Digital Commons Network^™

Polylactic Acid (Pla)-Based Multifunctional And Biodegradable Nanocomposites And Their Applications, Md Shariful Islam, G. M. Fazley Elahee, Xiong (Bill) Yu, Rigoberto Castillo Advincula, Changyong (Chase) Cao

Faculty Scholarship

Polylactic acid (PLA)-based nanocomposites are emerging as multifunctional, biodegradable materials, offering sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based plastics. This review examines recent advancements in PLA nanocomposites, focusing on enhanced mechanical strength, thermal stability, and biodegradability achieved through nanofillers like metallic particles, carbon-based materials, and ceramics. Techniques such as in situ polymerization, melt mixing, and electrospinning enable application-specific improvements. PLA's limitations, including brittleness and low barrier properties, are addressed to support diverse applications: in packaging (e.g., extended shelf life), biomedicine (e.g., degradable implants), and electronics (e.g., flexible devices). Despite challenges with filler dispersion and thermal resistance, continued innovations expand PLA's potential across multiple …

Family Caregivers’ Perceptions Of Quality Of Dementia Self-Care In Wakiso District, Uganda, Martha Sajatovic, Kylie Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

INTRODUCTION: In Sub-Saharan Africa, most people with dementia are cared for in the home setting (dementia self-care) with hardly any support from the formal health and social care system. The study explored family caregivers' perceptions of quality of dementia self-care. METHODS: A descriptive-exploratory qualitative study design was used. Data were collected through four focus group discussions with 48 family caregivers of older people with dementia, recruited from four villages of the Wakiso district in Uganda. RESULTS: Five themes emerged: (1) patience and understanding; (2) maintaining hygiene and cleanliness; (3) constant supervision and safety precautions; (4) personalized care by understanding individual …

State-Level Immigrant Policies And Diabetes Prevalence In Latino And Asian American Groups: A Weighted Multilevel Analysis, Md Towfiqul Alam, Jennifer Toller Erausquin, Erica Payton, Elizabeth Vásquez, Sandra Echeverria

Faculty Scholarship

Introduction: Growing literature has shown that immigrant-related policies influence population health by limiting or enhancing immigrants’ rights. However, less is known about the role of state-level immigrant policies shaping chronic health conditions such as type 2 diabetes (T2DM). This cross-sectional study examined the association between state-level immigrant policies (both criminalising and inclusive) and prevalence of T2DM among individuals of Latin American and Asian American origin.

Method: We included adults aged 18+years sampled in the 2014–2018 behavioral risk factor surveillance system (BRFSS) (n=201 824), a survey design that allows the calculation of state-level estimates. Using existing policy measures, states …

Diffusion Model For Medical Image Denoising, Reconstruction And Translation, Wei Wang, Shuo Li

Faculty Scholarship

Diffusion models, as a class of generative models, have demonstrated significant performance in image generation since their inception. The fundamental principle behind diffusion models is the definition of a forward process and a reverse process. The input data is progressively perturbed by adding random noise during the forward process, and the expected noise distribution is learned. In the reverse process, noise is gradually reduced from a Gaussian distribution to generate the image. Recently, diffusion models have been widely adopted in various image processing tasks, including text-to-image synthesis, denoising, segmentation, and object detection. In medical image analysis, diffusion models have shown …

Electrochemically-Assisted Low Power Density Laser Writing On Stainless Steel Via Enrichment Of Chromium Oxides, Zechariah Pfaffenberger, Lianlian Liu, Tae Kyong John Kim, Vignesh Venkataramani, Lydia Kisley

Faculty Scholarship

Laser color marking produces nearly permanent, environmentally friendly, vibrant colors on surfaces. However, previous work has used high-power-density pulsed lasers to induce the physicochemical reactions for marking. Here, laser color marking on stainless steel 304 (SS304) is performed with a less expensive continuous wave (CW) laser and a power density five orders of magnitude below that previously reported by combining an electrochemical cell with a fluorescence microscope. Using a combination of optical microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and bulk electrochemistry, it is demonstrated that the laser-induced luminescence and colors are due to enrichment (32 ± 9% increase) of Cr2O3 in the …

Conceptualizing The Research Cycle For The Field Of Materials Science And Engineering, Jennifer L.W. Carter

Faculty Scholarship

Abstract: Early-career materials researchers often receive guidance from their individual advisors on best practices for conducting research, but the materials science community lacks an explicit model of the research process. As a result, the lived experience of an individual researcher can be quite different from their peers since they may be exposed to a different unique set of implicit research steps. In this article, we translate an existing research heuristic from other fields and make explicit the steps, methodologies, and strategies materials science engineering researchers utilize to advance our collective materials science knowledge. This newly proposed research cycle can improve …

Conceptualizing The Research Cycle For The Field Of Materials Science And Engineering, Jennifer Carter

Faculty Scholarship

Early-career materials researchers often receive guidance from their individual advisors on best practices for conducting research, but the materials science community lacks an explicit model of the research process. As a result, the lived experience of an individual researcher can be quite different from their peers since they may be exposed to a different unique set of implicit research steps. In this article, we translate an existing research heuristic from other fields and make explicit the steps, methodologies, and strategies materials science engineering researchers utilize to advance our collective materials science knowledge. This newly proposed research cycle can improve the …

Mechanism Of Ph-Sensitive Amphiphilic Endosomal Escape Of Ionizable Lipid Nanoparticles For Cytosolic Nucleic Acid Delivery, Zheng Rong Lu, Da Sun

Faculty Scholarship

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are among the most successful classes of nonviral delivery systems for nucleic acid-based therapeutics in treating human diseases. One of the key challenges in achieving efficient cytosolic delivery of nucleic acids is overcoming endosomal entrapment within cells. Conventional lipid bilayer-forming cationic and amino lipids mediate endosomal escape via the mechanism of lamellar-to-inverted hexagonal phase transition, resulting in suboptimal cytosolic cargo delivery. pH-sensitive amphiphilic cell membrane disruption and endosomal escape have emerged as a strategy for designing protonatable or ionizable lipids, especially nonlamellar lipids, for efficient cytosolic nucleic acid delivery. Nonlamellar amino lipids possess a large wedge-shaped tail …

Alpha-Synuclein Dysregulation In Systemic Pathophysiology Of Synucleinopathies, Hallie H. Dolin, Bowen Zhou, Robert W. Maitta

Faculty Scholarship

Alpha-synuclein (α-syn) has long been identified as the etiologic agent of multiple neurodegenerative diseases, the most common and well-known of which are Parkinson's disease (PD) and Lewy body dementia (LBD). While it is known that the pathophysiology of these synucleinopathies involves aggregation of improperly-folded α-syn, the mechanisms leading to its accumulation have not been fully identified. However, multiple pathways have been proposed, any or all of which may contribute to synucleinopathies. The role of α-syn in normal homeostasis and in other organ systems, especially the hematopoietic system, has been reported recently. Research within the last decade has shown that α-syn …

Uses And Abuses Of Johnson V. M’Intosh In Native American Land Rights Cases: Investigative Insights From The Indian Law Justice Files, John P. Lavelle

Faculty Scholarship

The 200th anniversary of the foundational Indian law decision Johnson v. M’Intosh has come and gone, with many scholars contributing criticism and commentary. The dominant focus has been the case’s notorious embrace of the so-called “doctrine of discovery,” an odious theory for rationalizing European nations’ claims of superior rights to lands occupied by Indigenous Native American peoples. Commanding less attention, however, is the Johnson decision’s core protective legal feature, i.e., its reinforcing the United States government’s duty to guard against the alienation of Indian lands through private, unauthorized acquisitions.

This Article offers a somewhat different appraisal of Johnson v. M’Intosh …

From Palimpsest To Prompt: Rewriting Shakespeare, Creative Authorship, And The Generative Logics Of Large Language Models In Contemporary Theatre, Michael Harding, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the convergence of creative authorship, adaptation, and generative artificial intelligence within contemporary theatre, taking Michael Harding‘s Awake, Young King as a central case study. Through the rewriting of Shakespearean drama, Harding‘s creative process demonstrates how theatrical meaning emerges through ongoing negotiation among playwright, performer, and audience, with scripts historically subject to revision, improvisation, and reinterpretation. Concerns regarding copyright, intellectual property, and the role of AI in the performing arts are reframed as extensions of enduring debates over originality and authorship, rather than novel threats. Tracing the evolution from The Rise of James VI to Awake, Young King, …

Wealth Taxes Under The Constitution: An Originalist Analysis, David M. Schizer, Steven G. Calabresi

Faculty Scholarship

A federal wealth tax is high on the wish list of progressives, but is it constitutional? This Article shows that under the original public meaning of the Constitution, a wealth tax is a “direct tax” that must be apportioned. This means that the percentage of revenue collected in each state must match its percentage of the population. For instance, if two states both have three percent of the population, each must provide three percent of the revenue. This leads to an unappealing outcome: if one state is less wealthy, it needs a higher tax rate to supply its share.

Article …

Digital Bibliography In The Age Of Linked Data, Kate Ozment

Faculty Scholarship

The article explores how the interplay of ideological values and technological capacities have shaped the digital bibliography of British print history. Using a misgendering in the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) as a case study, the article explores how information flows through resources like Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), and Early English Books Online (EEBO), library catalogues, WorldCat, and retail outlets like Amazon. The article argues that as data from the ESTC is reproduced through linked data structures, information is ‘authorized’ far beyond what a single resource would do alone or what its original authors imagined or designed. While feminist, …

Experimental Determination Of Diffusion Flame Extinction Boundaries Over A Pmma Sphere: The Effect Of Sub-Surface Solid Heating, James S. T'Ien, Chengyao Li

Faculty Scholarship

The SoFIE-GEL (Solid Fuel Ignition and Extinction-Growth and Extinction Limit) microgravity combustion experiment was recently conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In these tests, diffusion flame extinction limits of 4-cm diameter PMMA (polymethacrylate) spheres were determined as a function of forced flows (0.2 to 80 cm/s), oxygen concentrations (13 % to 34 %) and pressure (0.15–1.1 atm). In particular, the effect of sample heat-up is investigated. The sample surface layer is preheated by the ignitor and the diffusion flame itself before the extinction procedure (e.g. flow velocity decrease or increase or oxygen decrease) is implemented. The degree of sample …

The East Palestine Train Derailment: A Complex Environmental Disaster, Lynn T. Singer, Fredrick R. Schumacher, Timothy Ciesielski

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium, The East Palestine Train Derailment: A Complex Environmental Disaster, brought together scientists whose research represented initial scientific responses to the community health impacts of the chemical exposures incurred from a disastrous train derailment and subsequent combustion in East Palestine, Ohio in February, 2023. This derailment and burn led to multiple complex toxic exposures to air, soil and water, including vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate. Presenters described the multi-university consortium formed to assist with developing and communicating data-informed summaries to the affected community. Presenters also reported on the immediate health sequelae experienced by the community and the stress and …

Civilian Enforcers, Karen Pita Loor

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the largely unexplored phenomenon of militant civilians engaged in efforts to police and silence activism that challenges entrenched American power systems and economic distributions placing whites atop the social hierarchy in the United States. I argue that this civilian enforcement is an unregulated vessel for state-sponsored violence meant to silence the contestation of the existing racial hierarchy. While scholars, myself included, have written about the many ways police confront and silence racial justice activists on the streets at least since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, the role law enforcement plays in silencing racial …

"What Shall Be Orthodox" In Polarized Times: Overview And Response To Commentators, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Justice Robert Jackson wrote this celebrated passage in his majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), which protected the First Amendment right of Jehovah’s Witness children not to participate in a compulsory flag salute in public schools. In recent years, protests against imposed orthodoxy—usually invoking Barnette—have occurred in …

A Historical Case For A Robust But Non-Remedial Seventh Amendment, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

In Jarkesy, the Supreme Court rightly held that the Seventh Amendment required a jury trial for a case fundamentally similar to common law fraud, and it rightly limited the scope of the “public rights” exception to the Seventh Amendment. Grounded in historical and originalist methods, this essay makes four suggestions after Jarkesy:

1. Following Jarkesy, the judiciary should continue a more robust enforcement of the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. The courts should eliminate the “public rights” exception to the Seventh Amendment, which does not appear to have an original link to the Seventh Amendment. The …

An Originalist Case For Birthright Citizenship Of Unlawful Immigrants' Children: Anti-Gypsy And Anti-Chinese Restrictions As Context, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The Trump administration and other opponents of birthright citizenship for the children of “unlawful immigrants” make the following originalist claim about the Fourteenth Amendment: Even if the clause meant birthright citizenship, it applies today only to “lawful immigrants,” because the category of “unlawful immigrant” or “illegal immigrant” did not exist in the 1860s, when the clause was written and ratified. Opponents also argue that the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause originally implied a “loyalty” or “allegiance” requirement.

These assertions are historically inaccurate.

To the contrary, the concept of “unlawful immigrants” existed in the 1850s-60s, and Americans ratified birthright citizenship without indicating …

Voclosporin‐Induced Gingival Enlargement: A Case Report, Dimitris N. Tatakis

Faculty Scholarship

The gingiva (gums) is often a site in the mouth where changes or reactions can occur in response to certain systemic medications. Some drugs, particularly those used to treat autoimmune conditions or following organ transplants, can cause the gums to grow excessively, a condition known as drug-induced gingival enlargement (also known as gingival overgrowth). In this report, we document the case of a 27-year-old woman with lupus nephritis who developed gingival enlargement after starting a medication called voclosporin. This drug is a newer treatment option for lupus nephritis, but until now had not been linked to gingival enlargement. The patient …

Grid Fragility, Blackouts, And Control Co-Design Solutions, Mario Garcia-Sanz

Faculty Scholarship

The grid is undergoing a large-scale transformation, including a significant reduction of synchronous generators, a high penetration of inverter-based resources and renewables, substantial demand growth, new extra-large loads, aging infrastructure and a concerning vulnerability to contingencies. Some of the recent massive blackouts in Spain/Portugal, Chile and Texas are exposing the fragility of the grid as we know it today. This paper introduces new solutions to stabilize the grid under undesired dynamic interactions and extreme contingencies, with the goal of avoiding cascading failures and blackouts. Using control co-design methodologies, the paper proposes three interdependent categories to improve the reliability and controllability …

Risk-Sensitive Markov-Perfect Equilibrium, Matthew J. Sobel

Faculty Scholarship

We investigate the existence and structure of Markov-perfect equilibria of discrete-time dynamic games in which players are risk averse and have time preferences consistent with discounting. We establish the existence of a Markov-perfect equilibrium when each player strives to maximize the expected exponential utility of the present value of the time stream of rewards. Also, we give sufficient conditions for a Markov-perfect equilibrium to be myopic, namely to be a sequence of Nash equilibria of static games. The myopia results are applied to a dynamic oligopoly model in which firms choose prices and production quantities, encounter stochastic demand and hold …

Effects Of Heating Orientation On Flow Boiling In Copper Manifold Microchannel Heat Sinks, Huigang Wang, Yue Qiu, Jennifer Carter, James Mcguffin-Cawley, Chirag R. Kharangate

Faculty Scholarship

Recently, two-phase cooling configurations are being proposed to meet the power dissipation requirements of high heat flux electronic devices. Flow boiling in Manifold Microchannel (MMC) offers high heat transfer coefficients with low pressure drops, making it a popular choice. While many studies have explored flow boiling in microchannels, the influence of heating orientation in MMCs with complex 3D flow paths has not been investigated thoroughly. In this study, experiments are conducted to investigate the effects of heating orientations and mass flow rates on heat transfer performance, pressure drop, and the hysteresis phenomenon during flow boiling in a copper manifold microchannel …

Intraspecific Competition Can Promote Population-Level Specialization, Abdel H. Halloway

Faculty Scholarship

The hypothesis of competitive diversification asserts that increased intraspecific competition will cause a population to generalize in resource use. The reasoning is that as preferred resources are depleted, individuals which use alternative resources become more fit, leading to an overall broadening of resource use. However, recent studies have shown instances of the opposite effect: increased intraspecific competition leading to increased population resource specialization. We explored how intraspecific competition could affect population resource specialization by creating an evolutionary game theoretic consumer-resource model in which individuals have both resource use preference and resource use breadth which are flexible and adaptable. Using this …

Association Of Medicaid Expansion With Colon Cancer Care: Treatment Patterns And Survival In Non-Metastatic Cases From State Registry-Claims Data, Kirsten Y. Eom, Weichuan Dong, Richard S. Hoehn, Jeffrey M. Albert, Uriel Kim, Gregory Cooper, Johnie Rose, Siran M. Koroukian

Faculty Scholarship

Purpose: Despite growing research on Medicaid expansion’s impact on cancer outcomes, there remains a critical need for a more nuanced understanding of how expansion affects cancer care and survival. This study assesses whether Medicaid expansion was associated with improved receipt of standard treatment, timely treatment initiation, and overall survival among colon cancer patients, while examining the specific factors influencing these outcomes. Methods: Using Ohio’s state cancer registry linked with Medicaid records, we analyzed 688 Medicaid-enrolled patients with non-metastatic colon cancer diagnosed between May 2011 and December 2017. We employed multivariable Poisson and Cox proportional hazard regression analyses to evaluate the …

Computational Model Predicts Function Of Rho-Gtpase Binding For Plexin Receptor Gap Activity On Rap1b Via Dynamic Allosteric Changes, Nisha Bhattarai

Faculty Scholarship

Plexin-semaphorin signaling regulates key processes such as cell migration, neuronal development, angiogenesis, and immune responses. Plexins stand out because they can directly bind with both Rho- and Ras-family small GTPases through their intracellular domains when these GTPases are in their active, GTP-bound states. This binding occurs via intracellular regions, which include a Rho-GTPase binding domain and a GTPase-activating protein (GAP) segment. Studies have shown that Rho and Ras GTPases play vital roles in plexin signaling and activation. However, the structural dynamics of plexins and GTPases and how these conformational changes affect interactions when plexin is bound with both Ras and …

Management Of Severe Gingival Recession Using A Double Papilla Connective Tissue Graft: A 2-Year Follow-Up Case Study, Dimitris N. Tatakis

Faculty Scholarship

Gum recession is a common condition where the gum tissue pulls away from the teeth, exposing the roots and making them more prone to damage. This report describes the treatment of a 30-year-old woman who had severe gum recession on her lower left canine tooth, caused by her long-term habit of scratching the gums with her fingernail. To restore the lost tissue and protect the tooth, a double papilla flap (a surgical technique that moves nearby tissue) along with a connective tissue graft (transplanted tissue from the roof of the mouth) was used. Over 2 years, the recession was reduced …

The Structure Of The Drp1 Lattice On Membrane, Kristy Rochon, Anelise N. Hutson, Jason A. Mears

Faculty Scholarship

Mitochondrial health relies on the membrane fission mediated by dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1). Previous structural studies of Drp1 on remodeled membranes were hampered by heterogeneity, leaving a critical gap in the understanding of the mitochondrial fission mechanisms. Here we present a cryo-electron microscopy structure of full-length human Drp1 decorated on membrane tubules. Using the reconstruction of average subtracted tubular regions (RASTR) technique, we report that Drp1 forms a locally ordered lattice along the tubule without global helical symmetry. The filaments in the lattice are similar to dynamin rungs with conserved stalk interactions. Adjacent filaments are connected by GTPase domain interactions …

Role Of Autonomic Dysfunction In Initiating Postoperative Atrial Fibrillation In A Canine Sterile Pericarditis Model, Seungyup Lee, Don W. Wallick, Celeen Khrestian, Dragan Juzbasich, Daniel Laurita

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Autonomic dysfunction plays a significant role in initiating postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) by causing atrial ectopic triggers, potentially through mechanisms such as increased sympathetic activity and altered vagal tone. These atrial ectopic triggers can easily induce POAF, especially in the presence of vulnerable substrates such as pericardial inflammation or structural remodeling. Objective: To test the hypothesis that autonomic dysfunction causes atrial ectopic triggers or POAF in the canine sterile pericarditis model. Methods: Ten sterile pericarditis dogs were studied on postoperative Days 2−3. Autonomic dysfunction was induced by stellate ganglion nerve stimulation (SNS, 5–15 mA; 4–10 Hz; pulse width 0.5–5 …

Multi-Omic Spatially Resolved Analysis Of The Neuroinflammatory Response To Intracortical Microelectrode Arrays, E. Ricky Chan, Jeffrey R. Capadona

Faculty Scholarship

Intracortical microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are devices implanted into the brain's cortex with the ability to record or stimulate neuronal activity. Unfortunately, MEAs tend to fail over chronic time points, limiting their clinical utility. Chronic failure has largely been attributed to the brain's neuroinflammatory response. Until recently, most of what was understood about the neuroinflammatory response to MEAs was learned through immunohistochemical analysis of small numbers of proteins. More recently, gene expression studies have sequenced thousands of mRNA molecules that contribute to neuroinflammation, but few studies have performed large-scale proteomic analyses. To expand the knowledge of molecular mechanisms involved, we have …