Digital Commons Network^™

Progress And Prospective Of New Pollutants Study, Ruan Ting, Chunyang Liao, Yawei Wang, Maoyong Song, Yaqi Cai, Guibin Jiang

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The governance of new pollutants has been becoming a critical strategic demand for the high-quality development of China. The policy will be further advanced during the coming National 15th Five-Year Plan period. Nevertheless, significant challenges remain in aspects such as list of controlled chemicals, standard development, measurement methods, alternative approaches, and remediation techniques. Existing experience in addressing traditional pollutants remains insufficient to adequately address the concealed and complex ecological and/or health risks associated with new pollutants. Thus, a strengthening of basic research is the optimal approach to tackling these challenges and avoiding detours. To better identify the critical scientific challenges …

Ai-Powered Knowledge Engines As Research Infrastructure For Systematic Knowledge Discovery, Gary Welz

Publications and Research

This paper proposes knowledge engines as a framework for understanding how intelligent systems — both human and artificial — systematically discover, integrate, and generate knowledge. We argue that history’s greatest scientific minds functioned as knowledge engines, processing information through iterative cycles of ingestion, analysis, synthesis, and communication, guided by curiosity and willingness to challenge established beliefs.

We propose a taxonomy of nine integrated capabilities — ingestion, digestion, analysis, calculation, comparison, connection, association, analogy, and multimodal communication — that any serious knowledge engine must combine systematically. The argument is deliberately integrative: achieving ambitious research goals requires orchestrating all nine capabilities within …

Open Sharing And Collaborative Governance: Practices And Implications Of National Institutes Of Health’S Digital Transformation, Long Yuntao, Bingzhi Wang, Zheping Xu, Yang Wang

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

With the rapid development of information technology, research projects and tasks of research institutes are increasing rapidly. Scientific and technological resources are the core and foundation of scientific research work, and scientific research institutes are faced with the needs of processing, management and coordination of a large number of scientific and technological resources. Digital transformation has become an inevitable choice for the high-quality development of scientific research institutes. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), as the world’s top scientific research institute, has continuously introduced a number of initiatives in the field of digital transformation, such as institutional reform policies, …

Career: New Insights Into The Ancient Carbon Cycle From Siliceous Deep-Sea Sediments, Donald Penman

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Can An Ai System Be Creative? A Critical Perspective From Art And Engineering, Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau

Presidential Fellows Articles and Research

This paper examines the question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) systems can be creative, approached from the dual perspective of a researcher trained in electrical engineering, pattern recognition, machine learning, and neural networks, who has also spent most of his life engaged in the arts as actor, stage and film director, writer, composer, and visual artist, and in philosophy. Drawing on Margaret Boden’s foundational framework — both her three properties of creativity (novelty, surprise, and value) and her three types of creative processes (combinatorial, exploratory, and transformational) — the paper argues that AI systems are structurally incapable of creativity in …

Provocable Forgiveness In Noisy Brand--Consumer Systems:An Agent-Based Study Of Repeated Interaction, Tahere Ahmadiyan, Hamidreza Navidi, Behbod Keshavarzi

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

Repeated brand--consumer exchange is often treated as a managerial problem of loyalty, recovery, and trust. It can also be read as a small complex system: many local decisions about cooperation, retaliation, and forgiveness accumulate into market-level selection. This study uses that perspective to examine which relational rules survive when communication is imperfect. Eight canonical Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma strategies are translated into marketing archetypes and evaluated through round-robin tournaments, a six-level noise sweep, proportional-fitness ecological dynamics, and finite-population Moran invasion tests. The tournament leaderboard is calculated without same-strategy self-play, so that reported payoffs reflect inter-archetype competition rather than homogeneous self-coordination. At …

“Innocent” Electrolytes Can Influence Organic Electrosynthetic Selectivity, Zachary A. Nguyen, Nhu H. Quach, Mayank Tanwar, Joshua A. Beeler, Kevin Mcfadden, Dylan G. Boucher, Matthew Neurock, Shelley D. Minteer

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Organic electrosynthesis has emerged as a powerful strategy for leveraging electricity in organic synthesis. Despite its growing popularity, the fundamental molecular interactions governing electrochemical systems remain poorly understood. Many electrosynthetic reactions show strong dependence on the identity of the allegedly inert supporting electrolyte, which can significantly impact yields and selectivity, yet the physical origins of these effects are largely unexplored. A mechanistic understanding of electrolyte effects would enable more rational reaction design for applications. Here, we use cyclic voltammetry to investigate cobalt-based metal–carbon bond homolysis and elucidate how common supporting electrolytes influence reaction rates. Bulk electrolysis experiments further reveal how …

Deciphering The Potential Of Monopterus Albus Protein Hydrolysate As A Therapeutic Candidate Against Cervical Cancer By Integrating Content Analysis, Network Pharmacology, And Molecular Docking, Okid Parama Astirin, Widya Mega Rahmawati, Elisa Herawati, Tetri Widiyani, Lili Pandan Sari, Sherly Octaviana

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

Cervical cancer has a high incidence rate in women, making the development of cancer drugs increasingly urgent. Asian swamp eel protein hydrolysate shows great promise as an anticancer candidate. This study aimed to reveal the potential of Asian swamp eel protein hydrolysate as an anticancer candidate in the cervix. Asian swamp eel protein hydrolysate was produced by hydrolyzing flesh with the enzyme alcalase. Compounds and peptides were identified using LC-HRMS. These compounds and peptides were analyzed using network pharmacology, gene ontology, and molecular docking. The results identified 153 endogenous compounds, including fatty acids and peptides. The key proteins targeted by …

Compressed Cinema As A Study In Llm Latent Spaces, Mallen Clifton

ELO (un)supervised 2026

In his article “Spec Acts” (2021), Matthew Kirschenbaum analyzes the AI-generated novel 1 the Road to develop his titular concept of the spec act, “the future in its multitudes collapsing into an actionable present.” With the proliferation of texts produced by generative AI and subsequent critical analyses of them, one element in particular calls for further theorization: “the future in its multitudes,” or more directly, the latent space. This echoes arguments by critics such as Antonio Somaini, who offered his own “Theory of Latent Spaces” last year. However, where Somaini’s attention is towards visual culture, I turn mine to the …

Developing An Understanding Of Concavity Built On Covariation, Jade E. Gregg

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated how six students developed a quantitative understanding of concavity founded in covariational reasoning through a series of task-based teaching interviews. A key finding was the importance of multivariational reasoning--the coordination of more than two variables--in helping students reason deeply about concavity in context. Common difficulties, including confusion about negative rates and overreliance on visual representations, served as productive opportunities for learning when addressed through carefully designed tasks and discussions. The findings extend existing frameworks of covariational reasoning and highlight instructional approaches that can support students in developing a robust, quantity-based understanding of concavity.

A Late Holocene (Late Bronze Age) Record Of The Syrian Elephant (Elephas Maximus Asurus) From Gavur Lake Swamp (Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye), Serdar Mayda, Yarenkür Alkan

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

The Syrian elephant (Elephas maximus asurus Deraniyagala, 1951) constitutes the extinct westernmost population of the Asian elephant and occupied parts of the Near East until the early first millennium BCE. Although historical, iconographic, and dental evidence for this population has been discussed extensively, its postcranial anatomy remains poorly documented. We present a revised osteological and morphometric study of cranial and postcranial remains recovered from the Late Bronze Age Gavur Lake Swamp assemblage (ca. 1650–1400 cal BCE) in Kahramanmaraş, southeastern Türkiye, during rescue excavations conducted in 2021 and 2022. The material derives from a natural swamp deposit rather than from an …

Resource Assessment Report 9: South Coast Crustacean Resource 2045-25 Assessment, Emma-Jade Tuffley, Simon De Lestang

Resource Assessment Reports

The South Coast Crustacean Resource (SCCR) comprises southern rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii), western rock lobster (Panulirus cygnus), crystal crab (Chaceon albus), giant crab (Pseudocarcinus gigas), and champagne crab (Hypothalassia acerba). The resource is accessed primarily by the South Coast Crustacean Managed Fishery (SCCMF), which operates between Augusta in the west and the South Australian border in the east. Since the 2022–23 season, the SCCMF has been managed under an Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) system with Total Allowable Commercial Catches (TACs) set for four quota zones. Recreational fishing retains a small quantity of rock lobster only.

During the 2024–25 fishing season, …

Out Of This World: An Exoplanetary Workshop, Monica Storss, Bart Kuipers

ELO (un)supervised 2026

The workshop investigates how scientific constraints can productively defamiliarize human experience and create new frameworks for creativity and expression. Participants will produce original work while considering broader questions about environment, perception, and cultural formation in speculative contexts, and how the arts, sciences, and technology inform each other in relational multiplicities. This generative workshop explores how astronomical data from confirmed exoplanets can generate new poetic forms and linguistic constraints. Participants will examine how exoplanetary conditions can shape language, metaphor, and narrative structure. We'll develop from writing exercises that respond to non-terrestrial physical parameters: alternative light spectra, gravitational variations, and atmospheric compositions. …

Assessing Flaws In Captcha Security Through Progress In Ai, Jaydon Stanislowski

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Protecting the internet from the threat of malicious bot activity is an important problem as AI tools become more powerful and commonplace over time. To that end, security measures are employed across websites in the form of CAPTCHAs, short challenges designed to identify and block fake web traffic. Yet, they become less effective over time as AI becomes more powerful, and thus more capable of solving them. This paper examines recent research on the threat to CAPTCHA security posed by current AI models and how this security can be reinforced over time, focusing primarily on Google’s reCAPTCHA v3.

Quantitative Methods In Education: A Practical Introduction To Statistics, Yukiko Maeda, John Gipson, Sheila Hurt, Katie H. Dufault

Purdue University Press Books

Educational research often involves understanding complex patterns in student achievement, teacher effectiveness, and institutional performance. Quantitative Methods in Education: A Practical Introduction to Statistics is designed to equip current and future educators and researchers with a basic comprehension of the statistical tools necessary to effectively analyze and interpret educational data. In today’s data-driven world, the ability to leverage statistical techniques is essential for making informed decisions that can enhance learning outcomes and maximize learner potential. This book provides a systematic approach to exploring these trends using both descriptive and inferential statistics, providing readers with the knowledge to conduct rigorous analyses …

Comparative Analysis Of Traditional And Deep Learning Time Series Architectures For Influenza A Infectious Disease Forecasting, Edmund Fosu Agyemang, Hansapani Rodrigo, Vincent Agbenyeavu

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Influenza A remains a major cause of respiratory mortality worldwide, motivating accurate forecasting to support timely preparedness and resource allocation. This study presents a comparative evaluation of two traditional seasonal time series baselines, ARIMA and Holt–Winters exponential smoothing (ETS), and six deep learning (DL) architectures (Simple RNN, LSTM, GRU, BiLSTM, BiGRU, and a Transformer) for forecasting monthly Influenza A case counts in the United States. Data from January 2009 to December 2023 were analyzed, using January 2009 to December 2022 for training and January 2023 to December 2023 for out-of-sample testing. Models were tuned using a validation split and assessed …

Solvent-Free Ball-Milling Synthesis Of 1,2-Disubstituted Benzimidazoles, Zachary A. Jaffery, Katherine E. Christopher, Kyle A. Grice

DePaul Discoveries

The search for sustainability in chemistry has led to the development of the field of Green Chemistry, comprised by 12 guiding principles. Existing syntheses of benzimidazoles, a heterocycle widely used in medicinal chemistry, utilize methods with much room for improved sustainability. This work presents a solventless mechanochemical synthesis of 1,2-disubsituted substituted benzimidazoles from the condensation of phenylenediamines and aryl aldehydes. The effect of milling aid on yield and selectivity was investigated and montmorillonite K10 was determined to be the best milling aid. The purification protocol was optimized as well, with a heptane:EtOAc extraction and subsequent recrystallization from EtOH found to …

Fish Tissue Digestion And Microplastic Polymer Identification Protocol Using Open-Source Ftir Database, Shawn L. Kissinger, Vick-Ariel Privert, Jason Bystriansky, Kyle A. Grice

DePaul Discoveries

Microplastic (MP) contamination in aquatic ecosystems poses significant concerns for environmental and public health, as seafood represents a critical food source worldwide. Despite increasing evidence of MP presence in marine organisms, efficient and accessible detection methods remain essential for characterizing contamination patterns and informing regulatory frameworks. This study extracted MPs from brain, gill, intestine, liver, and muscle tissues of gilt-head bream (Sparus aurata) and European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), two commercially important species from the Gulf of Cádiz, Spain, using a NaOH–HNO₃ chemical digestion protocol. Isolated particles were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, with …

Crystal Structural Analysis Of Medieval Human Bones Using Wide-Angle X-Ray Scattering, Selly Altangerel, Leslie Gracia

DePaul Discoveries

Female human second metacarpal (mc2) bones from a medieval cemetery at Wharram Percy, England, were studied using high-energy Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) at beamline 1-ID of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The age-at-death of 33 samples was determined from molar wear and classified into 3 groups:  18-30, 30-50, and 50+ years old.  Rietveld refinements of the WAXS data were performed to obtain lattice parameters of the hexagonal carbonated apatite phase (cAp). Individual fittings for cAp peaks 00.2, 00.4, and 31.0 were performed to obtain their widths and correlate them to collagen retention. For the three samples described …

Evolutionary Neural Architecture Search: A Survey, Ferda Nur Özçeli̇k, Mehmet Önder Efe

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have achieved remarkable success across diverse machine learning applications, yet designing effective architectures remains a laborious, expert-driven process. Neural Architecture Search (NAS) was introduced to automate this process, with Evolutionary NAS (ENAS) emerging as one of the most effective and widely adopted NAS paradigms. This survey provides a comprehensive and systematic review of 164 ENAS studies published between 2020 and 2024, categorized according to the specific evolutionary algorithm employed as the search strategy. Unlike prior surveys—which either treat evolutionary methods at a high level or focus on general NAS pipelines—this study is, to the best of …

Cnkg: Harnessing Large Language Models For Cognitive Neuroscience Knowledge Graph Construction, Ali Sarabadani, Kheirollah Rahsepar Fard, Hamid Dalvand

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Textual resources are among the most valuable sources of information in cognitive neuroscience (CN) for understanding and investigating brain activity and cognitive processes. Extracting and constructing knowledge graphs (KGs) from these texts can facilitate medical research by providing deeper insights into neurological diseases and brain function. In recent years, the use of large language models (LLMs) in natural language processing (NLP) has become increasingly widespread, significantly enhancing the extraction of meaningful information from large volumes of text. This study proposes a novel approach for constructing and evaluating a specialized knowledge graph, termed the cognitive neuroscience knowledge graph (CNKG), from scientific …

Ecological Footprint Assessment, Santina Benincasa

Open Educational Resources

This handout guides students through a structured ecological footprint assessment using the online Footprint Calculator. By following a series of steps—selecting their location, entering detailed lifestyle information, and reviewing personalized results—students evaluate how many planets would be required if everyone lived with their same resource consumption patterns. The activity prompts learners to identify the largest contributors to their footprint, quantify their impact in global hectares, and explore scenario-based changes that could reduce their environmental demand. Through reflection, students consider how everyday human behaviors influence Earth’s productive capacity and resource availability. Overall, the exercise encourages critical thinking about sustainability and personal …

Decoding The Allosteric Grammar Of Protein Kinases: A Dual-Stream Framework Integrating Protein Language Models And Energy Landscape Frustration Analysis, Will Gatlin, Max Ludwick, Lucas Turano, Brandon Foley, Kamila Riedlova, Vít Škrhák, Marian Novotný, David Hoksza, Gennady M. Verkhivker

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The spatial and energetic encoding of allosteric regulatory sites remains a major challenge in structural biology, frequently representing a “blind spot” for sequence-based artificial intelligence (AI) models. We present a protein language model (PLM)-guided approach complemented by the energy landscape frustration analysis as a dual-stream framework to investigate the relationship between AI prediction of binding sites and biophysical organization of regulatory pockets across the human kinome. By probing a fine-tuned residue-level PLM classifier across 453 kinase structures, a clear performance gap is discovered between highly predictable orthosteric pockets (Types I, I.5, and II) and poorly resolved distal allosteric sites (Type …

Experience Gained In Introducing Efficient Fodder Production In Iraq, Manfred Siebert

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Cultivation of fodder plants is one of the most important measures for increasing the agri­cultural production of Iraq. Lucerne, Egyptian clover, maize, sorghum, and barley prosper excellently on the irrigation lands. They pro­duce high fodder yields if the plants are grown on suitable soil, if there is enough irrigation water available, and if the cultivation measures are realized in best quality. Fodder production guarantees sufficient and safe supply of the increasing stocks of cattle and sheep with green fodder, hay, and silage throughout the year, and contributes to improving the fertility of the soils of Iraq which are extremely poor …

Trials On The Improvement Of Deteriorated Natural Pastures In The Sahel Of Upper Volta, Bernard Toutain

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Overstocking and the recent drought have led to a severe deterioration of some Sahelian rangelands of Upper Volta, leading to a more or less acute disappearance of grazable vege­tation. Partial protection improves pastures located on the more fertile soils. On the poorer soils, light techniques such as harrowing and superficial tillage of the soil were tried with success, but yield improvement remained slight.

Problems And Possibilities Of Continuous Forage Production In Arid Subtropical Regions, Horst Patzold

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The low animal performance and stocking rate in arid subtropical regions mainly depend on the discontinuity of forage production. In winter-raining steppes of North Africa, the cultivation or sod-seeding of adapted grasses, especially for forage production in the dry season. (summer), is recommended. For the dry savannas of West Africa with summer­raining, proposals are made for three different stages depending on the intensity of land use. They include a better use of grazing areas by transhumance, proposals for a ranching system, especially for meat production, and possibil­ities for milk production by stabling of cattle, including forage production under irrigation.

Ecqnomics Of Nitrogen Fertilization Of Native And Introduced Grasslands In The Intermountain Area Of The United States, John P. Workman

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

While numerous studies have shown that live­stock forage can be significantly increased by grassland fertilization, there is little mention in the literature of the economic considera­tions of this management practice. A Utah State University study was conducted to help alleviate this research deficiency. Forage pro­duction response of several Utah grassland sites to nitrogen fertilization was subjected to marginal economic analysis. When fertilized forage was harvested as hay, nitrogen appli­cation proved to be a profitable practice on semi-wet meadow and mountain loam sites. When valued as forage to be grazed directly by livestock, production increases due to fer­tilization were unprofitable. Significant …

Weed Control-Revegetation Systems, Raymond A. Evans, James A. Young

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Chemical weed control systems integrating 2,4-D [(2,4-dichlorophenoxy) acetic acid] or picloram ( 4-amino-3,5,6-trichloropicolinic acid) spraying for brush control and atrazine[2-chloro-4-( ethylamino-6-isopropylamino )-s-tria­zine] for Bromus tectorum L. control were investigated in a series of rangeland commu­nities. Applications of both weed control tech­nique greatly enhanced seedling growth and increased yield of perennial grasses seeded the year after the fallow. Available soil moisture during the growing period of the fallow and seedling years because of decreased weed com­petition was the major factor for the better stands of perennial grass from herbicidal weed control systems.

Some Effects Of Treading By Sheep On Pastures Of The Mediterranean Climatic Zone Of South Australia, Edwards D. Carter, Thambiappah Sivalingam

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

In a treading experiment on a red brown earth soil at the Waite Agricultural Research Insti­tute in South Australia, various combinations of treading intensity (0, 12.5, 25 and 50 sheep equivalents per hectare) and treading frequency (0, 7, 14 and 28 days) reduced the establish­ment and productivity of subterranean clover, annual ryegrass and a mixture of these two species. With increasing intensity of treading, soil bulk density increased under the clover swards but not under the grass and mixture swards where apparently the ryegrass provided a cush­ioning effect between hoof and soil. Soil moisture percentage decreased with increasing intensity of …

Farmer Usage Of Annual Medics In A Ley Farming Area In South Australia, Murray V. Smith

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

A survey of farmers in a ley farming ( cereal­livestock) area of South Australia with natu­ralized annual medics (Medicago spp.) showed a great potential for improved usage of annual medics in their farming systems. Most effective medic users expected dominant medic pastures 6 or more years in 10, whereas less effective medic utilizers expected dominant medic pas­tures 5 or less years in 10. Nearly 50% of farm­ers had not sown any medic seed over the last 10 years. While most of these had less effective medic use there were several examples of more effective use with no or minimal medic …