Digital Commons Network^™

The Self-Aware Room: A Framework For Operational Self-Awareness In Evolvable Blended Environments, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

The Self-Aware Room (SAR) is a room-scale research environment developed within the larger Balanced Blended Space and Blended Reality Performance System research trajectory. Rather than treating the room as a conventional “smart” environment composed of fixed automation technologies, SAR approaches it as an evolvable blended environment made from physical, virtual, conceptual, sensory, computational, and performative relationships. Its defining feature is not any particular sensor, model, or output device, but the set of transformations through which physical activity becomes structured observation, bounded representation, interpreted state, governed decision, and mediated response.

This paper develops the conceptual and methodological foundations of SAR as …

Theological Truths That Divide Us And Engaging In Disagreement Well, David M. Westfall

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

""Only when we locate our differences within the shared context of God’s will to unite all things in his Son can we “get with the program” and start to relate in love, allowing our objective identity in him to exert continual pressure on our relationship.""

Posting about ­­­­­­­­how pursuing unity is part of Christian transformation from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

2026 Convocation, Dr.Evan Glazer, Dr.Angela Rowley, Dr.Katie Berger, David Kung

Convocation

No abstract provided.

Daniel La Hart V. Sunoco Pipeline Lp

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Carolyn Gardner V. Kutztown University

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Software Tools And Simulation Exercises For Radiation Oncology Cyber-Attack Resiliency, Yevgeniy Vinogradskiy, James Lamb

Department of Radiation Oncology Faculty Papers

This review summarizes the rationale for radiation oncology cyberattack simulation exercises, recent results from multi-institutional resiliency drills, and the landscape of software tools developed to help clinics resume radiotherapy treatments rapidly and safely during a cyberattack or other major clinical software outage. Simulation exercises using record-and-verify (R&V) downtime and File Mode treatment delivery have identified failure modes not apparent in theoretical planning alone, including risks related to treatment documentation, repeated fractions, patient setup, and missed safety checks. Available software tools emphasize insulated backup of DICOM-format planning data and clinical notes, treatment-state dashboards, File Mode treatments, redundant R&V installations, and human-readable …

Iwu Students, Faculty And Alumni Find Professional Opportunities Close To Home At Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Emily Bollinger

Press Releases 2020-2029

No abstract provided.

Addressing Knowledge And Data Gaps That Limit Pesticide Risk Assessment For Managed Solitary Bees Used For Alfalfa Pollination, Kimberly J. Hageman

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Remarkable Seizure Reduction With Trofinetide Treatment In An Adult With Rett Syndrome: A Case Report, Semihan Adegbite, Pooneh Memar Ardestani, Maromi Nei

Department of Neurology Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

Are 2d:4d Finger-Length Ratios Related To Bdsm Power Play Roles? An Exploratory Study, Phoenix R. Crane

Psychology and Neuroscience Faculty Publications

This study explored the relationships between 2D:4D ratio, a biological marker influenced by prenatal androgen exposure, and personality traits among members of the BDSM community. The 2D:4D ratio, calculated by dividing the length of the second (index) finger by the length of the fourth (ring) finger, is a non-invasive measure of prenatal exposure to androgens, with a smaller 2D:4D ratio associated with higher levels of testosterone exposure. Previous, albeit conflicting, research suggests that higher levels of testosterone are associated with dominance, aggression, risk-taking, and sensation-seeking. The present study draws on these findings to propose an androgenization of power play roles. …

Selective Loss Of Primary Cilia And Neurotrophic Signaling In G51d Α-Synuclein Mice Highlights A Common Pathway To Parkinson’S Disease, Yu-En Lin, Ebsy Jaimon, Youngdoo Kim, Annabeth Loftman, Aaran Vijayakumaran, Benjamin D W Belfort, Claire Y Chiang, Benjamin R Arenkiel, Huda Y Zoghbi, Suzanne R Pfeffer

Duncan NRI Faculty and Staff Publications

Parkinson's disease is characterized by dopaminergic neuron loss and accumulation of α-synuclein aggregates in the brain. G51D α-synuclein knock-in mice provide a genetically and clinically relevant model of disease, exhibiting early olfactory deficits, age-dependent motor impairment, and progressive phospho-α-synuclein accumulation. In multiple Parkinson's disease models, striatal cholinergic and parvalbumin interneurons, as well as astrocytes, lose primary cilia and the neurotrophic signaling needed to sustain dopaminergic neurons. We show here that G51D α-synuclein mice share these phenotypes. Phospho-Ser129 α-synuclein accumulation correlates with cilia loss in cholinergic interneurons but not in spiny projection neurons that accumulate higher phospho-α-synuclein levels. In the piriform …

2026 August 18 - Faculty Senate Minutes, Faculty Senate, East Tennessee State University

Faculty Senate Agendas and Minutes

No abstract provided.

Anterior Neck Induration As The Initial Sign Of Metastatic Gastrointestinal Adenocarcinoma, Fahad Siddiqui, Jay Nguyen, Victoria Dukharan, Rajiv Nathoo

GME Publications

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Phosphorylation On The Structure And Function Of Motif A, An Intrinsically Disordered Region Within Sirt1, Sabrina M. Richter, Hoang Long Bui, Addison Chen, Chloe Tannous, Benjamin R. Butler, Sophia D. Bennett, Samson Quang Anh Nguyen, Justin Prado, Ryan Nhan, Ayan Mohamed, Isaac A. Dubois, Emile Tadros, Nhu Tam Thai, Selina Lima Guan, Carla Marie Peralta, Andy Kwong, Laura M.L. Hawk, Gianmarc Grazioli, Ningkun Wang

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The NAD⁺-dependent deacetylase sirtuin-1 (SIRT1) is known to elicit cellular defenses against aging, cancer, and other aberrant pathologies. Previous studies have identified an intrinsically disordered region of SIRT1 comprised of N-terminal residues 1–52, herein referred to as motif A, which activates SIRT1 activity, likely through intramolecular interactions. Additionally, phosphorylation of N-terminal residues Ser27 and Ser47 has been shown to be important for regulating SIRT1 activity and stability. The lack of in vitro characterization of these effects hampers our further understanding of the role of motif A in SIRT1 regulation. In this study, we elucidate the role phosphorylation plays …

“Turn The Faucet”: Right-Wing Hydrosocial Imaginaries Of Irrigation Water In The Western United States, Alexander Reid Ross, Thien-Kim Bui, Alida Cantor

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The second administration of United States President Donald Trump has taken an authoritarian, centralized approach to governance in the United States. Water management is one area in which the president has attempted to show dominance. This research theorizes President Trump’s concept of water in the United States West as a “hydrosocial imaginary” in which the release of water from rivers and reservoirs indicates virility, action, and power, instead of liberal cautiousness and prudence. By ordering the release of two billion gallons of water from California’s Central Valley into the dry Tulare Basin one hundred miles north of Los Angeles for …

The Lottery You Do Not Want To Win: The Role Of Local Institutional Quality In Brazil's Fight Against The Persistent Transmission Of Poverty, Adaye Sosthene Yvan N'Guettia

Economics Honors Projects

When does improving local institutions increase the poverty-reducing effectiveness of transfers? This paper examines whether federal oversight strengthens municipal administration of anti-poverty programs in Brazil. I develop a governance model in which incumbents allocate resources across diversion, effort, and institutional investment under audits and incentives. Using exogenous variation from Brazil's random CGU audit lottery across 5,500 municipalities, I find audits reduce irregularities, strengthen capacity, improve nutritional monitoring and school infrastructure, and reduce extreme poverty — with effects largest in municipalities with weakest institutions. A marginal-value-of-public-funds analysis confirms the program is self-financing. Results show the poverty-reducing power of transfers depends critically …

Ruins And Remedies: Hospital Site Archaeology In Medieval Southeast Asia, Karen Hill

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

System And Method For Ai-Generation And Personalized Music Playback In Social Venue Environments, Eric Zavesky, Miguel A. De La Lama

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method for generating and playing personalized music in a venue setting from multi-modal patron input. The system comprises a multi-modal input interface that accepts musical preferences, narrative text, voice, visual content, and social media links through QR-code-accessed mobile web, kiosk, and voice channels, fusing said inputs into a unified generation request. An AI music generation engine employs a progressive generation pipeline that begins generating preliminary musical content during input collection and refines iteratively as additional input arrives, producing complete songs with lyrics, melody, arrangement, and production. A venue audio integration module queues and plays generated songs through …

Tamper-Evident, Non-Downgradeable Binding Of Advisory Header Metadata To Ciphertext In Client-Side-Encrypted Document Envelopes Via Aes-Gcm Additional Authenticated Data, David Lee Brown

Defensive Publications Series

An encrypted-document envelope carries advisory metadata — a threshold/quorum requirement, a lifetime policy, a distribution policy,   and a lineage pointer — alongside ciphertext. Conventionally this metadata sits in a plaintext or merely hashed header, where a   third party can strip it, alter it, or downgrade the format to disable the behavior it governs, because the metadata is not bound to   the ciphertext itself. An unkeyed header hash does not solve this: an attacker who edits the header simply recomputes the hash.

This disclosure describes binding that metadata to the ciphertext as AES-GCM Additional Authenticated Data (AAD), computed over a   deterministic …

Generation Of Synthetic Training Data Using Randomization In Camera Sensor Response And Image Signal Processing Pipeline, Ahmed Abdelkader, Wen-Sheng Chu

Defensive Publications Series

Successful deployment of machine learning models for computer vision on consumer devices requires generalization across multiple devices with varying camera sensor characteristics and image signal processing (ISP) tuning profiles. To ensure model performance, expensive data collection campaigns need to be executed to capture device-specific data for various devices to obtain training datasets to train such machine learning models. This disclosure describes techniques to generate training data to train a machine learning model for deployment across multiple target devices. Variations in camera sensor and ISP tuning profiles are simulated using randomized RAW transformations to produce different color sensitivities and by randomizing …

Steganography-Based Anti-Abuse Mechanism For Media Provenance, Bryan Jeffery Moles, Brian Jeremiah Murray

Defensive Publications Series

Mechanisms for media provenance are implemented by having a device cryptographically sign a bundle of assertions/claims about the media of interest. These assertions/claims reveal information about the media file, such as whether the media came from the camera of the device, whether it was processed in some way, etc. The trustworthiness of media provenance assertions by such mechanisms is reliant on the signing device being uncompromised. This disclosure describes the use of steganographic techniques to prevent scalable abuse of media signing mechanisms through the use of compromised devices. Per the techniques, the signing mechanism is implemented to inspect media content …

Device Platform-Aware, Closed-Loop Resource Scheduling And Handover Management In A Cellular Network, Fernando Selma, Francis Bourque, Hung Tsang, Jibing Wang, Alex Gorokhov

Defensive Publications Series

Cellular network architectures lack visibility to device-level or application-level states and cross-device awareness. Consequently, network scheduling, resource allocation, and handover are purely reactive and inefficient. This document describes techniques for closed-loop platform-driven resource allocation and proactive mobility management. Per the techniques described herein, a platform coordination server that operates independently of the RAN of the 3GPP cellular network receives UE-level telemetry data that includes application-level demand, location and velocity, and sends an aggregated traffic (or demand) forecast to the network for each cell. The platform coordination server converts a confirmed network resources scheduling plan prepared by a gNB to application …

Non-Disclosing Detection Of Material Evidence Gaps And Hidden Conflicts In Permission-Restricted Enterprise Rag, Niveditha Balakrishna Bhat

Defensive Publications Series

Enterprise retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems commonly enforce document-level or content-level permissions before presenting retrieved evidence to a user. Correct enforcement of those permissions, however, does not guarantee that the evidence remaining visible to a particular role is materially sufficient to answer a question safely. A role may retain access to plausible, apparently authoritative evidence while newer rules, material exceptions, or contradictory evidence remain inaccessible. In such cases, the system can produce an incomplete or misleading answer without violating any access-control rule.

This publication describes a role-conditioned evidence-auditing mechanism for detecting such failures before deployment. For a representative question and role, …

Zero-Shot Widget Configuration Via Natural Language Query, Ant Oztaskent, François Deschênes

Defensive Publications Series

Setting up a helpful tool on a phone or computer screen, like a live tile or weather display, usually takes too many steps. This publication describes a new, automated system that lets a user simply type or speak what they want, such as “weather in London,” and the device handles the rest. By acting as a smart broker (e.g., a multi-tier routing system), the system automatically finds the right application, places a live widget, glanceable, or dynamic home screen applet on the screen, and sets up the widget perfectly without any extra tapping from the user. If a matching application …

Dynamically Adjustable Photoplethysmography Geometry Based On Perfusion Index And Motion Profile To Balance Accuracy And Power Efficiency, Hamed Vavadi, Kaiyuan (Kai) Yao, Chintan Trehan

Defensive Publications Series

Wearable photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors detect a small pulsatile signal against a large non-pulsatile background.  The signal quality varies widely across users, activities, and conditions.  This publication describes systems and techniques in which the optical geometry of a PPG sensor is adjusted during operation to balance signal quality against power consumption.  A voltage-controlled film, for instance, over an emitter and a photodetector changes an effective aperture, and thereby the depth of light penetration and the perfusion index, without moving parts.  A control system uses a perfusion index and a motion level to select the aperture size produced by the voltage-controlled film. …

Usa V. Jose Tavares

2026 Decisions

USDC for the District of New Jersey

Sara Slattery V. Main Line Health Inc

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Usa V. Jose Torres

2026 Decisions

USDC for the District of New Jersey

Comments Re: Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program And Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, Fred D. Ledley M.D., Edward Zhou Pharm. D.

CISI Publication

Thank you for the opportunity to provide written comments in response to the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program proposed rule published on June 16, 2026 in the Federal Register. [1] We are answering as academic researchers with experience in medicine, pharmacy, biomedical research, and the biopharmaceutical industry. Our perspective is informed by extensive, published research on the economics and finance of pharmaceutical innovation, the value created by new medicines, and the impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

We applaud the accomplishment of the IRA in establishing the precedent for the government to negotiate “fair market prices” for drugs on …

Spcc: Inferring Spatial Cell-Cell Interaction By Integrating Single-Cell And Spatial Transcriptomics, Tiangang Wang, Yu Zhou, Xi Liu, Sijia Wu, Liyu Huang, Kexin Huang, Xiaobo Zhou

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Study of single-cell spatial biology reveals the importance of integrating single-cell and spatial data for capturing spatial structure at individual cell resolution in various fields. With the lack of cellular-level information in most spatial data, it is necessary to integrate single-cell and spatial data. Here, we developed a deep learning computational framework for alignment and mapping of unpaired single-cell and the spatial data by using adversarial joint-variational autoencoder and Random Forest model (SPCC). SPCC will generate a mapping matrix for single-cell and spatial positions that can transfer spatial location to individual cells. SPCC can be used to perform downstream analysis, …