Digital Commons Network^™

Perspective On Lessons Not Learned: From Coley’S Toxins To Microbial Drug Delivery, Guidance For Institutional Review Boards (Irbs), Brian P. Hanley, Alejandro J. Betancourt, Gustavo Gross, Wilbur (Bo) Bowne

School of Medicine Publications

The bacterial and toxin methods of cancer treatment date back 130 years. This paradigm rests on nonspecific bacterial-toxin-generated immunotherapy. This high-risk oncology research is experiencing a renaissance of methods that are among the most effective yet. Glioblastomas and other resistant cancers are the modern touchpoint, because of remission history following sepsis. Spurred by recent research deaths, we discuss protocols IRBs should consider in live bacterial or synthetic immuno-stimulatory trials. Human systemic inflammatory response syndrome immunology is unique due to non-functioning SIGLEC-13 and 17, which control excessive Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR-4) signaling. This is not a technicality like human CD8+/CD4+ T …

Soil And Crop Productivity Under On-Farm Vermiculture-Based Farming System At Smallholder Rates In The Sub-Humid Tropics, Felix Matheri, Edward Karanja, David Bautze, Milka Kiboi

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Introduction – Vermiculture-based manures such as vermicompost and its byproducts like vermiculture are gaining importance as viable alternative soil amendments. This is practically feasible, especially in subsistence farming, by replacing common organic and synthetic inputs that are often costly and inaccessible to farmers. However, the effectiveness of vermiculture tea as a sole amendment or in combination with other inputs has not been tested under field conditions. Moreover, its longterm impact on soil and crop productivity has not been established. Methods – We conducted an on-farm field study in farmers' fields to evaluate the effects of sole vermiculture tea (Vermi), in …

Height Does Not Impair The Hydraulic System Of The Tallest Tropical Dipterocarp Trees, Paulo Bittencourt, Arne Scheire, Palasiah Jotan, Jehova Lourenço-Junior, Lindsay F. Banin, Mohd. Aminur Faiz Bin Suis, David Frp Burslem, Bradley O. Christoffersen, David Coomes, Peter Groenendijk

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences Faculty Publications

Half of the aboveground biomass in forests is stored in a disproportionately small number of very tall trees. These giants are predicted to be more vulnerable to drought-induced damage because height impairs their hydraulic system. We evaluated whether the hydraulic system of world’s tallest tropical tree species—Southeast Asian dipterocarps—are negatively affected by their height. The more negative xylem pressures caused by tree height were fully compensated for through adjustment of vessel anatomy and leaf hydraulic traits, and the trees suffered no height-related loss in growth during a severe drought. Therefore, height does not make the hydraulic systems of the world’s …

Oregon State Rank Assessment For Deschutes Milkvetch (Astragalus Tegetarioides), Nora Dunkirk, Gabriel Campbell, Sue Vrilakas

Institute for Natural Resources Publications

Oregon state conservation status assessment for Deschutes Milkvetch (Astragalus tegetarioides) using NatureServe methodology, 2026.

Human Cancer Genomes Harbor The Mutational Signature Of Tobacco-Specific Nitrosamines Nnn And Nnk, Michael Korenjak, Nuri Alpay Temiz, Stéphane Keita, Bérénice Chavanel, Claire Renard, Cécilia Sirand, Jiehong Guo, Et Al.

Michigan Tech Publications

BACKGROUND: Tobacco use is linked to multiple cancer types and a quarter of cancer deaths. Tobacco smoke contains numerous mutagenic chemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), however, the mutagenicity of many chemicals in tobacco products remains underexplored. The tobacco-specific nitrosamines 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) and N'-nitrosonornicotine (NNN), both International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Group 1 carcinogens, form pre-mutagenic pyridyloxobutyl (POB) DNA adducts, yet little is known about the associated genomic mutation landscape(s) in humans. METHODS: We applied bulk and error-corrected next-generation sequencing to a battery of experimental systems comprising mammalian cell lines and animals exposed to NNK or NNN, …

Successful Management Of A Large Pediatric Traumatic Pneumothorax Using A Thoracic Vent Device After Blunt Chest Injury: A Case Report, Jayanjali Bodavula, Melika Babadi, Morgan W. Stewart, Brett Dunbar

Student Publications

Traumatic pneumothorax is a common complication of blunt thoracic trauma and is traditionally managed with tube thoracostomy, particularly in larger or symptomatic cases requiring pleural decompression. Thoracic vent devices, such as the UreSil Thora-Vent, represent a less invasive pleural drainage option for the management of spontaneous or iatrogenic pneumothorax. However, literature regarding their use in traumatic pneumothorax, particularly in pediatric patients, remains limited. We present a case of a 13-year-old girl who developed a large left-sided traumatic pneumothorax after blunt thoracic trauma sustained during a softball collision. Computed tomography demonstrated a large left-sided pneumothorax and a nondisplaced left sixth rib …

An Automated Electrochemistry Platform For Accelerating The Characterization Of Enzymatic Electrochemistry, Michael A. Pence, Zachary A. Nguyen, Luke G. Kays, Dylan G. Boucher, Joaquín Rodríguez-López, Shelley D. Minteer

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Enzymatic electrochemistry harnesses the selectivity of enzymes to enable electrochemical applications spanning sensing, synthesis, and energy conversion. However, the sequential nature of electroanalytical experiments limits throughput, restricting the scale at which enzyme-electrode systems can be screened. Here we demonstrate the capabilities of an automated electrochemistry platform, eLab, to increase the throughput of enzymatic electrochemistry investigations. We used the eLab to collect over 10,000 cyclic voltammograms across a large parameter space consisting of two enzyme variants (promiscuous and wild-type glucose oxidase), 20 saccharide substrates, 21 concentrations, and four scan rates, with measurements being made all in triplicate. The expansive dataset enabled …

The Fingers-Based Occlusion Effect Triggering Methodology That Will Be Utilized For Creating Visual Imagery And Visual Patterns Utilizing A Pen Tool Where The Pen Tool Can Be Utilized To Create Visual Imagery And Visual Patterns On Physical Surfaces And On 3-Dimensional Virtual Space Areas., Punarjeewa Abeysekera

Defensive Publications Series

This paper describes a fingers-based occlusion effect triggering methodology that will be utilized for creating visual imagery and visual patterns utilizing a pen tool where the pen tool can be utilized to create visual imagery and visual patterns on physical surfaces and on 3-dimensional virtual space areas. The fingers-based occlusion effect triggering methodology will incorporate a pen tool, a built-in display that produce illumination, tracking markers and built-in camera configuration. The methodology will be required to utilize a power source that will be required to power the pen tool and its entities. And the methodology will be required to utilize …

Method For Trust-Aware And Language Model–Driven Email Threat Detection And Mitigation, Niranjan M M

Defensive Publications Series

Email remains the primary communication channel for enterprises and continues to be the most exploited attack vector for cyber threats. Modern email attacks increasingly rely on impersonation, social engineering, and contextual manipulation rather than traditional malware or malicious links, allowing them to evade existing detection mechanisms. At the same time, email security systems are adopting large language models (LLMs) to improve intent detection and contextual analysis, introducing new risks where email content itself can manipulate or degrade automated reasoning.

The proposal introduces a secure, trust-aware, and LLM-safe framework for automated email threat detection and remediation. The proposed system integrates sender …

Risk Authority Platform, Soumick Sinha, Mayank Johari, Lucas Fernando Müller, Sanjay Sawhney

Defensive Publications Series

Proposed herein is a Risk Authority platform that continuously computes an authoritative Trust Score and Trust Deficit for users or entities from heterogeneous security, identity, threat, compliance, privilege, and vendor-risk telemetry. The platform normalizes signals, applies configurable weighting and time decay, and maintains a versioned canonical trust state. A drift detection and reconciliation engine compares downstream trust states against the authoritative state and issues deterministic, idempotent reconciliation tokens when deviations or model-version mismatches occur. Software development kit (SDK) and application programming interface (API) integrations can validate schemas, verify tokens, and propagate risk updates. A closed-loop adaptive policy controller maps Trust …

Primitive For Finding Actionable Information In Time Series Based On Motif Locations, Michael Yeh, Yan Zheng, Junpeng Wang

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to a system and method for finding actionable information in time series based on motif locations. The method includes an analysis computer that obtains time series data. The analysis computer generates a plurality of motifs. For each motif of the plurality of motifs, the analysis computer determines identified locations in the time series data that match the motif and determines a plurality of motif type scores based on the identified locations of the motif. The analysis computer determines a selected motif of the plurality of motifs based on the plurality of motif type scores for each …

Method, System, And Computer Program Product For Online Account Recovery, Elisa Duarte

Defensive Publications Series

Methods, systems, and computer program products are provided for online account recovery. An example method includes: receiving an account recovery request associated with a user account a user is unable to access, the account recovery request including identity data and payment device data, the payment device data obtained via short range wireless communication in response to the user arranging the payment device relative to a computing device; in response to receiving the account recovery request, authenticating the chip based on a cryptogram; in response to authenticating the chip, inputting a payment device identifier and the identity data into a model …

Optimally Scaled Low-Rank Adaptation For Efficient High-Rank Fine-Tuning, Yilang Zhang, Xiaodong Yang, Yiwei Cai

Defensive Publications Series

A method can be performed during a round of iteration during a loss function optimization process. The method can include a computer obtaining a first matrix and a second matrix. The computer can determine a selected scaling process from a first scaling process and a second scaling process. The computer can modify the first matrix and the second matrix using the selected scaling process to obtain a first modified matrix and a second modified matrix. The computer can determine a first moment and a second moment based on the first modified matrix and the second modified matrix. The computer can …

Autonomous Mobile Robot For Transferring Planar Workpieces Between Processing Stations Using An Orientation-Holding Con­Veyor Stage And A Self-Locking Kinematic Dock, Alexander Willer

Defensive Publications Series

An autonomous mobile robot (AGV / AMR) transfers a planar workpiece — for example a printed circuit board — between processing stations by carrying a transfer-conveyor segment on a powered stage that holds the segment’s orientation independently of the robot’s heading. This lets a minimal-footprint, non-holonomic robot present the conveyor to a station port facing any direction, in confined space, without sweeping the segment through its diagonal. At each station a docking interface is provided that separates location from clamping: passive kinematic features (a fully-locating feature plus a relieved one, optionally tapered) locate the segment, while one or more self- …

Predictive Doppler Frequency Pre-Compensation For Non-Terrestrial Network Handovers, Edison Chen, Xuqiang Zhang

Defensive Publications Series

In non-terrestrial networks, for example, networks that use low-earth-orbit satellites, handovers between satellites may be subject to latency due to significant Doppler frequency shifts for the target satellite. This disclosure describes a predictive method for Doppler pre-compensation that may be centered at a user equipment (UE) (e.g., a smartphone, tablet, or vehicle-mounted terminal). The technique may involve the UE recording the magnitude of a frequency compensation value from its connection with a source satellite. For an initial uplink transmission to a target satellite, the UE may then apply a predictive pre-compensation value, which could be derived by inverting the polarity …

In-Band Threat Context Propagation For Distributed Policy Enforcement, Niranjan M M

Defensive Publications Series

The proposal introduces a data-plane aligned mechanism for propagating compact, actionable threat context in-band with live traffic to enable immediate and coordinated security enforcement across distributed environments. Instead of relying on centralized control-plane signaling or out-of-band policy distribution, the approach encodes deterministic enforcement intent such as action, severity, scope, and validity into bounded in-band metadata that travels along the same forwarding path as the affected traffic.

Enforcement points decode and validate this metadata in the fast path and apply policy actions at data-plane speed without requiring context lookups or external coordination. Rich threat details remain out-of-band and are optionally resolved …

System For Converting Predictive Insights Into Executable Tasks Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Predictive analytics tools are highly effective at identifying organizational risks, such as potential employee turnover, but they often fall short in providing managers with clear steps to resolve these issues. To bridge this gap, the described technology functions as an intelligent intermediary layer that translates high level statistical risk drivers into concrete, multi-step intervention strategies.  When a predictive engine detects a risk, the system uses a retrieval augmented generation framework to pull relevant contextual information from an internal knowledge base, which can include organizational playbooks and historical success records. This specific context is then fed into a generative large language …

System For Context-Aware Data Redaction Using Instruction-Constrained Generative Ai, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Data redaction techniques, such as manual review or simple pattern-matching, may present challenges related to speed, potential for errors, and contextual understanding for identifying sensitive information. The described system and method may be used for a context-aware redaction process that uses a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model. Source text can be encapsulated within a detailed instructional prompt that guides the AI model's function toward identifying and substituting sensitive data. This process can be managed by an orchestration layer that is configured to interact with an AI inference engine, for example, under a zero-retention policy. By replacing identified data with semantic …

Prioritization Of Work Items Using Ai-Based Weighted Strategic Alignment, Tanmay Kayande, Deep Raithatha

Defensive Publications Series

Prioritization of work items within an organization can be a subjective and manual process, potentially leading to a disconnect between development efforts and strategic business objectives. A disclosed technology describes a system, for example, a computing device (e.g., a server, a smartphone, a wearable device), where an artificial intelligence agent can analyze unstructured work requests, such as feature ideas or bug reports. The agent may evaluate an item against a configurable registry of weighted strategic drivers, and can assign a numerical score and a natural language justification. A total priority score may then be calculated for a work item by …

An Evaluation Of The “Police Response To Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Operations” Online Training Program, Anthony Galante, Leila Halawi

Publications

This study evaluates the impact of the “Police Response to Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Operations” online training program of officers from the Daytona Beach Police Department (DBPD). By measuring the effectiveness of the training through pretest and posttest assessments and considering variables such as educational background, length of service, and rank, this research underscores the training’s potential to enhance UAS response capabilities. Employing a self-selection sampling method, the study engaged 82 voluntary participants from the DBPD, revealing significant improvement across all groups in UAS knowledge and confidence levels. Despite limitations, these findings offer compelling evidence of the training’s efficacy and advocate …

Operational Agency: A Permeable Legal Fiction For Tracing Culpability In Ai Systems, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood—a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)—a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework—and Operational Agency Graph (OAG)—a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI’s observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these …

Alumni Voices. Beyond Graduation: The Lifelong Global Impact Of A Uk Education, Sladana Krstic, Alexander Towne

Higher education research

The third round of the British Council Alumni Voices survey provides robust and timely evidence of the enduring value of a UK higher education experience. Drawing on three years of longitudinal survey data, supplemented by a number of interviews, the findings highlight how UK education continues to deliver skills, support professional progression, and foster long lasting international networks that extend well beyond graduation and national borders. Nearly three quarters of respondents report that in the last 12 months they have maintained contact with people they first met during their UK studies, and almost 84 percent have recommended a UK study …

Modeling And Forecasting Intraday Spot Volatility, Adam Clements, Daniel P. A. Preve

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a multiple-equation regression-based method for modeling and forecasting intraday spot volatility. In this approach, intraday intervals are treated as individual time series, deviating from the common practice of treating the data as one continuous sample. Our empirical study, which spans more than two decades and encompasses six US blue-chip stocks, employs the recent OK volatility estimator developed by Li, Wang, and Zhang (2024) to expose the dynamics of latent intraday spot volatility over time. We demonstrate that the proposed method effectively captures the intricate dynamics of intraday spot volatility and find strong evidence that it outperforms a competing …

How Do Sectoral Shocks Shape Future Gdp?, Paul Ho, Danial Lashkari, Pierre-Daniel Sarte

Research Collection School Of Economics

A production sector’s size, as measured by its Domar weight, captures the contemporaneous aggregate effect of its productivity shocks. Any future aggregate effects, however, depend on that sector’s participation in the investment network. We derive a dynamic generalization of Hulten’s theorem in an environment with intermediate-input and investment networks. This generalization, implied by production efficiency alone, decomposes each sector’s Domar weight into an impact and a propagation component. The relative size of these components then determines how persistent the aggregate effects of sectoral shocks are, but cannot be known absent information on the economy’s production structure. We show in a …

Integrated Optimization Of Farmland Cultivation And Fertilizer Application: Implications For Farm Management And Crop Production, Onur Boyabatli, Lusheng Shao, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the fresh produce industry, this paper studies a farmer’s joint cultivation and fertilizer (a representative farm input) application decisions facing uncertainties in yield, crop price, and harvesting cost where the latter two are yield dependent and yield is stochastically increasing in the fertilizer application rate. We develop a two-stage stochastic model of a farmer growing a commodity crop in a single season to maximize the expected profit. We then use the model to evaluate the optimal expected harvest volume (a measure of crop production). Our analytical analysis is complemented with numerical experiments calibrated to data. We characterize how …

Exploring The Relationship Between Energy Use And Sectoral Output At The Useful Stage, Daniel Chester, Ritika Susarla, Paul Brockway, Emmanuel Aramendia, Matthew Magness, Matthew Kuperus Heun

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

1.Develop a publicly-available dataset of sectoral useful energy/exergy intensities

• And final, where not already existing

• How do global sector-level trends change when viewed from the useful stage?
• Are similar convergence patterns observed compared to previous analysis?
• How do sectoral differences explain aggregate convergence/divergence?

Smart-Twin: Systematic Modeling And Real-Time Transportation With Digital Twins, Hovannes Kulhandjian

Mineta Transportation Institute

Urban transportation networks are increasingly affected by everyday congestion, non-recurring disruptions, and limited real-time visibility into what is happening on the road. Transportation agencies require advanced tools that support faster, proactive management and data-driven infrastructure decisions rather than passive monitoring. This report presents SMART-TWIN, an Artificial Intelligence (AI)–driven Digital Twin framework designed for real-time traffic operations, disruption detection, and performance-based decision-making support. The SMART-TWIN architecture integrates microscopic traffic simulation (detailed traffic modeling), long-horizon synthetic demand generation simulating real travel patterns, supervised machine learning, and performance analysis within a unified and reproducible workflow. A corridor-scale Digital Twin was developed for the …

Securing A Calibrated Marketing Budget, Junqiu Jiang, Kapil R. Tuli, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates the sociopolitical processes underlying the development and approval of marketing budgets in large multinational corporations. While prior research has focused extensively on optimizing the level and allocation of marketing budgets, little attention has been paid to the internal organizational dynamics that shape the marketing budgeting process. Drawing on the theories-in-use of both CMOs and CEOs, this study examines how these executives codevelop a calibrated marketing budget (CMKB)—a budget that aligns expected performance with allocated resources through an iterative, participative process. Field data show that CMOs deploy a set of signals to assuage CEO concerns related to goal …

The Power And Peril Of Awe In Leadership: Transforming Follower Identity And Behavior, Jack Mcguire, Daniel Mcallister, Jochen Menges, David De Cremer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Awe is a profound emotion that has captured significant attention within psychological research. While the potential for leaders to inspire awe in followers has received some recognition, systematic research on the nature and effects of awe in leadership—and within organizational contexts more broadly—remains limited. In this article, we offer a conceptual framework that explains the multifaceted and transformative nature of leadership through the power of awe. Specifically, we identify four leader behaviors—charismatic leadership tactics, exceptional performance, problem reframing, and self-sacrificial behavior—that elicit awe among followers. We further propose three variants of awe-inspiring leaders, describing how variation in a leader’s self-construal …

The Anatomy Of Earnings Conference Calls: An Integrative Framework For Management Research, Matthew P. Mount, Gokhan Ertug, Wei Shi, Tengjian Zou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Over the last decade, there has been an explosion in the use of diverse data sources by management scholars to observe and capture managerial and organizational constructs that have historically been difficult to access. This surge has been driven by the growing availability of rich, multi-modal data—textual, image, and audio (Luo, Jia, Ouyang, & Fang, 2024)—together with advances in analytical techniques to process and analyze data, such as computer-aided text analysis (Harrison, Thurgood, Boivie, & Pfarrer, 2019), machine learning (Choudhury, Wang, Carlson, & Khanna, 2019; Harrison, Josefy, Kalm, & Krause, 2023), and deep learning (Gouvard, Goldberg, & Srivastava, 2023). These …