the inter-household distribution of European glass beads reflects considerable variation in the performance of female identity. This distribution suggests varying norms of feminine adornment. Some of these norms likely originated in runaways’ natal communities; others may have developed during enslavement. The variability in adornment practices additionally points to women’s improvisation amid shifting gender relations in these nascent fugitive slave communities

Economic Organization and Cultural Cohesion in the Coastal Hinterland of 19th-Century Kenya: An Archaeology of Fugitive Slave Communities

This article presents a dissertation proposal for doctoral research scheduled to begin in September 2007. The project centers on the archaeological investigation of settlements founded in 19th-century Kenya by people escaping slavery. It considers the economic insularity and cultural heterogeneity of runaway slave groups relative to the coastal hinterland communities that neighbored them. In Swahili, fugitive slaves were known as watoro. This project investigates the creation of watoro communities through a dual focus on inter- and intra-group relationships. Firstly, it explores the relative economic integration of these nascent communities into regional networks. Secondly, the project investigates whether fugitive slaves developed homogenized sociocultural norms or, alternately, maintained long-term cultural heterogeneity. The above inquiries will be evaluated through an archaeological comparison of watoro settlements with villages of neighboring Mijikenda peoples in the coastal hinterland. Relying on Mijikenda settlements as alternate examples of 19th-century rural Eastern African life, the project will explore how the status of watoro as refugees from enslavement shaped the economic, social, and cultural organization of their villages. Indices targeted in this investigation include diet, trade, craft production, house style, and spatial organization of domestic activities

Simple and Fast Reconstruction of 6 MV Radiotherapy Doses to the Whole Body

Background: State-of-the-art radiotherapy medical records include reliable estimates of the therapeutic radiation but are known to underestimate the stray radiation exposures by 40% away from the treatment field. Most commonly, stray radiation exposures are reconstructed using empirical formulas and/or lookup tables containing machine-specific dose measurements. The purpose of this study was to develop a physics-based model to calculate exposures to the whole body of patients who receive external beam photon radiotherapy. Methods: We developed a physics-based analytic algorithm to predict absorbed dose from therapeutic, scatter, and leakage radiation. The model includes separate terms to characterize photon production, attenuation, and scattering in the treatment unit as well as attenuation and scatter of radiation within the phantom. It was developed using measurements of total absorbed dose in a water-box phantom from a 6 MV medical linear accelerator and was validated against measured profiles in water using several clinically representative treatment fields. Results: Our dose algorithm reproduces the measured dose profiles in water from 1.5 to 10 cm in depth and 35 cm off-axis distance. At least 90% of predicted doses agreed within 10% or 3 mm of measured absorbed doses for positions where those doses were greater than 5% of therapeutic dose, and within 2 mGy of stray dose per Gy of therapeutic dose or 10 mm of measured doses at other locations. Computation times for 10 million dose points within a phantom were less than 6.5 minutes. Conclusions: The results suggest that it is feasible to use a physics-based model to accurately and quickly predict whole body exposures from radiation therapy. A potentially important advantage of a physics-based approach, such as the algorithm proposed in this work, is that the model is inherently more readily adaptable to a wide variety of treatment units and treatment techniques than models based on empirical formulae or machine specific lookup-tables

Making the Transition: Developing a Peer-Mentoring Program Targeting Transfer Students

In 2017, the ETSU Library developed a peer-mentoring program targeting transfer students from local community colleges. The intent was to ease the transition from community college to our four-year university, to help students establish an ETSU identity before arriving on campus, and to offer undergraduates research help from trained peers

Games and Roleplaying in the Classroom

The Library Ambassador Program hires approximately 20 undergraduate students each fall and provides them with two semesters of information literacy and research skills instruction before deploying them across campus to help students with their research. As part of their training, instructors use various game-play strategies in the classroom including: a card game designed to teach players about databases and how they function, a card game intended to teach players how to evaluate sources of information, and a roleplaying activity meant to prepare ambassadors for experiences in helping students. Many emotions are involved in the action of gameplay such as competitiveness, satisfaction, and excitement. The card games and roleplaying activities we play in class harness these emotions to create a fun and engaging way to develop research skills. Games in this context also provide opportunities for collaborative learning as students work together to problem-solve and to learn new skills

Developing a Peer-Mentoring Program to Expand Information Literacy across Campus

In an effort to expand information literacy throughout our institution and to reach students who may not make it to the library for research help, our library faculty have developed a peermentoring program. The Library Ambassador Program entails hiring undergraduate students, providing them with two semesters of information literacy instruction and deploying them across campus to help students with their research

Engaging Students in Information Literacy: Lessons from Our Library Ambassador Program

The Library Ambassador Program hires approximately 25 undergraduate students each fall and provides them with two semesters of information literacy and research skills instruction before deploying them across campus to help students with their research. As part of their training, instructors use various game-playing and active learning strategies in the classroom including: a card game designed to teach players about databases and how they function, group problem-solving exercises, a card game intended to teach players how to evaluate sources of information, and a roleplaying activity meant to prepare ambassadors for experiences in helping students. In this session, participants will learn effective methods for implementing active and collaborative learning strategies to engage students in information literacy instruction

Let Your Library Shine: Creating a Student Newsletter to Raise the Profile of an Academic Library

Developed to raise the profile of the library among ETSU\u27s student community, which is comprised of nearly 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students, The Sherrod Library Student Newsletter is released twice per semester and highlights library events, resources, and services that students may not otherwise know about. It is our library\u27s hope that creating such a newsletter will increase student attendance at library events as well as increase the use of featured library resources and services. Join us as we discuss the steps and logistics of planning, creating, funding, and releasing a student newsletter