Digital Commons Network^™

Reinsuring Ai: Energy, Agriculture, Finance & Medicine As Precedents For Governance Of Frontier Artificial Intelligence, Nicholas Stetler

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

Federal reinsurance for advanced artificial intelligence offers a credible foundation for managing risk at scale. Traditional legal tools such as regulation, litigation, and voluntary guidelines, lack the institutional capacity to address deep uncertainty, widespread spillover effects, and low-probability but catastrophic harms. A public financial infrastructure distributes risk, incentivizes responsible development, and enables earlier detection of emerging threats. Precedent exists in nuclear energy, agriculture, healthcare, and finance, where federal reinsurance enabled markets to function despite underlying volatility. The same institutional logic applies to frontier AI.

Part I explains how general-purpose and frontier AI models work, and why they have become a …

The Crumbling Flsa Collective Action: How Bristol-Myers Squibb Shapes The Reach Of Federal Wage Claims, Elijah Phillips

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was meant to help level the playing field and help workers create a healthy working environment for themselves. However, today, due to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California, San Francisco County and lower federal courts’ eagerness to expand personal jurisdiction, the FLSA is crumbling. Workers now face great difficulty in combining their claims in collective actions through the FLSA. When workers from many states do combine their claims, the workers often face dismissal from the action because not all claims have sufficient connections with the chosen litigation forum. …

Echo’S Repertoire: Performing Science Fiction And Trans Care Models, Juniper Blue

Theses

Echo’s Repertoire is a mixture of a passion piece and a call for more work with performing science fiction. It focuses on interpersonal communication within trans studies and the experiences of transgender individuals and myself. Echo’s Repertoire is also an example of the Lyrical Model proposed by Awkward-Rich as a new model for trans affirming speech. The show is laid out non-linearly and follows along with Echo as he starts to build new relationships with the advice of his spaceship ai, Eep, who is a previous version of himself prior to transformation (transition).

Relationship Between Semi-Aquatic Mammal Occupancy And Particulate Carbon, Nitrogen, And Phosphorus Dynamics In Freshwater Ecosystems, Madison H. Stokoski

Theses

Semi-aquatic mammals such as beavers (Castor canadensis) and muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) can influence carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) dynamics in freshwater systems. While the effect of beavers, in particular, are typically attributed to their dam and lodge building behaviors, these animals do not always build these structures. It’s possible that other, non-damming behaviors (e.g. foraging and burrowing) may influence the availability of nutrients as well. To assess this possibility, we surveyed 54 lentic and lotic waterbodies across Southern Illinois and investigated the possibility that beaver and muskrat occupancy improved our ability to explain variation in nutrient availability across …

Survivorship In Virginia Opossums And The Management Implications For Burmese Pythons In Key Largo, Florida, Arya J. Sanjar

Theses

This study employed a telemetry-based framework, using radio-collared Virginia opossums (Didelphis virginiana), to quantify survival patterns and estimate detection probabilities of python predation events. Between April 2022 and January 2025, 135 adult opossums were monitored using VHF collars across protected habitats within Key Largo. Annual survival was estimated using a staggered-entry Kaplan-Meier model, producing an annual survival rate of 0.17 (SE = 0.089) for females, and male survival was estimated at 0.04 (SE = 0.032) at 10 months since no male lived 10 months after collaring. Cause-specific monthly survival analyses indicated python predation peaked during the late summer months of …

The Role Of Sex And Genetic Background In Early Life Stress Effects On Locus Coeruleus Physiology And Related Cognitive And Affective Behaviors, Savannah Grace Brannan

Dissertations

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have been associated with many neurodevelopmental and affective disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), with more exposures increasing negative risks. Sex and genetic background are biological variables involved in adverse psychiatric outcomes due to ACE exposure(s). Few preclinical studies have properly powered each sex to determine the interaction between sex and genetics on stress-impacting behavior, especially in early life. Females generally have an increased prevalence of stress-related psychopathologies beginning after adolescence, indicative of the adolescent time period as a female-specific sensitive period. To understand the underlying neuronal components responsible for …

Once Upon A Time: A Kinesthetic Approach To Teaching Evidence, Peter C. Alexander, Cheryl T. Page, Hannah G. Chapman

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

This Article describes and evaluates a kinesthetic, simulation-based approach to teaching Evidence at Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School. Departing from the traditional Langdellian, case-method model, one section of Evidence requires students to memorize and apply the Federal Rules of Evidence through a series of five scaffolded mini-trials built around fractured fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Drawing on the MacCrate Report, Bloom’s taxonomy, and Vygotsky’s theory of scaffolding, we situate this pedagogy within the broader movement toward experiential legal education and argue that Evidence—because of its centrality to litigation practice—is an ideal doctrinal course in which to integrate trial advocacy …

Existence, Difference, And The Nigerian Woman: A Feminist Praxis Beyond Patriarchy, Hannah Yemisi Ajewole

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the postcolonial condition of Nigerian woman through a critical philosophical engagement with feminist theory, focusing particularly on Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialism and Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference. It interrogates the historical processes through which gender became the basis of hierarchy in the Nigerian society, arguing that colonial and patriarchal override precolonial forms of relationality—marked by dual-sex relationship and age-based hierarchies—into rigid, male-dominated structures of authority and representation. Drawing also on Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí’s critique of western gender epistemologies, the work contextualizes the Nigerian woman’s experience within a broader matrix of colonial imposition, cultural displacement, and epistemic violence. This …

Ukrainian Women In The Russo-Ukrainian War: Between Survival And Resistance, Jelena Nikolic Khatatbeh

Dissertations

This dissertation explores how the Russo-Ukrainian war has transformed the lives, identities, and resistance strategies of Ukrainian women. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with forty-five Ukrainian women conducted between March 2022 and February 2023, it analyzes how everyday survival, political thought, and civic activism have changed during the war. Using a modified grounded theory approach and a feminist lens, this study examines women’s psychosocial experiences, their evolving political consciousness, and their active roles in humanitarian, cultural, and cyber resistance.Findings reveal that the war simultaneously reinforced and disrupted traditional gender expectations. While Ukrainian women dealt with increased domestic and caregiving burdens …

Data For Fermentation Research Guide Analysis, Laura Guengerich

Morris Library Data Sets

No abstract provided.

Using Constructivist Grounded Theory Study To Understand The Retention Rate Of The School Of Automotive, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois, Lana Rizzo

Ed.D. Capstone Reports

This study explored students’ reasons for returning and continuing their education in the School of Automotive. Therefore, this study developed an understanding of the higher-than-average retention rate for the School of Automotive at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Illinois. This study used a constructivist grounded theory approach, and the data came from semi-structured interviews. As this is a constructivist grounded theory study, the students and I co-created the theory behind this phenomenon.

Effectiveness Of Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 Receptor Agonists In The Treatment Of Heart Failure, Lisa Kristen Schloemann

SIU Journal of Medical Science Scholarly Works

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to review the use of glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA) in heart failure (HF) treatment considering the HF phenotype and comorbidities, including type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and obesity.

Method: A PubMed and Google Scholar literature search was conducted with search terms, HF and GLP-1 RA. Seven pertinent articles were retrieved and served as the basis for this clinical review.

Results: The efficacy of GLP-1 RA therapy in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fractions (HFrEF) is unclear, with one study showing increased adverse cardiac events including tachyarrhythmias, and …

Difficulty In American Dramatic Literature, David Turkel

Dissertations

Speaking broadly, this dissertation explores the marginalization of American drama within the field of literary studies. In attempting to account for this marginalization, theater scholars have tended to invoke the genre’s supposed lack of “difficulty,” meaning its failure to pose meaningful interpretive challenges to its readers. However, this dissertation takes an alternative view of the matter, contending that if American drama has indeed been marginalized, it is not because literary studies departments have regarded it as intrinsically “simpler” than other literary genres; in fact, it is theater scholars who have been more likely to read the genre as simple, or …

Spatial Distributions And Occupancy Dynamics Of Carnivores In A Central Hardwood Forest, Maximillian Larreur

Dissertations

Extirpation of apex predators, caused primarily by anthropogenic alterations to natural environments and persecution, has led to mesocarnivore release in these areas. Mesocarnivore release is an ecological phenomenon in which mesocarnivores thrive in the absence of apex predator dominance within the carnivore hierarchy. Mesopredators fill this dominant role on the landscape as de facto apex predators, however, this can lead to changes in inter-guild species space use, predator-prey dynamics, activity patterns, and interspecific competition. Understanding patterns in wildlife spatial distributions, which indicate variability in habitat space use across spatiotemporal scales, is critical for developing effective management and conservation plans and …

A Study On Covid-19 Outbreak In Cook County Of Illinois, Suraj Powar

Research Papers

This study presents a mathematical model developed to better understand the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 and evaluate the effectiveness of different public health strategies. The model, called SEQIRD, includes of the disease such as exposure, quarantine, infection, recovery, and death. Using real case and death data from Cook County, Illinois, the model closely fits observed trends and captures both pre and post-lockdown dynamics with high accuracy.

Our results show that early intervention significantly reduces total infections, with lockdown imposed even a few days earlier preventing thousands of cases. Through sensitivity analysis, we also identify that parameters such as transmission rate, …

Dewey And Nkrumah On Education: A Comparative Study Of Their Philosophies And Impact On Ghana’S Development, Peter Kojo Kontoh

Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award

This study explores Ghana’s developmental challenges through the lens of its educational philosophy. Despite decades of effort, the country’s economic growth remains slow, partly due to an education system misaligned with national goals. Scholars debate whether an indigenous or global philosophy of education is best suited to drive progress. This work argues for a blended approach, drawing on John Dewey’s progressive ideas and Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of education for liberation. Through historical-comparative analysis, it proposes a hybrid framework that integrates global relevance with local realities to foster a more effective, development-oriented education system in Ghana.

Dewey And Merleau-Ponty: Science, Experience, And Nature, Michael Timm

Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award

This paper defends comparisons between pragmatist and phenomenological philosophies of science by comparing Dewey and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophies of science or scientific method. Merleau-Ponty might be said to “answer the phenomenological tradition’s criticism of naturalism” from within the Husserlian phenomenological tradition itself, revindicating the consensus between pragmatism and phenomenology set forth by Rosenthal and Bourgeois. In the absence of an argument that “methodological inconsistency” amounts to methodological illegitimacy, phenomenology ought not reject pragmatist philosophies of science because the Husserlian phenomenological tradition espouses a relative naturalism not unlike pragmatist naturalism. More importantly, this consensus with pragmatism sustains phenomenology’s own critique of scientism.

The Epistemological Dimension Of Dewey’S Emergentist Metaphysics: Sense And Signification, Andrii Leonov

Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award

I argue that Dewey had a kind of naturalistic or pragmatic epistemology already in his Experience and Nature which constitutes the Pragmatic Epistemology View. Dewey’s naturalistic epistemology is exemplified by his theory of “sense” and “signification” and as such is the first order consequence of Dewey’s second order qualitative naturalism. Instead of the classical epistemological question, “How is knowledge possible anyway, überhaupt?”, Dewey’s pragmatically reconstructed version of it would be “How do we make sense of the world that is around us?” Instead of the classical “theory of knowledge,” Dewey’s pragmatic epistemology can be seen as a theory …

The (Dis)Continuity Of Meaning In John Dewey’S Experience And Nature, Harrison S. Jackson

Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award

Experience and Nature proposes a naturalistic empiricism emphasizing continuity. This paper will argue that this continuity is threatened by Dewey’s anthropocentric in its account of meaning, which is only found in humans but is necessary for the perception of objects, communication, and social existence. Given contemporary research in ethology, Dewey’s denotative method requires a modification of this account. I will propose Merleau-Ponty’s notion of sense or the neuroscientific theory of enactivism as supplements preserving embodiment and social communication while being more continuous. Finally, I examine some recent applications of Dewey’s naturalism and show how they modify this account of meaning.

The Supernatural Shadow Of The Philosophic Fallacy: A Critical Examination Of John Dew-Ey’S Experience And Nature, Danica Jenck

Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award

In Experience and Nature, John Dewey asserts the existence of the philosophic fallacy. He describes the philosophic fallacy as understanding reality through abstractions rather than material causes that are situated in experience. However, Dewey’s writings on moral and religious development, particularly his criticisms of the supernatural, puts his philosophic fallacy into question. I argue that Dewey’s rejection of the supernatural is a mistake that limits his ability to clearly articulate his metaphysical project, demonstrating that Dewey’s rejection of supernatural experience commits the philosophic fallacy and is based in a Eurocentric tendency that can be escaped by challenging Eurocentric metaphysical …

The Application Of Behavior Analytic Strategies For Latino Catholic Mass To Increase Accessibility For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Andrea Canelo Serrano

Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Gender Knobs, Jordan Faye Bardgett

Theses

Gender Knobs is a performance art piece that tells the histories of both the technology surrounding pitch shifting devices like the vocoder as well as well as the personal history of the voice of the performer, Jordan, regarding their queer identity as non-binary trans woman. The performance is a combination of lecture, personal storytelling, and sound performance within a theatrical setting with musical accompaniment and projected visuals.

Jenifer Michaels. A History., Farrah Freibert

Publications

Jenifer Michaels was a legendary subcultural star within the gay liberation film milieu of 1970s Los Angeles. Taking three paths to approaching and interpreting Michaels’s filmic and archival image, this article is structured by an analysis of Michaels’s documentary appearances, her performance in sex films, and her statements published in a textual interview. Working against what I call historiographic gentrification, the article utilizes archival and micro-historical methods to think through Michaels’s subcultural stardom as a nexus for complicating biography, documentary, and the politics of veracity.

Lifespan Of Male And Female App/Ps1 And Appnl-F/Nl-F Mouse Models Of Alzheimer's Disease, Hannah Roberts, Yimin Fang, Kathleen Quinn, Tiarra Hill, Mackenzie R Peck, Andrzej Bartke, Kevin N Hascup, Erin R Hascup

Articles

Alzheimer's disease (AD) disproportionately affects women, yet most preclinical research studies are male-centric. We performed lifespan analyses of male and female AD mouse models (APP/PS1 and APP^NL-F/NL-F) and their shared genetic background control (C57BL/6). Survival curves support significant sex differences between genotypes. Minimal longevity revealed increased age in male APP/PS1, and decreased age in male APP^NL-F/NL-F mice. Maximal longevity revealed an increased average age in males. Furthermore, median lifespan differed between sex and genotype. This study supports dimorphic survival in two mouse models of AD, emphasizing the need to examine mechanisms and treatments in both sexes.

Effectiveness Of The Online Leave No Trace 101 Course, Joseph Tanner

Ed.D. Capstone Reports

This study examined the effectiveness of the Leave No Trace Online 101 course in increasing participants' knowledge and of Leave No Trace principles. Using a pre- and post-survey design, the study assessed changes in understanding through a combination of self-assessment and objective knowledge-based questions. The research aimed to determine whether the course successfully enhances environmental stewardship knowledge. Findings will inform future improvements to Leave No Trace educational programs and contribute to broader efforts in promoting responsible outdoor recreation.

Aligning Audience Needs With Scientists’ Information In The Complex Harmful Algal Bloom Outreach To Engagement Continuum, Erica Clites, Heather Triezenberg, Diane Doberneck

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education

Algae, an important foundation of aquatic ecosystems, can become a nuisance or harmful when it grows in excess. Many government agencies have a role in monitoring, responding to, and confirming a harmful algal bloom (HAB). HAB scientists have important information to share, however, given the complexities of HABs, which often involve decoupled drivers from observed impacts, presents challenges to outreach and engagement. Understanding key audience information needs can help scientists prioritize key science communication and engagement opportunities to maximize the impact of such efforts. Scientists may need additional science communication training or support for scientist-community partnerships. This will be evermore …

Probiotic Supplementation In Ruminants: A Sustainable Alternative For Enhancing Health, Milk Production, And Rumen Function, Jovahna Williams

Research Papers

This paper examines the effects of probiotic supplementation on ruminant animals, with emphasis on several key areas including ruminant animal health, milk production, rumen microbial profile, microbial protein synthesis and diversity, and patterns of rumen fermentation. As global interest in economically and biologically sustainable alternatives to antibiotics continues to grow, probiotics have emerged as promising candidates for improving livestock productivity while promoting animal and consumer welfare.

The primary objectives of this paper are to evaluate the specific effects and benefits of different probiotic strains in ruminants, to assess their potential as replacements for traditional growth-promoting substances such as fermentation enhancers …

U.S. Bison Industry: An Analysis Of Production, Health, And Market Dynamics, Morgan A. Young

Research Papers

The bison market has been becoming increasingly popular within recent years. However, this market is challenging for producers due to disease concerns, aggressive bison behaviors, nutritional and facility requirements and market risks for bison operations. Since most bison data began in 2020, forecasting bison meat prices remains difficult. This raises an important question: can bison meat cut prices be effectively hedged by using live cattle futures prices? This paper examines USDA bison meat cut price data and live cattle futures prices to determine potential correlations. A regression analysis, along with a dummy variable approach is utilized to evaluate the relationship. …

Scholarly Program Notes For "Songs Of Love & Loss", Seth A. Tanner

Research Papers

This document presents the extended program notes for the graduate voice recital of Mr. Seth A. Tanner which took place on March 1, 2025 in the Old Baptist Foundation recital hall at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. These extended program notes also contain the program of repertoire performed at the recital in addition to the texts of all pieces with translations for those non-English songs.

The repertoire list includes operatic arias from the Baroque and late Romantic periods, and art songs from the late Romantic period, early 20th century, and mid 20th century. The repertoire is representative of a …

Queer Form And Romantic Friendship In Ghost World, Elaina Gilley

Research Papers

No abstract provided.