Digital Commons Network^™

Predictors And Barriers To Vaccination Among Older Syrian Refugees In Lebanon: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of A Multi-Wave Longitudinal Study, Berthe Abi Zeid, Tanya El Khoury, Hala Ghattas Ph.D., Marwan F. Alawieh, Zeinab Ramadan, Sirine Anouti, Sawsan Abdulrahim, Stephen J. Mccall

Faculty Publications

Background:

Vaccination is important to prevent morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19 among older Syrian refugees. We aimed to elucidate the predictors of COVID-19 vaccine uptake among Syrian refugees aged 50 years or older in Lebanon and to understand their main reasons for not receiving the vaccine.

Methods:

This was a cross-sectional analysis of a five-wave longitudinal study, conducted through telephone interviews between Sept 22, 2020, and March 14, 2022, in Lebanon. For this analysis, data were extracted from wave 3 (Jan 21–April 23, 2021), which included a question on vaccine safety and on whether participants intended to receive the …

"My Well Is Empty": Adverse Childhood Experiences Among Pastors, David Sedlacek, René Drumm

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Access To Athletic Trainers And Emergency Medical Services Activations For Sport-Related Injuries, Rebecca M. Hirschhorn, Robert A. Huggins, Zachary Y. Kerr, James M. Mensch, Thomas P. Dompier, Caroline Rudisill, Susan W. Yeargin

Faculty Publications

Context: Having athletic trainers (ATs) employed at secondary schools is associated with improved preparedness for sport-related emergencies. The use of emergency medical services (EMS) in settings with different access to athletic training services remains unknown. Objective: To compare the incidence of EMS activations for patients with sport-related injuries among zip codes with various levels of access to athletic training services. Design: Descriptive epidemiology study. Setting: Data were obtained from the National EMS Information System and the Athletic Training Location and Services Project. Patients or Other Participants: Zip codes where 911 EMS activations for sport-related injuries among individuals 13 to 18 …

Cotton Blight Identification With Ground Framed Canopy Photo-Assisted Multispectral Uav Images, Changwei Wang, Yongchong Chen, Zhipei Xiao, Xianming Zeng, Shihao Tang, Fei Lin, Luxiang Zhang, Xuelian Meng, Shaoqun Liu

Faculty Publications

Cotton plays an essential role in global human life and economic development. However, diseases such as leaf blight pose a serious threat to cotton production. This study aims to advance the existing approach by identifying cotton blight infection and classifying its severity at a higher accuracy. We selected a cotton field in Shihezi, Xinjiang in China to acquire multispectral images with an unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV); then, fifty-three 50 cm by 50 cm ground framed plots were set with defined coordinates, and a photo of its cotton canopy was taken of each and converted to the L*a*b* color space as …

Editorial Introduction: Punctuated Equilibrium, Multiple Streams, Environmental Governance, And Many More, Geoboo Song, Michael D. Jones, Holly L. Peterson, Aaron Smith-Walter, Melissa K. Merry, Gwen Arnold, Creed Tumlison, Rachael M. Moyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Networks In Motion: The Alliances Of Information Communication Technologies And Mobility Technologies During The 1918 Influenza Pandemic, Miles C. Coleman, Will Mari

Faculty Publications

In this article, we turn back to the 1918 influenza pandemic to throw light on the alliances of information communication technologies and technologies of mobility (such as the car) during the pandemic. We examine newspaper articles, technical publications, and other historical texts to demonstrate that, despite the fact that mobile technologies—such as cellular phones—did not exist during the 1918 pandemic, the telephone and mobility technology nonetheless formed alliances as networks in motion, or social moments in which risk and reward are calculated not simply by the ability to move, but rather the ability to move, while remaining connected, revealing insight …

Gifts And Commodities: A Dialectical Thought Experiment For Sublation, Ruirui Zhang, Joseph D’Andrea, Chunmin Lang

Faculty Publications

The core motivation for this study is the realization that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) encounter temporary obstacles, conflicts, or inconsistencies that impede progress and generalization. According to the authors, sustainable development across social, environmental, and economic dimensions is unlikely to occur without redefining the meaning and recalibrating the metrics used to measure commodities. These meanings and metrics must align with values such as general reciprocity, morality, and the common good, going beyond mere calculations of means and ends and personal preferences. The research has three primary objectives: first, to compare and reassess the meanings and responsibilities assigned to “items” …

Religion, Discrimination, And The Future Of Public Education, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions regarding the free exercise of religion threaten fundamental changes to public education. On their face, these decisions are relatively narrow. They prohibit states from explicitly excluding religious schools from participating in states’ tuition subsidy programs, otherwise known as private school vouchers. But school choice advocates and some scholars argue that the rationale in these cases also extends to religious organizations that want to operate public charter schools.

While these changes would drain enormous resources from an already underfunded public education system, even more important interests are at stake: antidiscrimination and basic core curriculum. More specifically, …

The Racialized Violence Of Police Canine Force, Madalyn K. Wasilczuk

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Right To Social Expungement, Itay Ravid

Faculty Publications

In recent years, policy makers advancing criminal legal reform have engaged
in attempts to correct years of harsh and expansive use of criminal laws. Two
main parallel trends dominate these attempts. One is forward-looking—the
decriminalization of many activities currently punishable by the criminal legal
system. The second is backward-looking, and related—expungement and vacatur
reforms that aim to allow individuals to start fresh.

While these latter efforts are intended to erase the criminal stain from official
criminal records, the non-official domain gained less traction, leading to an
absurd reality in which news stories about individuals’ criminal histories remain
accessible in the …

Governance Seams, Brett Frischmann, Paul Ohm

Faculty Publications

This Essay formalizes the concept of governance seams and develops theories for what they enable; how they arise; why they are some- times dismantled; and how, why, and when regulators might step in to protect endangered governance seams or to create new ones. Governance seams are socially constructed boundaries, borders, and interfaces that harness friction-in-design to enable governance. Governance seams mediate interactions among components of sociotechnical systems and between different parties and contexts. Delineating boundaries, borders, and interfaces as loci of transparency, coordination, and oversight supports mechanisms for deliberation, contestation, and protection, both by those within and those outside the …

Nearly-Lossless-To-Lossy Medical Image Compression By The Optimized Jpegxt And Jpeg Algorithms Through The Anatomical Regions Of Interest, Zhongqiang Li, Alexandra Ramos, Zheng Li, Michelle L. Osborn, Waleed Zaid, Xin Li, Yanping Li, Jian Xu

Faculty Publications

Currently, plenty of image data is generated that complicate storage and image transmission. Great efforts have been attempted on how to increase compression ratio (CR) without loss of critical diagnostic information. In this study, we designed two optimized JPEGXT (JPEGXT_OPT) and JPEG (JPEG_OPT) approaches by amplifying discrete cosine transform coefficients and using the entire anatomical region as ROI (region of interest). We found that ROI percentages have a great impact CR: smaller ROI percentages (10–30 %) could obtain a larger CR. Under the near-lossless compression, JPEGXT_OPT could have CRs up to 4.0 under small ROI percentages (10–30 %), while only …

On The Application Of Probabilistic Decline Curve Analysis To Unconventional Reservoirs, U. C. Egbe, O. O. Awoleke, O. M. Olorode, S. D. Goddard

Faculty Publications

Several authors have worked on combining decline curve analysis (DCA) models and stochastic algorithms for probabilistic DCAs. However, there are no publications on the application of these probabilistic decline curve models to all the major shale basins in the United States. Also, several empirical and analytical decline curve models have been developed to fit historical production data better; there is no systematic investigation of the relevance of the efforts on new model development compared with the efforts to quantify the uncertainty associated with the “noise” in the historical data. This work compares the uncertainty associated with determining the best-fit model …

Predicting Adolescent Intervention Non-Responsiveness For Precision Hiv Prevention Using Machine Learning, Bo Wang, Feifan Liu, Lynette Deveaux, Arlene Ash, Ben Gerber, Jeroan Allison, Carly Herbert, Maxwell Poitier, Karen Macdonell, Xiaoming Li Ph.D., Bonita Stanton

Faculty Publications

Interventions to teach protective behaviors may be differentially effective within an adolescent population. Identifying the characteristics of youth who are less likely to respond to an intervention can guide program modifications to improve its effectiveness. Using comprehensive longitudinal data on adolescent risk behaviors, perceptions, sensation-seeking, peer and family influence, and neighborhood risk factors from 2564 grade 10–12 students in The Bahamas, this study employs machine learning approaches (support vector machines, logistic regression, decision tree, and random forest) to identify important predictors of non-responsiveness for precision prevention. We used 80% of the data to train the models and the rest for …

Micro-Targeting Consumers To Reduce Consumptive Externalities, Tamara L. Sheldon, J. R. Deshazo, Bronwyn Lewis Friscia

Faculty Publications

When correcting for consumption externalities policymakers may employ economic incentives, a uniform moral suasion intervention, or various micro-targeted moral suasion interventions. To assess the relative effectiveness of these policy interventions, we randomly assign consumers to different moral suasion treatments designed to increase their willingness to pay for energy efficient light bulbs. Both economic incentives and single moral suasion interventions have similar modest effects on household willingness to pay for this durable good. However, we find that optimally targeting moral suasion messages increases consumers' choice of the most efficient light bulbs even more than large subsidies.

Trends In China-Africa Economic Relations And Dispute Settlement, Won Kidane

Faculty Publications

The rapid rise in the last two decades of China-Africa economic interactions in trade, investment, construction projects, and loans require sustained inquiry into the substantive rules of engagement and mechanisms of dispute settlement. Evidently, however, it would quickly emerge that the improvements in supranational legal frameworks have not kept pace with the growing scale and complexity of the economic interactions. While trade relations between China and Africa are theoretically subject to the same multilateral World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, they are in practice mostly based on informal unilateral concessions. Moreover, investment relations are partially governed by fragmented and mostly outdated …

Covid-19 Challenges, Responses, And Resilience Among Rural Black Women: A Study Protocol, Fanghui Shi, Jiajia Zhang Ph.D., Chengbo Zeng, Xiaowen Sun, Zhenlong Li, Xueying Yang, Sharon Weissman, Bankole Olatosi Ph.D., Xiaoming Li Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Background

Timely linkage to care (LTC) is key in the HIV care continuum, as it enables people newly diagnosed with HIV (PNWH) to benefit from HIV treatment at the earliest stage. Previous studies have found LTC disparities by individual factors, but data are limited beyond the individual level, especially at the county level. This study examined the temporal and geographic variations of county-level LTC status across 46 counties in South Carolina (SC) from 2010 to 2018 and the association of county-level characteristics with LTC status.

Methods

All adults newly diagnosed with HIV from 2010 to 2018 in SC were included …

Decision Support Issues In Automated Driving Systems, William N. Caballero, David Ríos Insua, David Banks

Faculty Publications

Machine learning and computational processing have advanced such that automated driving systems (ADSs) are no longer a distant reality. Many automobile manufacturers have developed prototypes; however, there exist numerous decision support issues requiring resolution to ensure mass ADS adoption. In the coming decades, it is likely that production ADSs will only be partially autonomous. Such ADSs operate within predetermined conditions and require driver intervention when they are violated. Since forecasts of their 20-year market penetration are relatively low, ADSs will likely operate in heterogeneous traffic characterized by vehicles of varying autonomy levels. Under these conditions, effective decision support must consider …

Criminal Justice Reform And The Centrality Of Intent, Cynthia V. Ward

Faculty Publications

The nationwide movement for criminal justice reform has produced numerous proposals to amend procedural and sentencing practices in the American criminal justice system. These include plans to abolish mandatory minimum schemes in criminal sentencing; address discrimination in charging, convicting, and sentencing; reform drug policy; rectify discriminatory policies and practices in policing; assist incarcerated individuals in re-entering society when released from prison; and reorganize our system of juvenile justice. But less attention has been given to reforming the substantive content of the criminal law—specifically, to addressing flaws in how the law defines the elements of criminal culpability and deploys them in …

Caveat Emptor: Scan Quality Of Elsevier’S Digital Backfile Pdf Collection, Gregory M. Nelson, Paul Kj Robbins, Dennis L. Eggett

Faculty Publications

Scans of journal articles originally published in print, otherwise known as digital journal backfiles, benefit library patrons by providing near instantaneous access to important older information and full-text searchability. Digital backfiles can serve as a reliable surrogate for their corresponding print journals which could be removed from the library, freeing up space for other patron services. Both benefits are realized when the scanned articles are of sufficient clarity to replace the print versions. Several studies have analyzed small and subject-narrow sections of Elsevier’s digital backfile. This article contains a scan-quality analysis from 1578 journals that contain nearly four million articles …

Synergistic Role Of Temperature And Salinity In Aggregation Of Nonionic Surfactant-Coated Silica Nanoparticles, Yingzhen Ma, Christian Heil, Gergely Nagy, William T. Heller, Yaxin An, Arthi Jayaraman, Bhuvnesh Bharti

Faculty Publications

The adsorption of nonionic surfactants onto hydrophilic nanoparticles (NPs) is anticipated to increase their stability in aqueous medium. While nonionic surfactants show salinity- and temperature-dependent bulk phase behavior in water, the effects of these two solvent parameters on surfactant adsorption and self-assembly onto NPs are poorly understood. In this study, we combine adsorption isotherms, dispersion transmittance, and small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) to investigate the effects of salinity and temperature on the adsorption of pentaethylene glycol monododecyl ether (C12E5) surfactant on silica NPs. We find an increase in the amount of surfactant adsorbed onto the NPs with increasing temperature and salinity. …

The Critique Is On The Glass: The Extension Of Museum-Presentation Techniques To Substantively Advance Law School Pedagogy, Rachel H. Smith

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In The Writing’s on the Wall: Using Multimedia Presentation Techniques from the Museum World to Improve Law School Pedagogy, Professor Cecilia A. Silver demonstrates how traditional law school teaching would benefit from embracing museum techniques. The Writing’s on the Wall offers museum presentation principles as a corrective to old-fashioned law teaching. And they certainly are. But they can be much more.

The museum techniques that the article describes are a starting point for thinking about museums as a useful analog to law schools, especially in confronting the biases, hierarchies, and injustices of the past and present. The Writing’s …

Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Alcohol-Attributed Deaths In The United States, 1999–2020, Ibraheem M. Karaye, Nasim Maleki, Ismaeel Yunusa Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The disparities in alcohol-attributed death rates among different racial and ethnic groups in the United States (US) have received limited research attention. Our study aimed to examine the burden and trends in alcohol-attributed mortality rates in the US by race and ethnicity from 1999 to 2020. We used national mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) database and employed the ICD-10 coding system to identify alcohol-related deaths. Disparity rate ratios were calculated using the Taylor series, and Joinpoint regression was used to analyze temporal trends and calculate annual and …

Development, Survival, And Fecundity Of Helicoverpa Zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) On Five Weedy Host Plants Common Across The Mid-South Usa, James P. Glover, Maribel Portilla, Gadi V.P. Reddy

Faculty Publications

Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a highly mobile and polyphagous pest known to feed on over 300 cultivated and wild host plant species. Larvae cause significant economic damage to several commercial row crops over multiple generations each growing season. The objective of this study was to compare biological fitness of H. zea on 5 weedy host plants commonly found across the mid-south US. Crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum L.), white clover (Trifolium repens L.), hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth), kudzu (Pueraria montana [Lour.] Merr. (all Fabaceae), and honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica Thunb.; Caprifoliaceae) were evaluated as primary food sources for H. …

The Global Fatty Liver Disease-Sustainable Development Goal Country Score For 195 Countries And Territories, Jeffrey V. Lazarus, Hannah Han, Henry E. Mark, Saleh A. Schattenberg, Jörn M. J., Ismaeel Yunusa Ph. D., Et Al.

Faculty Publications

Background & Aims:

Fatty liver disease is highly prevalent, resulting in overarching wellbeing and economic costs. Addressing it requires comprehensive and coordinated multisectoral action. We developed a fatty liver disease-Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) country score to provide insights into country-level preparedness to address fatty liver disease through a whole-of-society lens.

Approach & Results:

We developed two fatty liver disease-SDG score sets. The first included six indicators (child wasting, child overweight, non-communicable disease [NCD] mortality, universal health coverage service coverage index, health worker density, and education attainment), covering 195 countries between 1990-2017. The second included the aforementioned indicators plus an urban …

Procedural Posture And Social Choice, Michael Risch

Faculty Publications

Lawyers, judges, and professors have always been interested in the way cases unfold procedurally—their procedural posture. To date, however, nobody has provided a generalized theoretical framework to explain how procedural posture influences outcomes. This Article uses social choice theory to fill that void, providing much-needed insight into the ways that trial court litigation is influenced by the procedural agenda. Social choice theory considers how individual preferences translate to the collective desire. It is a messy business. One key insight of social choice theory is that whoever controls the decision agenda can control the outcome.

This Article conceptualizes trial court litigation …

Optimization Of Host Cell-Compatible, Antimicrobial Peptides Effective Against Biofilms And Clinical Isolates Of Drug-Resistant Bacteria, Jenisha Ghimire, Robert J. Hart, Anabel Soldano, Charles H. Chen, Shantanu Guha, Joseph P. Hoffmann, Kalen M. Hall, Leisheng Sun, Benjamin J. Nelson, Timothy K. Lu, Jay K. Kolls, Mario Rivera, Lisa A. Morici, William C. Wimley

Faculty Publications

Here, we describe the continued synthetic molecular evolution of a lineage of host-compatible antimicrobial peptides (AMP) intended for the treatment of wounds infected with drug-resistant, biofilm-forming bacteria. The peptides tested are variants of an evolved AMP called d-amino acid CONsensus with Glycine Absent (d-CONGA), which has excellent antimicrobial activities in vitro and in vivo. In this newest generation of rational d-CONGA variants, we tested multiple sequence-structure-function hypotheses that had not been tested in previous generations. Many of the peptide variants have lower antibacterial activity against Gram-positive or Gram-negative pathogens, especially variants that have altered hydrophobicity, secondary structure potential, or spatial …

The Perspectives Of Higher Agricultural Education In The Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, Eihab Mohamed Fathelrahman, Paula E. Faulkner, Ghaleb A.Al Hadrami Al Breiki

Faculty Publications

This chapter offers a perspective on how agricultural education, research, and extension services address educational challenges and foster food security and sustainability in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. In the last two decades, significant progress has been made in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates regarding agricultural education infrastructure and human capital development. However, agricultural education in the GCC countries face challenges, including stagnant enrollment, the need to offer more diverse programs, and enhanced education quality to satisfy the job market demand for qualified professionals. There is a need to formulate policies and initiatives to address the …

Coarse Particulate Matter Air Quality In East Asia: Implications For Fine Particulate Nitrate, Shixian Zhai, Daniel J. Jacob, Drew C. Pendergrass, Nadia K. Colombi, Viral Shah, Laura Hyesung Yang, Qiang Zhang, Shuxiao Wang, Hwajin Kim, Yele Sun, Jin-Soo Choi, Jin-Soo Park, Gan Luo, Fangqun Yu, Jung-Hun Woo, Younha Kim, Jack E. Dibb, Taehyoung Lee, Jin-Seok Han, Bruce E. Anderson, Ke Li, Hong Liao

Faculty Publications

Air quality network data in China and South Korea show very high year-round mass concentrations of coarse particulate matter (PM), as inferred by the difference between PM10 and PM2.5. Coarse PM concentrations in 2015 averaged 52 µg m−3 in the North China Plain (NCP) and 23 µg m−3 in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA), contributing nearly half of PM10. Strong daily correlations between coarse PM and carbon monoxide imply a dominant source from anthropogenic fugitive dust. Coarse PM concentrations in the NCP and the SMA decreased by 21 % from 2015 to 2019 and further dropped abruptly in 2020 due …

Barriers To Cataract Surgery In Africa: Providers’ Perspective (Research Protocol), Cougar Hall, Scott Herrod, Benjamin Crookston, Sadik Taju Sherief, Akwasi Ahmed, Grace Chipalo Mutati, John Welling, Boatang Wiafe, Michae Gyasi, Joshua West

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Millions of individuals in sub-Saharan Africa are needlessly blind from cataracts. While progress was made towards the Vision 2020: The Right to Sight goals, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia fell short of the recommended cataract surgical rate (CSR) on a national level. The purposes of this study were to describe possible economic factors impacting surgeon surgical productivity, possible barriers to attaining the recommended CSR, and surgical services in each of these countries.

Methods: An online survey was sent to ophthalmologists practising in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia. Responses were collected between June 25, 2021 and January 30, 2022.

Results …