Digital Commons Network^™

Ai And Ip: Are Creativity And Inventorship Inherently Human Activities?, Christian E. Mammen, Carrie Richey

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cracking The Code: Computer Code As Pure Speech And Its First Amendment Implications On The 3d Printed Firearms Controversy, Brian E. Heckmann

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of The Specific Attenuation Method For Radar-Based Quantitative Precipitation Estimation: Improvements And Practical Challenges, Bong Chul Seo, Witold F. Krajewski, Alexander Ryzhkov

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study demonstrates an implementation of the prototype quantitative precipitation R estimation algorithm using specific attenuation A for S-band polarimetric radar. The performance of R(A) algorithm is assessed, compared to the conventional algorithm using radar reflectivity Z, at multiple temporal scales. Because the factor a, defined as the net ratio of A to specific differential phase, is a key parameter of the algorithm characterized by drop size distributions (e.g., differential reflectivity Zdr dependence on Z), the estimation equations of a and a proper number of Zdr–Z samples required for a reliable a estimation are examined. Based on the dynamic estimation …

Festivals As A Sustainable Development Tool: Case Study Of Teriberka, Russia, Maria Monakhova

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Sustainable development refers to positive economic, social, and environment changes brought both locally and globally, creating a better world for individuals and future generations. Sustainable development in the Arctic shares the same approach, yet the smallness and remoteness of the Arctic regions often present a challenge to its implementation (Larsen & Huskey, 2015). I believe that the remarkable beauty, culture, history, and geography of these territories may generate positive returns for sustainable development through the organization of festivals. This paper examines the Teriberka festival taking place in a small same-name village in the Russian Arctic. The questions raised are what …

Technology Based Grammar Instruction, Erin Mary Summerhays

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

There are a wide variety of technology-based grammar instruction resources available for educators, and it is important for them to select the best tool for their school district’s and individual students’ needs. It is also important for educators to know whether the technology they have chosen is better than the traditional way of grammar instruction using paper and pencil. This paper studied the free grammar tool Noredink and looked specifically at the concept of active and passive voice. 22 10th -grade students were participants, with 11 receiving grammar instruction using traditional methods, and the other 11 receiving grammar instruction using …

"I Was A Trailblazer": A Phenomenological Study Of The Baseball Playing Experience Of Girls, Aj Richard

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Baseball is a reflection of America (Briley, 1992). The game is immersed in traditions. Many of these traditions are gendered. Baseball is built on myth, and these myths have served the purpose of keeping baseball white, heterosexual, and male. Baseball is also characteristic of enduring inequalities and discrimination. Sixty years after Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, owners, managers, coaches, CEOs, and fans are still overwhelmingly white and male (Chang, 2017; Lapchick, 2019). Although the participation of girls in baseball can be traced back to the beginnings of the game, they have faced persistent opposition. According to Batts Maddox (2019), …

Trend In Male Engagement In Maternal And Newborn Health Services In Ethiopia, Wubite Bekele Bogale

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

There is a growing recognition among government and local public health systems in Ethiopia that male partners engagement and support during pregnancy and beyond can contribute to improvement in maternal and newborn health (MNH) outcomes and equitable gender roles. Men’s engagement in MNH is associated with the reduction of newborn and maternal mortality. However, in Ethiopia, there is a dearth of evidence on the trend of male engagement in MNH and the differences in male engagement between regional states. This study sought to explore the temporal trend and regional differences in male engagement in MNH in Ethiopia.

Data used for …

S. R. Koehler And The Etching Revival In The United States: Toward An “American” Tradition Of Printmaking, Katie Larson

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Ua64/2 The Challenge: Magazine For The Center For Gifted Studies (No. 48, Winter 2020), Center For Gifted Studies, Tracy Inman Editor

Gifted Studies Publications

No abstract provided.

Pregnancy And Lactation In A 67-Year-Old Elderly Gravida Following Donor Oocyte, Leila Magistrado, Mary C Tolcher, Anju Suhag, Sonal Zambare, Kjersti M Aagaard

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

There is limited data on the anticipated perinatal course among gravidae in their sixth and seventh decades. Our objective was to describe the relatively uncomplicated prenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum course of a 67-year-old essential primigravida. Briefly, our patient conceived a singleton pregnancy via IVF with donor oocytes, then presented at 13 6/7 weeks of gestation to initiate prenatal care. Her medical history was significant for chronic hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity. Her cardiac function was monitored throughout pregnancy, and she delivered at 36 1/7 weeks by cesarean for a decline in left ventricular function with mitral regurgitation. Her intrapartum and postpartum …

Perioperative Acute Kidney Injury, Sam D Gumbert, Felix Kork, Maisie L Jackson, Naveen Vanga, Semhar J Ghebremichael, Christy Y Wang, Holger K Eltzschig

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Perioperative organ injury is among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality of surgical patients. Among different types of perioperative organ injury, acute kidney injury occurs particularly frequently and has an exceptionally detrimental effect on surgical outcomes. Currently, acute kidney injury is most commonly diagnosed by assessing increases in serum creatinine concentration or decreased urine output. Recently, novel biomarkers have become a focus of translational research for improving timely detection and prognosis for acute kidney injury. However, specificity and timing of biomarker release continue to present challenges to their integration into existing diagnostic regimens. Despite many clinical trials using various …

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Presenting Initially As Spinal Cord Compression: When Chemotherapy Alone Is Enough, Albert Jang, Kallie N Kram, Scott N Berger, Mahmoud R Gaballa, Lee B Lu, David R Dunaway, Courtney N Miller-Chism

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Spinal cord compression (SCC) is a rare initial presentation and complication of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with nearly all reported cases occurring in the pediatric population. We report a 38-year-old previously healthy man who presented with acute on chronic lower back pain, gait instability, urinary retention, and severe thrombocytopenia. Radiologic examination revealed two soft tissue masses of the thoracic spine associated with compression fractures causing spinal canal narrowing and cord compression. Bone marrow biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of ALL. Immediate initiation of high-dose corticosteroids and systemic chemotherapy resolved the patient's symptoms without radiation therapy or surgical intervention. After two courses …

Spironolactone In Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: Results Of A Cross-Over Study, Zeenat Safdar, Adaani Frost, Arya Basant, Anita Deswal, E O'Brian Smith, Mark Entman

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system is implicated in the pathophysiology of pulmonary arterial hypertension. We undertook this study to determine the effects of spironolactone, a mineralocorticoid receptor blocker, on collagen metabolism in pulmonary arterial hypertension patients. After obtaining institutional review board approval and informed consent, 42 pulmonary arterial hypertension patients were prospectively enrolled and 35 patients completed the 16-week randomized double-blinded crossover clinical trial. Subjects received 50 mg spironolactone or placebo and at the end of week 8, treatment arm was switched. Circulating levels of collagen biomarkers, brain natriuretic peptide, and aldosterone levels were measured, and six-minute walk distance, liver function tests, …

Metaproteomic Analysis Of Human Gut Microbiome In Digestive And Metabolic Diseases, Sheng Pan, Ru Chen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Metaproteomics, as a subfield of proteomics, has quickly emerged as a pivotal tool for global characterization of a microbiome system at a functional level. It has been increasingly applied in studying human digestive and metabolic diseases, and provides information-rich data to identify the dysbiosis of human gut microbiome related to healthy or disease states to elucidate the molecular events underlying host-microbiota interplays. While significant technical challenges still exist, this emerging technology has been demonstrated to provide essential information in interrogating functional changes in the human gut microbiome, complementary to metagenomics and metatranscriptomics. This chapter overviews the overall metaproteomic work flow …

Development Of A Hybrid, Interprofessional, Interactive Quality Improvement Curriculum As A Model For Continuing Professional Development, Isabelle S Kusters, Megan E Gregory, Jennifer L Bryan, Sylvia J Hysong, Lechauncy D Woodard, Aanand D Naik, Kyler M Godwin

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Over the past 20 years, there has been an increased focus on quality improvement (QI) in health care, which is critical in achieving care that is patient-centered, safer, timelier, and more effective, efficient, and equitable. At the center of this movement is QI education, which is known to lead to learning, behavior change, and improved outcomes. However, there is a need for the development and provision of long-duration, interactive, interprofessional training in QI, to allow for in-depth learning and application of learned skills. To this end, we designed a curriculum for an established interprofessional, interactive, web-based QI fellowship for doctorally …

Direct Numerical Simulations Of Acoustic Disturbances In Various Rectangular Nozzle Configurations, Nathaniel Hildebrand, Meelan M. Choudhari, Lian Duan

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We perform Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) to study the acoustic freestream disturbances radiating from the turbulent boundary layers along the contoured nozzle walls of a hypersonic wind tunnel with a rectangular test section. To begin with, the effects of the spanwise end walls are suppressed by confining the spanwise computational domain to a finite segment of the overall nozzle cross section and by imposing periodic boundary conditions across that spanwise domain. Besides providing a building-block configuration to reveal partial effects of the enclosed acoustic environment within the wind tunnel, these computations serve as a steppingstone toward the goal of fully-3D …

Improving Patient Satisfaction With The Virtual Handoff Process Through The Utilization Of Educational Pamphlets In The Emergency Department, Lynda Michelle Heintz

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Boarding patients in the emergency room while waiting to transfer the patient to the proper unit can be harmful to clinical care and have significant financial opportunity costs. At one local hospital it was found that on average patients were being boarded in the emergency room (ED) for approximately 85 minutes waiting to be transferred. Several barriers that caused this delay were found including, delay in room cleaning, nurse staff shortage, and inability to give report to the nurse receiving the patient. In an attempt to combat this delay which may be caused by a difficulty in giving patient report, …

The Knowledge Of End-Time Prophetic Scriptures Prepares Believers At Northcliffe Baptist Church To Expect Religious Persecution, John C. Reddy

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The lack of knowledge about the end-time prophetic Scriptures and its inferences to Islamic eschatology appears to be a problem at Northcliffe Baptist Church. The purpose of this study is to raise awareness about the end-time Scriptures and prepare the congregants to expect persecution as normative in the Christian life. Islam is projected to overtake Christianity in a few decades and is proliferating at a rapid pace. The anti-parallel structure between Christian eschatology and Islamic eschatology is disconcerting. Islam denies Jesus’s divinity and advocates persecuting Christians if they do not convert to Islam. Suffering and persecution for the Lord are …

Transitioning To A Televised Worship Service Via Internet To Provide For The Continued Existence Of A Small, Declining Congregation, Clifford L. Herd

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Prince of Peace (POP) congregation, Ft. Payne, Alabama has less than twenty members and is struggling to survive. POP needed another option for her continued existence and sustainability as a small, declining congregation. Utilizing Internet technologies, it was possible for this small congregation to connect with a host congregation to receive their worship service and message on a large screen television. The thesis project investigated if POP congregation could make a transition from a live person-led worship service/message to a televised worship service/message to enable them to continue to worship and survive as a congregation. The congregation was prepared to …

Principal Instructional Leadership Effect On High School Students’ Literacy Achievement, Kimberly Joyce Pinkney Kelly

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this applied study was to further understand the problem of poor literacy achievement among high school students and to design interventions for school leaders to impact and improve high school students’ literacy. Fifteen Florida secondary principals’ self-perceived instructional leadership behaviors were scored using the three dimensions of the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS). The independent variables were the principal’s instructional behaviors, and the dependent variable was sophomore students’ Florida Standards Assessment English Language Arts school level scores for the 2016–2017 school year. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted using four open-ended questions to gather further information …

Erratum: Minimization Of The Kullback-Leibler Divergence For Nonlinear Estimation (Journal Of Guidance, Control, And Dynamics, (2017), 10.2514/1.G002282), Jacob E. Darling, Kyle J. Demars

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Erratum Notice In the original article [https://doi.org/10.2514/1.G002282], Eqs. (16b) and (18b) were typeset as (Formula Presented) which incorrectly show that the posterior covariance at time tk, denoted by Pk, is calculated about the prior mean, m−k. The correct forms of these equations are given by (Formula Presented) which show that Pk is calculated about the posterior mean, mk. All resulting analyses and simulations reported in the article were performed using the correct forms of the equations.

Information-Based Particle Flow For High Uncertainty Estimation, Kari C. Ward, Kyle J. Demars

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This work presents a new formulation of the Gaussian particle flow filter derived using an information theoretic approach. The developed information flow addresses two problems with Gaussian particle flow: the lack of inherent meaning in the flow parameters and the inability to easily include modifications for a non-Bayesian update. Equivalency between Gaussian particle flow and information flow is established using a linear, Gaussian example. An orbit determination simulation with high initial uncertainty is used to demonstrate the consistent, robust performance of the information flow filter in situations where the extended Kalman filter fails.

The Use Of English And Linguistic Hybridity Among Emirati Millennials, Sarah Hopkyns, Wafa Zoghbor, Peter John Hassall

All Works

© 2020 The Authors. World Englishes published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd For Emirati millennials, multilingualism is both typical and expected. Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Emiratis mainly use Khaleeji (Gulf Arabic) dialects at home. English is the lingua franca and common medium of instruction with approximately 100 other languages also being spoken in the nation. While top-down language policies overtly favor English and MSA, which appear on signage, in educational contexts, and online as two ‘pure’ languages placed side-by-side, language ‘on the ground’ is considerably more complex than …

Tweets Classification And Sentiment Analysis For Personalized Tweets Recommendation, Asad Masood Khattak, Rabia Batool, Fahad Ahmed Satti, Jamil Hussain, Wajahat Ali Khan, Adil Mehmood Khan, Bashir Hayat

All Works

© 2020 Asad Masood Khattak et al. Mining social network data and developing user profile from unstructured and informal data are a challenging task. The proposed research builds user profile using Twitter data which is later helpful to provide the user with personalized recommendations. Publicly available tweets are fetched and classified and sentiments expressed in tweets are extracted and normalized. This research uses domain-specific seed list to classify tweets. Semantic and syntactic analysis on tweets is performed to minimize information loss during the process of tweets classification. After precise classification and sentiment analysis, the system builds user interest-based profile by …

Discounting Credibility: Doubting The Stories Of Women Survivors Of Sexual Harassment, Deborah Epstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For decades, federal and state laws have prohibited sexual harassment on the job; despite this fact, extraordinarily high rates of gender-based workplace harassment still permeate virtually every sector of the American workforce. Public awareness of the seriousness and scope of the problem increased astronomically in the wake of the #MeToo movement, as women began to publicly share countless stories of harassment and abuse. In 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace published an important study analyzing a wide range of factors contributing to this phenomenon. But the study devotes only limited …

Rationing Safe And Effective Covid-19 Vaccines: Allocating To States Proportionate To Population May Undermine Commitments To Mitigating Health Disparities, Harald Schmidt, Parag A. Pathak, Michelle A. Williams, Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Ünver, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A central goal in the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) framework for equitable COVID-19 vaccine allocation is to mitigate existing inequities, particularly those affecting economically worse-off racial and ethnic minorities. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) likewise notes that equity demands to “reduce, rather than increase, health disparities in each phase of vaccine distribution”. A crucial question in this regard is how vaccines should be distributed to states. The default is to allocate proportionate to population size. However, this approach risks increasing scarcity for worse-off populations in states where they represent above-average shares. To avoid lower …

Doctoral Candidacy Examination Scores And Time To Degree Completion, Juliann Sergi Mcbrayer, Steven Tolman, Katherine E. Fallon

Leadership, Technology & Human Development: Faculty Publications

Aim/Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between doctoral students’ candidacy examination scores and estimated time to degree completion, measured by dissertation progression.

Background

Time to degree completion in doctoral programs continues to be an issue and reasons for high attrition rates for doctoral students are broad and include varied core components of the academic pathway such as challenges with critical thinking during coursework, stress about passing comprehensive examinations, poor academic writing, and lack of knowledge around scholarly practitioner research.

Methodology

An ex post facto, correlational research design utilized quantitative data to determine …

The Role Of State And Federal Law In Energy Condemnations, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

When an energy provider condemns fee interests or easements to permit construction of transmission lines, what roles do state and federal law play in determining the "just compensation" available to affected landowners? That question has arisen in a number of different factual contexts. Usually, condemnors seek to avoid state law rules that provide for compensation beyond what they believe represents the market value of the property they seek to acquire. For instance, condemnors may seek an offset for benefits the condemnation generates for neighboring land owned by the condemnee. Condemnors may also seek to avoid state rules that entitle condemnees …

Machine Learning Techniques For Quantification Of Knee Segmentation From Mri, Sujeet More, Jimmy Singla, Ahed Abugabah, Ahmad Ali Alzubi

All Works

© 2020 Sujeet More et al. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is precise and efficient for interpreting the soft and hard tissues. Moreover, for the detailed diagnosis of varied diseases such as knee rheumatoid arthritis (RA), segmentation of the knee magnetic resonance image is a challenging and complex task that has been explored broadly. However, the accuracy and reproducibility of segmentation approaches may require prior extraction of tissues from MR images. The advances in computational methods for segmentation are reliant on several parameters such as the complexity of the tissue, quality, and acquisition process involved. This review paper focuses and briefly …

Menopause-Specific Quality Of Life Among Emirati Women, Linda Smail, Ghufran Jassim, Anam Shakil

All Works

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. To investigate the quality of life (QOL) of menopausal Emirati women aged 40–64 years and determine its relationship with their sociodemographic characteristics. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 70 Emirati women using multistage stratified clustered random sampling. The participants were interviewed face-to-face using a structured questionnaire comprising sociodemographic variables, reproductive characteristics, and the Menopause-Specific Quality of Life (MENQOL) questionnaire. The most common symptom among the study participants was ‘aching in the muscles’. The participants had a moderate level of bothersome symptoms; in addition, vasomotor symptoms were reported by 61%, while …