Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of House Staff Candidates For Program Fit: A Cohort-Based Controlled Study, Soo-Hoon Lee, Phillip H. Phan, Sanjay V. Desai

Management Faculty Publications

Background: Medical school academic achievements do not necessarily predict house staff job performance. This study explores a selection mechanism that improves house staff-program fit that enhances the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Milestones performance ratings.

Objective: Traditionally, house staff were selected primarily on medical school academic performance. To improve residency performance outcomes, the Program designed a theory-driven selection tool to assess house staff candidates on their personal values and goals fit with Program values and goals. It was hypothesized cohort performance ratings will improve because of the intervention.

Methods: Prospective quasi-experimental cohort design with data from two house staff …

China Inc. And The World's Response, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

This article is based on the author’s new book, China, Inc.: How the Chinese Communist Party Transformed China into a Giant Corporation (Cambridge University Press, 2022). The author argues that leveraging its absolute power, low human rights advantage, and tolerance by other countries, the Chinese Communist Party has transformed China into a giant corporation. Living, working, and investing are not rights but privileges granted by the party. The party is the management of China, Inc., with the politburo standing committee as the board of directors and the party’s general secretary as the CEO. The various ministries are the functional departments …

An Exploration On Apts In Biocybersecurity And Cyberbiosecurity, Xavier-Lewis Palmer, Lucas Potter, Saltuk Karahan

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

Novel and complex digital threats that are increasingly interwoven with means and products of biology that can affect society. Much work in Biocybersecurity/Cyberbiosecurity (BCS/CBS) discuss vulnerabilities, but few deeply address malicious actor varieties as attacks at this intersection are new. The path to those attacks remains mostly theoretical, presenting considerable difficulty to accomplish in practical scenarios. In terms of advanced persistent threats (APTs) this of course needs to change as biomanufacturing facilities are at risk, considering Covid-19 and other potential pandemics. Further attacks are not out of reach and thus we must start to imagine how BCS APTs may appear. …

A Zebra's Trust: How Rare Disease Communities' Participation In Data Trusts' Governance Builds Trust And Drives Research, Samantha C. Smith

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Data sharing plays an increasingly prominent role in society, but it remains a necessary component of rare disease research. Because rare diseases are--as the name indicates-- rare, researchers have only a small number of patients from whom to collect data, and the expense of cross-border data sharing to increase research data is significant. Nevertheless, the rise of artificial intelligence and precision medicine increases the need for usable rare disease data. Current legislation and regulations aimed at addressing rare diseases fall short in addressing these data sharing needs for rare disease research. While the European Union (EU) has invested in rare …

Prairie Strips: The Roadman Farm, Tallgrass Prairie Center, University Of Northern Iowa

Tallgrass Prairie Publications and Reports

Report on the implementation of prairie plants in contour farming on a farm in Grundy County, Iowa.

System Statuses In Academic Libraries: Increasing Transparency And Improving The User Experience, Lauren Puzier, Rebecca A. Nous

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

"is facebook down" trended on Google on October 4, 2021, when Facebook became temporarily globally unavailable. Web users proactively seek information when they encounter issues online. System status dashboards are one way libraries can leverage this behavior to share changes to resources or services and improve transparency, reference services, and the user experience. The University at Albany Libraries Discovery Services Librarian and User Experience Librarian implemented Springshare’s System Status Management tool to share system statuses with library staff and the campus community. The institutional context, implementation, and impact are described in this article. The authors reviewed Association of Research Libraries …

Moments In Performance: Developing An Aid For Articulation And Reflection, Shelby R. Mckenzie

Theses : Honours

Embodiment is an innately human experience. Why then, is it so difficult for society to come to a shared understanding of what it is to be embodied? This problem is particularly relevant in a theatrical context. Critical thinking across the disciplines of Philosophy, Science and History have impacted an actor's theoretical understanding of embodiment. However, this has not affected their corporeal understanding. As an actor I realised that this gap led to my inability to articulate the embodied experience in my practice. This inability to explain the experience meant I was unable to experience it consistently. This thesis examines how …

Predictive Models In Software Engineering: Challenges And Opportunities, Yanming Yang, Xin Xia, David Lo, Tingting Bi, John C. Grundy, Xiaohu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Predictive models are one of the most important techniques that are widely applied in many areas of software engineering. There have been a large number of primary studies that apply predictive models and that present well-performed studies in various research domains, including software requirements, software design and development, testing and debugging, and software maintenance. This article is a first attempt to systematically organize knowledge in this area by surveying a body of 421 papers on predictive models published between 2009 and 2020. We describe the key models and approaches used, classify the different models, summarize the range of key application …

The Dissonance Between Knowing Animals Are Sentient Beings Yet Eating Them, Yana Bender, Juliane Bräuer

Animal Sentience

Animal sentience is linked to the bigger picture of climate and health crises and “carnism” is a factor in the dissonance among (1) knowing animals are sentient, (2) caring about their feelings, and (3) not acting accordingly. We discuss our responsibility as researchers and as individual human beings.

A Feasibility Assessment Of The Optimal Use Of Hydrogen Drones In Fashion Item Replenishment Logistics, Chi Wing, Alex Tsang

Department of Construction, Environment and Engineering

What should be considered in optimising the delivery routes for stock replenishment in a retail textile company? Traditional land-based truck delivery makes prompt returned or new products replenishments in small batches from one location to another impractical due to the high shipping costs incurred. Drones, which serve as digitized delivery equipment especially in western countries nowadays, realise last-mile and door-to-door deliveries. Breaking geographical barriers, drones raise operational efficiency and lower human- and equipment-related costs. Nonetheless, drone delivery regulations set legal boundaries. Added to this are the teething issues arisen in the drone deliveries across regulatory borders. As a consequence, retail …

Retro-Commissioning For Buildings: Problems And The Way Forward For A Policy Research Study, Wai Yee, Betty Chiu

Department of Construction, Environment and Engineering

Buildings represent a major source of energy use and significantly contribute to carbon emissions and hence, the global warming problem. Towards the goal of sustainable and smart buildings, worldwide a variety of voluntary and mandatory tools have been introduced to enhance buildings’ operational performance. Among these tools is retro-commissioning (RCx) - a knowledge-based systematic process to periodically check and improve existing buildings’ performance. However, the uptake of RCx in the building sector remains limited. Grounded on a literature review, this paper reports on the emergence and development of RCx, a comparison between RCx programmes in cities that pioneered to impose …

Seasonal Variation Of Heavy Metal Contents In Road Dust From Residential, Industrial And Rural Areas Of Hong Kong, King Wah Ngai, Hilda Ming Wai Mak, Hon Sang Ko, Kwok Leung Pun

Department of Construction, Environment and Engineering

Heavy metal contents in road dust have been an important indicator of heavy metal pollution arising from traffic-related activities. In this study, 108 road dust samples were collected from four locations of Hong Kong, namely Kwai Hing (industrial area), Sau Mau Ping (residential area), Sai Kung and Tai Lam (rural area), over a one-year period and analysed for zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), and arsenic (As). The geo-accumulation indices (Igeo) and contamination factors (Ci f) indicated zinc, copper, chromium, to a lesser extent, nickel, and cadmium pollution of road dust in industrial and …

Github Discussions: An Exploratory Study Of Early Adoption, Hideaki Hata, Nicole Novielli, Sebastian Baltes, Raula Kula, Christoph Treude

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Discussions is a new feature of GitHub for asking questions or discussing topics outside of specific Issues or Pull Requests. Before being available to all projects in December 2020, it had been tested on selected open source software projects. To understand how developers use this novel feature, how they perceive it, and how it impacts the development processes, we conducted a mixed-methods study based on early adopters of GitHub discussions from January until July 2020. We found that: (1) errors, unexpected behavior, and code reviews are prevalent discussion categories; (2) there is a positive relationship between project member involvement and …

Contextualized Knowledge-Aware Attentive Neural Network: Enhancing Answer Selection With Knowledge, Yang Deng, Yuexiang Xie, Yaliang Li, Min Yang, Wai Lam, Ying Shen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Answer selection, which is involved in many natural language processing applications, such as dialog systems and question answering (QA), is an important yet challenging task in practice, since conventional methods typically suffer from the issues of ignoring diverse real-world background knowledge. In this article, we extensively investigate approaches to enhancing the answer selection model with external knowledge from knowledge graph (KG). First, we present a context-knowledge interaction learning framework, Knowledge-aware Neural Network, which learns the QA sentence representations by considering a tight interaction with the external knowledge from KG and the textual information. Then, we develop two kinds of knowledge-aware …

Contracts Formed By Software: An Approach From The Law Of Mistake, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A ‘Contracting Problem’ arises when software is used to autonomously enter into contracts without human input. Questions arise as to how and whether there can be an expression of an objective intention to be legally bound. This article considers three leading solutions to the Contracting Problem. The ‘Mere Tools Theory’, which views software as ‘mere tools’ of communication, is too harsh as it binds users to any software malfunction. The Agency Approach, which treats software as Electronic Agents, capable of contracting on behalf of their users, is untenable as it ascribes unrealistic characteristics to software. The article submits that the …

Student Disciplinary Proceedings In Universities: The Importance Of Due Process And Evidentiary Standards When Investigating And Adjudicating Serious Offences, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In Singapore, recent news about university students involved in sexual offences have generated considerable discourse on the features of its criminal justice system, with a pronounced focus on the appropriate sanctions that should have been meted out by either the university or the courts/police. What might have been overlooked, however, is the question of maintaining due process and evidentiary standards, particularly in relation to the role of universities when they conduct their internal disciplinary proceedings for students alleged to have committed serious criminal offences. But what is happening in Singapore is not anomalous; universities across the world are increasingly confronted …

Self-Authorship And The Effects Of Reverse Culture Shock In Post-Study Abroad U.S. College Students: Strangers In Their Own Land, Tarianne G. Cotton

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, in our globally diverse and intertwined society, study abroad has served as a valuable, enriching, and life-changing aspect of college and university offerings and opportunities for students. Today, the lives of post-study abroad students will be defined by the ways they make sense of unexpected major events surrounding the history-changing COVID-19 pandemic and the contemporary protests against racism and social injustice. A large body of research exists on study abroad, culture shock, self-authorship, provocative moments, cross-cultural reentry, and reverse culture shock. A lack of research exists on what ways post-study abroad U.S. students make meaning of their experiences in …

How Does Flow Alteration Propagate Across A Large, Highly Regulated Basin? Dam Attributes, Network Context, And Implications For Biodiversity, Albert Ruhi, Jeongwoo Hwang, Naresh Devineni, Sudarshana Mukhopadhyay, Hemant Kumar, Lise Comte, Scott Worland, A. Sankarasubramanian

Faculty Publications – Biological Sciences

Large dams are a leading cause of river ecosystem degradation. Although dams have cumulative effects as water flows downstream in a river network, most flow alteration research has focused on local impacts of single dams. Here we examined the highly regulated Colorado River Basin (CRB) to understand how flow alteration propagates in river networks, as influenced by the location and characteristics of dams as well as the structure of the river network—including the presence of tributaries. We used a spatial Markov network model informed by 117 upstream-downstream pairs of monthly flow series (2003–2017) to estimate flow alteration from 84 intermediate-to-large …

Where Are All The African-American Women Superintendents In California, Oregon, And Washington State?, Toniesha D. Webb

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

There are many African American women in leadership positions such as Assistant Superintendents, Network Superintendents, Directors, Principals, Assistant Principals, and Coaches. There is a disconnect for African American women in leadership and the highest position of authority in a school district. This leads to the question, what are the barriers, if any, that are limiting the amount of African American Women in the far western states to transition into Superintendent positions? In the reverse, what supports did the women who are superintendents have in their leadership ascension? Finally, what structures need to be developed and formalized in order to facilitate …

The Interrelationship Between Treatment, Ethnicity, And Structured Exercise In Clinical Populations, Amanda M. F. Lopez

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is the second leading cause of death, with about approximately 1.9 million Americans being diagnosed each year. Yet, it has high survival rates with the help of advancing treatments like radiation therapy. Cancer patients and survivors are contingent on experiencing a decline in physical functioning, quality of life, and physiological parameters. Treatment is effective and can prolong life expectancy but can be deleterious to a patient’s health. Parallel with cancer's impact on Americans is cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease is responsible for 1 in 4 deaths. The development of cardiovascular disease is not spread accordantly among all ethnicities. Hispanics are …

Microbial Community Analysis: Biofilm Inhibition & Algae Associated Community Structure, Michelle V. Fong

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Natural products chemistry is the pursuit of bioactive small molecules from living organisms. These can be classified as primary metabolites if they are essential to survival, and secondary metabolites if they are accessory, playing a role in communication, defense, recruitment, etc.. Natural products have made a significant contribution to society – of 1,881 FDA-approved drugs from 1981 to 2019, 4% were pure natural products, 19% were natural products derived, and 3% were synthetic drugs with a natural products pharmacophore targeting a wide range of diseases and infections (Newman & Cragg, 2020). Pharmacophores are structural components of drugs that are responsible …

Continuous Improvement In Practice: One K–12 District’S Leadership Journey, Orquidea Largo

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

K–12 leaders’ compliance mandates, challenges of adopting a continuous improvement approach to student success, and competing priorities often leave leaders feeling vulnerable and unprepared for the task. This basic qualitative study applied the continuous improvement framework (CIF) to research how improvement science penetrated an educational system. This basic qualitative study explored and described leaders’ commitment to employing the principles of improvement science at one California K–12 school district. An in-depth analysis of the interviewees’ transcriptions, persona, and experiences unveiled the following themes for continuous improvement: (a) transformational governance, (b) capacity building, (c) accountability, (d) limitations of transactional governance, and (e) …

Aac Camp As A Pre- And Post- Service Training Model, Joanne Kim

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of participation in an AAC-based day camp as a pre-service training opportunity for students of speech-language pathology and a post-training opportunity for practicing speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Following the conclusion for the most recent iteration of the AAC Academy hosted by the Diagnostic Center of Central California, students and SLPs who volunteered within the past ten years were recruited via email to participate in semi-structured interviews. Upon thematic analysis of the interview transcripts, the following themes were conceptualized: (1) Many volunteers had some interest, if not experience, with AAC prior to …

Implementation And Sustainability Of Trauma-Informed Care Via Multi-Tiered System Of Support (Mtss), Aisha Larie Elloie Brice

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Trauma-informed care is a relatively new construct in K-12 education, and districts across the United States are seeking avenues to meet the needs of their students. The COVID-19 pandemic elevated the need for districts to develop appropriate supports to address student and adult trauma. Traumatic events can affect a child’s mental, physical, social-emotional, and/or spiritual well-being (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, 2011). Furthermore, children with an elevated risk of trauma may not be able to access these supports outside of the school setting (Baweja et al., 2015). Therefore, educational systems need to develop trauma-informed care models for schools …

Spouses Of First Responders: A Narrative Inquiry Of Survival, Recovery And Healing, Jennifer D. Geiger

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The nature of the work of emergency responders (i.e., firefighters, law enforcement, paramedics, and dispatch) includes high stress and direct experiences of traumatic situations. The experience of posttraumatic stress is common. The spouse or significant other is often the first person to see a change in their responder and the person most likely to be sought out for support from the responder, yet there is little support for the spouses or significant others of emergency workers. The purpose of this qualitative study using in-depth interviews and narrative inquiry was to learn about participants’ experiences at the 6-day residential treatment (retreat) …

Motivating Factors For Academic Dishonesty And Reoccurrence Prevention Of These Behaviors, Andrew Bryzgornia

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teachers often turn to assessments to measure a student’s learning in a class. The intent is for the student to complete this assessment by meeting the instructor’s requirements, but often they look for alternate means to aid in the assignment’s completion, which is known as academic dishonesty or cheating. While students may illegally use notes, partner with others, and more, it is common for the students to have other justifications beyond simply desiring a better grade in the class. Not knowing they are cheating, believing cheating is not wrong, believing the class is too difficult, distrusting the instructor, and having …

The Impact Of Classroom Management On Behavior Regulation For Students In Early Childhood And Elementary School Classrooms, Katherine S. Winters

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A significant obstacle for teachers in early childhood and elementary classrooms is regulating negative student behavior. The implementation of classroom management programs is a strategy used by school districts worldwide to lessen learning distractions caused by negative student behavior to improve classroom quality. This thesis is a review of studies specifically linking the impact that classroom management interventions have on behavior regulation. Review of both preventative and reactive classroom management practices were discussed as well as the training process and implementation fidelity. The consistent trend in the research related to increasing positive student behavior in the classroom, is that positive …

Inclusion In The Modern-Day Classroom: Identification Of Benefits, Reservations, And Methods Of Implementation, Carley Anne Dyer

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates some of the most apparent benefits of creating an inclusive classroom. Inclusion is a vital part of development for students with special education needs, but also directly benefits their general education peers and teachers as well. Some of these benefits are peer learning, forming connections with peers, and preparing the students for post-secondary life. This thesis also takes time to identify some of the areas that inclusion can have some perceived setbacks for both educators and students alike. Identifying these negatives are crucial for the advancement of inclusion, as it is necessary to know what areas need …

The Importance Of Building Positive Classroom Community For Adolescents After The Relational Disconnect From The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jessica Ann Swanson

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper aims to analyze the importance of providing students with a positive classroom environment that supports adolescent mental health. Middle school can be a time when students feel lonely, isolated, and oftentimes, it can be physiologically confusing as the body is transforming to becoming an adult. The Covid-19 pandemic exemplified the negative characteristics of normal adolescence. Research suggests that schools that incorporate belonging, relationship building, resilience training, community, and conflict resolution into the classroom can translate to academic success. Social-emotional learning programs can build community and improve adolescent mental health by promoting well-being. Addressing mental health through these types …

Successful Co-Teaching Models In The Secondary Setting, Alexandra L. Hermoza

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Co-teaching is an educational practice that emerged in the early 1970’s with the creation of the IDEA act. In this inclusive teaching model, a special education and a general education teacher work together to share responsibilities of the classroom such as planning lessons, monitoring student progress, and managing student behaviors and learning. While some teachers are not able to implement this strategy successfully, other teachers and schools find great success in this inclusive practice. Studies indicate that teachers struggle with co-teaching when they do not communicate adequately or are not given the proper training or time to collaborate. Teachers who …