Digital Commons Network^™

Joy To The Rehabilitation World: A Call To Incorporate Enjoyment Into Clinical Practice, Cristina Colón-Semenza, Raymond Jones, Winston Kennedy

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Although multiple academic disciplines recognize the motivational power of joy, rehabilitation professionals have, historically, underemphasized this construct in clinical practice. In addition, many clinicians report persistent challenges in motivating patients to adhere to prescribed exercise regimens. In response, there is growing advocacy for integrating affective-based interventions into practice. This overview aims to 1) raise awareness among rehabilitation professionals about the role of joy in physical rehabilitation, 2) illustrate how joy influences physical activity engagement and recovery outcomes, 3) outline evidence-based strategies for enhancing joy in clinical settings, and 4) introduce validated measures of joy suitable for use in practice. By …

Scaling Learning Health Systems: Highlights From The 2026 Health Care Systems Research Network Annual Conference, Deborah Hamlin

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

The Health Care Systems Research Network convened for its 2026 Annual Conference on April 21– 23 in Dallas, Texas, at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel. The conference centered on the theme, “Scaling Learning Health Systems: Data-Driven Pathways to Better Outcomes,” featuring 99 peer-reviewed abstract and panel presentations, along with 21 poster presentations, and emphasized the growing role of collaborative, data-enabled research in transforming care delivery and improving patient outcomes.

Abstracts From The 2026 Health Care Systems Research Network (Hcsrn) Annual Conference, Dallas, Texas, Health Care Systems Research Network

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

The Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN) comprises 18 learning health systems with integrated care delivery and embedded research units. The network’s annual conference serves as a forum for research teams from member institutions to disseminate project findings, explore scientific collaborations, and share insights about population-based research practices that can measurably improve health and health care for all. The theme of this year’s conference was “Scaling Learning Health Systems: Data-Driven Pathways to Better Outcomes.” Abstracts presented at HCSRN 2026 are published in this issue supplement of the Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews, the journal of record for HCSRN’s annual …

Fostering And Maintaining Relational Trust Between Massachusetts Public School Superintendents And Their School Committees, John J. Robidoux

Educational Studies Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The effectiveness of public school governance in Massachusetts relies on the collaborative partnership between superintendents and elected school committees. However, school committee members often lack professional backgrounds in education, leading to role confusion, political friction, communication breakdowns, and a reduced ability to develop and maintain effective relationships with the superintendent. While the structural roles of these entities are well-defined by policy, there is limited research on the internal, lived experiences of district leaders navigating the multifaceted dynamics of relational trust as they relate to effective school district operations. This study addresses the gap in understanding how relational trust is …

Creating Collaborative Strategies: The Influence Of Principal Leadership In Teacher Retention In Rural Secondary Schools In Dhalai District, Tripura, Northeast India., Valerian Castelino

Educational Studies Dissertations

Teacher retention has become a growing concern across India and the world. In rural, tribal, and multilingual contexts, the challenge is even greater. This research, Creating Collaborative Strategies: The Influence of Principal Leadership in Teacher Retention in Rural Secondary Schools in Dhalai District, Tripura, Northeast India, explores how school leadership influences teachers’ decisions to remain in rural schools. The research focuses on Tripura, a small state in Northeast India known for its tribal diversity, geographic isolation, multilingual classrooms, and limited educational resources. The research is informed by a multi-theoretical framework: Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, Non-Economic Capital Theory, and Transformational Leadership …

Smart City Pula, Bj Fletcher, Saša Drezgić, Molly Schnoke

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

From The Archives: Rediscovering The John Preston Papers, Isabella Sumner

TMC Library Newsletter (2015-)

The John Preston, MD Papers, the newest collection at the McGovern Historical Center, contain letters and institutional records documenting life at the Austin State Lunatic Asylum—now Austin State Hospital—during Dr. Preston's 36 years as superintendent. Materials include correspondence from patient's families, physicians, judges, sheriffs, and attorneys, along with budgets, patient records, and even menus for staff and patients. Together, they offer a window into mental health care in Texas during the early 20th century.

Read the full story and explore highlights from the collection on the McGovern Historical Center blog. 

Book Review: Arming East Asia: Deterring China In The Early Cold War, Richard H. Immerman

Parameters Bookshelf – Online Book Reviews

Author: Eric Setzekorn

Reviewed by Richard H. Immerman, emeritus professor of history, Temple University

Covering American policy toward Asia in the Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower administrations, Arming East Asia: Deterring China in the Early Cold War looks to “enhance the historical sensibilities of contemporary policymakers, thereby enabling them to make informed—and by implication, better—decisions as the United States again confronts an aggressive China in the twenty-first century,” according to the reviewer. It focuses on the years 1952–60, though offers no “surprises for informed readers.”

Copyright: ©2026 Richard H. Immerman

Book Review: Warfare In Peacetime: Proxies And State Powers, Scott Heal

Parameters Bookshelf – Online Book Reviews

Author: Christopher C. Harmon

Reviewed by Scott Heal (US Army)

Warfare in Peacetime: Proxies and State Powers defines proxy, lists the advantages and disadvantages of using proxies, and offers seven case studies, including the USSR and East Germany, the United States and the Nicaraguan Contras, and Iran and Hezbollah. The reviewer notes, “those studying limited warfare or the challenges in understanding and addressing gray-zone activities will find Harmon’s framework and analysis practical and informative.”

Book Review: Nexus: A Brief History Of Information Networks From The Stone Age To Ai, David R. Leard

Parameters Bookshelf – Online Book Reviews

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Reviewed by Colonel Daniel R. Leard, US Army War College Fellow at Princeton University

Built on the ideas that stories are important and bind civilizations, which results in human societies working as information networks, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, by Yuval Noah Harari, is the third book exploring the evolution of humanity. Harari unpacks the idea that the networks people create have flaws and people tend to exploit these flaws to misuse power. Though the topic is heavy, the reviewer notes, Harari “presents deeply complex issues in …

Book Review: Death, Dominance, And State-Building: The Us In Iraq And The Future Of American Military Intervention, Connor Halliday

Parameters Bookshelf – Online Book Reviews

Author: Roger D. Petersen

Reviewed by Major Connor Halliday (US Army), instructor of international affairs at the United States Military Academy

Death, Dominance, and State-Building: The US in Iraq and the Future of American Military Intervention, by Roger D. Petersen, analyzes America’s strategy in Iraq over the last 20 years and offers lessons learned for future US military interactions and state-building ventures. Reviewer Connor Halliday notes, “Military practitioners, strategists, and scholars of civil wars and state-building will all find Petersen’s work insightful and thought-provoking. The book’s value lies not just in its analysis of Iraq, but in its broader lessons …

Understanding Continuity Of Care Through The Voices Of. Providers And Families In Massachusetts, Ami Patel

Educational Studies Dissertations

Continuity of care is an important component of early childhood education that emphasizes stable, consistent, and responsive relationships among children, caregivers, and families. Although research has demonstrated the importance of stable caregiver-child relationships, much of the existing literature has focused on center-based childcare settings. This qualitative study explored how providers and families perceived long-term caregiving relationships, communication practices, and family-provider partnerships as shaping continuity of care. The purpose of this study was to examine licensed family childcare providers’ and families’ perspectives regarding the perceived developmental benefits, relational experiences, and challenges associated with continuity of care. Guided by attachment theory, sociocultural …

The Perceptions Of K-5 Teachers Regarding Their Preparedness To Implement Trauma-Informed Practices, Matthew P. Londo

Educational Studies Dissertations

Childhood trauma significantly impairs students' cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning, yet teachers frequently lack the preparation necessary to address its effects in classroom settings. This mixed-methods study examined the perceptions of K-5 teachers regarding their preparedness to implement trauma-informed practices (TIPs) at a public elementary school in a mid-sized urban district in central Massachusetts. A convergent mixed-methods design was employed to gather data from 20 selected K-5 educators via a structured Likert-scale questionnaire and semi-structured Zoom interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were analyzed through inductive thematic analysis. Findings revealed that participants employed four primary …

Leakage-Safe Boosting Ensembles With Shap Explainability For Alzheimer's Disease Risk Prediction: A Rigorous Multi-Classifier Benchmark On Global Structured Clinical Data, Hadeer Mahmoud, Fady Salama

Sustainable Machine Intelligence Journal

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a major public health challenge, and scalable non-invasive risk-stratification tools are needed. We benchmarked 11 machine-learning classifiers on a publicly available global structured Alzheimer's prediction dataset (N = 74,283; 24 predictors) using leakage-safe sklearn/imblearn pipelines. Four resampling strategies were assessed with stratified cross-validation; preprocessing included imputation, IQR-based outlier capping, feature engineering, one-hot encoding, and standardization. The leading models underwent HalvingRandomSearchCV optimization, followed by soft-voting and stacking ensembles. Performance was evaluated on a held-out 20% test set and interpreted with SHAP, permutation importance, and built-in feature importance. No resampling was selected in Stage A (composite score = …

Explainable Deep Learning For Forensic Wound Analysis: A Survey Of Injury Classification, Gunshot Wound Interpretation, And Toward Court-Admissible Ai, Zakaria Ahmed, Zeshan Aslam Khan

Sustainable Machine Intelligence Journal

Wound analyses conducted in forensics continue to be based on visual interpretation of pathologists and therefore exhibit variations among observers, especially when dealing with unusual injuries. Recent research using deep learning algorithms has proven that automated identification of wounds and interpreting gunshot wounds has achieved success with high levels of accuracy, ranging between 88% on large human datasets in distinguishing exit/entrance wounds and 94% to 98% in shooting distance and shotgun patterns. Nonetheless, most of these models still operate as black boxes. In this systematic review of deep learning methods in forensic wound assessment, there is emphasis placed on three …

Swarm-Calibrated Ordinal Forests For Risk-Aware Forecasting In Non-Stationary Intraday Financial Time Series, Ahmed S. Salama, Ahmad M. Nagm

Sustainable Machine Intelligence Journal

Intraday non-stationary financial time series are difficult to model because of regime switching, volatility clustering, nonlinear price responses, and rapidly changing liquidity. Although machine-learning models can detect nonlinear dependencies, their direct use for intraday trading decisions can be unstable because of transaction costs, drawdown, and exposure risk. This study develops Swarm-Calibrated Ordinal Forests (SC-OF), a hybrid soft-computing architecture for risk-aware forecasting and execution control in non-stationary intraday markets. Continuous OHLCV streams are transformed into a technical-ordinal feature space in which ordinal symbolic patterns preserve local temporal ordering while reducing sensitivity to amplitude distortions. A validation-weighted ordinal forest combines random-forest and …

Anti-Fuzzy Hypergraphs And Superhypergraphs: Max-Oriented Uncertainty Models For Higher-Order And Hierarchical Networks, Takaaki Fujita, Ajoy Kanti Das, Suman Das, Sankar Prasad Mondal

Sustainable Machine Intelligence Journal

Hypergraphs extend classical graphs by allowing hyperedges to connect more than two vertices, while superhypergraphs further generalize this framework through iterated powerset constructions that capture hierarchical and nested incidence structures. Within fuzzy graph theory, anti-fuzzy graphs provide max-oriented uncertainty models in which each edge grade is at least the maximum grade of its incident vertices. However, corresponding max-oriented frameworks for hypergraphs and superhypergraphs have not been systematically developed. To address this gap, we introduce anti-fuzzy hypergraphs and anti-fuzzy superhypergraphs, formulate their mathematical definitions, and establish basic well-definedness and canonical representation results. These models provide a unified foundation for max-based …

Usa V. Davone Walker

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Usa V. Davone Walker

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Usa V. Charles Brooks

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Usa V. James Goode

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Dr. Allan J. Mcnicol Papers, 1960s-2025, Allan J. Mcnicol

Center for Restoration Studies Archives, Manuscripts and Personal Papers Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

"A Brief History Of Florence, Alabama", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

A brief history of Florence, Alabama from its origins with the Cypress Land Company on March 12, 1818. McDonald highlights the industrialization of East Florence and notable residents, including four Alabama governors, Dred Scott, members of the US House of Representatives, and W.C. Handy the Father of the Blues.

"A Brief History Of The Florence Harbor", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

A brief overview of the Florence, Alabama Harbor's history delivered by William Lindsey McDonald at the dedication of the Florence Harbor on Thursday, May 6, 1999. The information is divided into sections, as follows:

• The Tennessee River
• Florence Was Established as a River Town
• The Florence Port
• Steamboat Days
• The End of an Era
• The Singing River Will Sing a New Song

Art Beyond Magnolias And Pillared Porticoes, William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article is a reflection on antebellum portrait painters, including those associated with the Forks of Cypress, such as Edward Troye, Thomas Sully, Sr., and William Frye. Notably, Troye created a portrait of Parson Dick, an enslaved blacksmith at the Forks of Cypress. The Parson Dick portrait is on display at Pope's Tavern Museum in Florence, AL and visible on their website. Additionally, portraits include those of the James Jackson and Sarah Moore Jackson, and the Jackson racehorses.

Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome Due To Post-Traumatic Osseous Tunnel Formation: A Rare Case And Surgical Management, Dev Y. Patel, Eshan Doshi, Fiona Zimmerman, Jamal Revolus, Michael Kimball, Michael Franco

Cooper Rowan Medical Journal

Tarsal tunnel syndrome (TTS) is classically a compressive neuropathy of the posterior tibial nerve beneath the flexor retinaculum, presenting with plantar foot pain and paresthesias. Standard surgical management of TTS involves release of the flexor retinaculum to decompress the nerve. We report a rare and unusual case of TTS in which the posterior tibial nerve was encased within a post-traumatic osseous tunnel accompanied by dense fibrotic tissue, representing an atypical and previously undescribed etiology of nerve entrapment. In this case, surgical decompression required a modified approach involving meticulous dissection of the tibial nerve from its encasement by heterotopic ossification and …

Evaluating Medical Student Geriatric Competency Using A 5ms-Based Assessment Tool, Lauren R. Hersh Md, Amy Cunningham Phd, Mph, Xiya Wu Md

Cooper Rowan Medical Journal

INTRODUCTION

Driven by an aging Baby Boomer generation, the United States is navigating a demographic transformation with far-reaching implications that include increased demand for chronic disease management and long-term care as well as increased stress on both healthcare costs and infrastructure. Generating a workforce competent in the delivery of care to older patients with complex, multimorbid conditions is fundamental to addressing this shift. Recognizing that the development of primary and specialty care physicians skilled in geriatric care begins in medical school, the American Geriatric Society developed minimum competencies grounded in the Geriatric 5Ms (Mind, Mobility, Medication, Multicomplexity, and …

On The Origins Of Western Religion And Thought: How Do We Get Home?, The Philosophical Discussion Group

The Philosopher's Stone

• On the Origins of Western Religion and Thought: How do we get Home?

Early Elementary Teachers' Experiences Implementing Concrete Representational Abstract Strategies In A Low-Performing District, Grace Sheree Bruce-Spence

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem addressed in this study was that early elementary students in an achievement zone continued to demonstrate low mathematics achievement, despite the district-wide implementation of the concrete representational abstract (CRA) instructional strategy, designed to promote conceptual understanding through scaffolded stages at a school district in the southeastern United States. In this district, an achievement zone refers to a cluster of schools serving historically underperforming students in high-poverty communities who receive targeted academic support. Grounded in Bruner’s constructivist learning theory, the purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore kindergarten through third-grade teachers’ experiences implementing the CRA strategy in …

Comparative Evaluation Of Practical Functional Assessment And Traditional Functional Behavior Assessment: Practitioner Perspectives On Efficiency, Resource Utilization, And Social Validity Across Practice Settings, Mathew Dinga Gwangwaa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) expands across diverse settings, there is an increasing need for assessment models that balance empirical rigor with practical feasibility. This quantitative, non-experimental study was an examination of the perceptions and experiences of board certified behavior analysts (BCBAs) and board certified behavior analysts doctorate (BCBA-Ds) regarding the comparative utility of traditional functional behavior assessment (FBA) and practical functional assessment (PFA). Data were collected from Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) and BCBA-Ds using a structured, cross-sectional online survey assessing three primary domains: efficiency, resource utilization, and social validity. Descriptive findings indicated that practitioners perceived …