Digital Commons Network^™

Bridging The Gap: Examining The Discrepancies In Communication Skills Between University Education And Employer Expectations, Valerie Chan

Honors Theses

Effective communication is a critical skill in the workplace, yet a persistent gap exists between the communication abilities of university graduates and the expectations of employers. This study explores the alignment between the communication skills taught in the Western Essential Studies (WES) general education curriculum at Western Michigan University (WMU) and the communication needs identified by employers. By examining four communication types—oral, written, interpersonal, and digital—this research investigates the similarities and differences in how faculty and employers define and emphasize communication skills.

Findings reveal a misalignment between the skills emphasized in university curricula and those prioritized in the workplace. Faculty …

Natural Medicine Use In Costa Rica, Elizabeth Krol

Honors Theses

This study explores the role of natural medicine in Costa Rican culture, while focusing on its historical, cultural, and clinical significance. With a literature review, ethnobotanical research, and a study abroad experience, this paper highlights the integration of natural, herbal medicine into modern healthcare. Costa Rica’s rich biodiversity, with its varied microclimates and abundant medicinal plants, forms a strong foundation for traditional herbal medicine. Indigenous groups such as the BriBri and Cabécar contributed significantly to this legacy, which has evolved through interactions with European and Afro-Caribbean populations.

Research emphasizes the cultural importance of herbal medicine within the “Pura Vida” lifestyle, …

Ices Roadmap For Marine Recreational Fisheries (Mrf), International Council For The Exploration Of The Sea (Ices), Karina L. Ryan

Fisheries Research Articles

Purpose of the roadmap

The overarching goal of this roadmap is to guide the development of robust marine recreational fisheries (MRF) assessments through data and methodological improvements, in line with current and future management needs. To address the requirements of the policy and legislative instruments in relation to MRF and to plan future steps in ICES, there is need to further improve and operationalize the required MRF dataflows and assessment procedures. Better integration of MRF into advice is in line with ICES vision and mission alongside its advisory framework and principles. This will assist not only managers but also the …

The Cowl - V. 88 N. 9 - December 5, 2024

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol. 88 No. 9 - December 5, 2024. 16 pages.

The Rise Of Refundable Tax Credits: Implications For The Canada Disability Benefit, Wayne Simpson

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Bill C-22, while vague, sets its sights on poverty reduction and financial security for persons with disabilities by establishing a Canada Disability Benefit that will be delivered as a refundable tax credit along the lines of the Guaranteed Income Supplement and the Canada Child Benefit. This article reviews the evolution of tax credits in North America from income exemptions to non-refundable tax credits to the rise of refundable tax credits in the modern tax system. It offers lessons from existing refundable credits and corresponding discussions around a guaranteed basic income to inform the design of a Canada Disability Benefit that …

Is The Canada Disability Benefits Program Consistent With The Social Model Of Disablement? The Perils And Promises Of Equality Rights Through Income Support Programs, Ravi Malhotra

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The social model of disablement stands for the proposition that it is structural barriers that impede the lives of people with disabilities. Disabled people should be included in all spheres of life, including employment, through the removal and eradication of barriers. At first glance, the expansion of disability benefits appears to contradict the goal of inclusion of people with disabilities in employment. In this article, I argue that the passage of the Canada Disability Benefit Act is fully consonant with the social model of disability. Using the work of disability rights scholar Marta Russell and the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, as …

Stitching The Canada Disability Benefit Into The Social Security System: Expectations, Patchworks, And Goals, Michael J. Prince

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

New public policies stir old expectations and stimulate new expectations among people. For the planned Canada Disability Benefit (CDB), what is possible? What type of policy is at stake for women with disabilities? The CDB symbolizes an official acceptance by the federal government of a national public responsibility to address known risks of low income and poverty among hundreds of thousands of persons with disabilities. In policy content terms, the CDB is redistributive and regulatory. As redistribution, it promises to be a large-scale allocation of public revenues to a broad category of individuals disproportionately living in poverty in Canada. As …

Education Policy Committee Agenda December 05, 2024, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Approval of Minutes
• Subcommittee Reports
• Other Business
• Adjourn: 4:00pm

Ai-Enabled Wearable Cameras For Assisting Dietary Assessment In African Populations, Frank P-W Lo, Jianing Qiu, Modou L Jobarteh, Yingnan Sun, Zeyu Wang, Shuo Jiang, Tom Baranowski, Alex K Anderson, Megan A Mccrory, Edward Sazonov, Wenyan Jia, Mingui Sun, Matilda Steiner-Asiedu, Gary Frost, Benny Lo

Children’s Nutrition Research Center Staff Publications

We have developed a population-level method for dietary assessment using low-cost wearable cameras. Our approach, EgoDiet, employs an egocentric vision-based pipeline to learn portion sizes, addressing the shortcomings of traditional self-reported dietary methods. To evaluate the functionality of this method, field studies were conducted in London (Study A) and Ghana (Study B) among populations of Ghanaian and Kenyan origin. In Study A, EgoDiet's estimations were contrasted with dietitians' assessments, revealing a performance with a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 31.9% for portion size estimation, compared to 40.1% for estimates made by dietitians. We further evaluated our approach in Study …

Fostering The Forum: Examining The Progress And Challenges In Cultivating A Free Speech Campus At Western Michigan University, Kalloli Bhatt

Honors Theses

The First Amendment’s breadth has narrowed on college and university campuses. Students, once staunch defenders of free speech, have become the censors themselves. In fact, there have been so many incidents of speaker disinvitations and scholars under scrutiny that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, otherwise known as FIRE, has amassed years’ worth of data documenting these occurrences. This phenomenon has been so widespread for so long that scholars have been sounding the warning bells since 1987 (Bloom, 1987). While it may seem as if these problems occur at bigger universities, events that have violated First Amendment rights of …

Cultural Barriers And Communication: South Asian Experiences In Health Care Settings, Sabahat Moughal

Publications and Research

For U.S. immigrants, communication is a complex aspect of integration into American society, and when it involves health care, communication can become particularly challenging and stressful. This is especially true for South Asian immigrants and their health care providers, who face language, cultural, and ethnic barriers. This study addresses the health communication challenges facing this immigrant community by gathering narratives from South Asian patients and health care professionals through in-depth, open-ended interviews, conducted via Zoom or in-person and voice-recorded. The interviews aim to assess communication styles (verbal and non-verbal), methods (such as symbolic practices and culturally specific terms), and regional …

Factors Of Police Decision-Making Of Veterans In Crisis, Paul N. Guzman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Since 9/11, the need for veteran crisis intervention has increased. Police agencies often respond to veterans in crisis by deploying officers who have completed Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training, and many of the officers are prior military. However, little research has focused specifically on the factors influencing police officers’ decision-making when responding to veterans in crisis. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the association and predictability between event type, veteran behavior, police officer military experience, police officer CIT, and the disposition of veterans as measured by arrest, referral for mental health services, and the use of force. …

Perceptions Of Clinicians Towards Offenders Who Utilize The Good Lives Model For Sex Offender Treatment, Janel Nicole Harper

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Understanding how clinicians perceive offenders who utilize the strength-based good lives model (GLM) in treatment may help facilitate more acceptance among clinicians to incorporate strength-based alternatives as well as provide better therapeutic outcomes in treatment. The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory study was to examine the perceptions of clinicians who utilize the GLM for sex offender treatment. Grounded theory was utilized to formulate a theory regarding clinician perceptions towards offenders and its social change implications. The sample comprised of 11 clinical health professionals from mental health agencies who currently work or have worked with sex offenders within the past …

Kenyon Collegian - December 5, 2024

The Kenyon Collegian

No abstract provided.

Integrative Multi-Omics Analysis Uncovers Tumor-Immune-Gut Axis Influencing Immunotherapy Outcomes In Ovarian Cancer, Spencer R Rosario, Mark D Long, Shanmuga Chilakapati, Eduardo Cortes Gomez, Sebastiano Battaglia, Prashant K Singh, Jianmin Wang, Katy Wang, Kristopher Attwood, Suzanne M Hess, A J Robert Mcgray, Kunle Odunsi, Brahm H Segal, Gyorgy Paragh, Song Liu, Jennifer A Wargo, Emese Zsiros

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Recurrent ovarian cancer patients, especially those resistant to platinum, lack effective curative treatments. To address this, we conducted a phase 2 clinical trial (NCT02853318) combining pembrolizumab with bevacizumab, to increase T cell infiltration into the tumor, and oral cyclophosphamide, to reduce the number of regulatory T cells. The trial accrued 40 heavily pretreated recurrent ovarian cancer patients. The primary endpoint, progression free survival, was extended to a median of 10.2 months. The secondary endpoints demonstrated an objective response rate of 47.5%, and disease control in 30% of patients for over a year while maintaining a good quality of life. We …

Clonal Landscape And Clinical Outcomes Of Telomere Biology Disorders: Somatic Rescue And Cancer Mutations, Fernanda Gutierrez-Rodrigues, Emma M Groarke, Natthakan Thongon, Juan Jose Rodriguez-Sevilla, Luiz Fernando B Catto, Marena R Niewisch, Ruba Shalhoub, Lisa J Mcreynolds, Diego V Clé, Bhavisha A Patel, Xiaoyang Ma, Dalton Hironaka, Flávia S Donaires, Nina Spitofsky, Barbara A Santana, Tsung-Po Lai, Lemlem Alemu, Sachiko Kajigaya, Ivana Darden, Weiyin Zhou, Paul V Browne, Subrata Paul, Justin Lack, David J Young, Courtney D Dinardo, Abraham Aviv, Feiyang Ma, Michel Michels De Oliveira, Ana Paula De Azambuja, Cynthia E Dunbar, Malgorzata Olszewska, Emmanuel Olivier, Eirini P Papapetrou, Neelam Giri, Blanche P Alter, Carmem Bonfim, Colin O Wu, Guillermo Garcia-Manero, Sharon A Savage, Neal S Young, Simona Colla, Rodrigo T Calado

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Telomere biology disorders (TBDs), caused by pathogenic germ line variants in telomere-related genes, present with multiorgan disease and a predisposition to cancer. Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) as a marker of cancer development and survival in TBDs is poorly understood. Here, we characterized the clonal landscape of a large cohort of 207 patients with TBD with a broad range of age and phenotype. CH occurred predominantly in symptomatic patients and in signature genes typically associated with cancers: PPM1D, POT1, TERT promoter (TERTp), U2AF1S34, and/or TP53. Chromosome 1q gain (Chr1q+) was the commonest karyotypic abnormality. Clinically, multiorgan involvement and CH in TERTp, TP53, …

A Heuristic Evaluation Of A Pharmacy Surveillance Information System, Reza Abbasi, Mehrdad Farzandipour, Habiballah Rahimi, Yang Gong, Ehsan Nabovati

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: The pharmacy surveillance information system (PSIS) is intended to manage the dispensing practice of under-controlled drugs and substances. We designed and developed a PSIS for the first time in a developing country. This study aimed to evaluate the usability of this system using a heuristic evaluation method before the pilot implementation in outpatient pharmacies.

Materials and methods: The study was conducted in 2022 during the development of a pharmacy surveillance information system. Five evaluators examined the system using Nielson's heuristic evaluation method. The detected usability problems were categorized into 10 Nielson's usability principles, and their severity was calculated.

Results: …

Unpacking Bias, Accountability, And Ethical Practices In Ai, Manya Chandra, Micol Hebron

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This study is based on understanding how text-to-image generative AI platforms perpetuate biases such as racism and sexism and decoding how this bias is programmed within large language models and datasets. In this study, the results of generative AI are analyzed through the lens of affect and affect theory, as they are applied to investigate the machine learning and computer theory behind generative AI algorithms. The purpose of the study is to explain why generative AI is biased and whether this bias is generated due to current trends or to deficits and biases within the database that it draws information …

Immediate Feedback Generates Greater Improvements In Secondhand Smoke Reduction For Dual Smokers Compared To Exclusive Tobacco Users, Rylen Sakamoto, Eusabeia Silfanus, Vincent Berardi

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure is defined as the breathing of smoke exhaled from burning combustible products, which can increase the risk of heart and lung diseases, especially in children. Research has primarily focused on tobacco SHS, with much less work examining cannabis SHS. Project Fresh Air, conducted in San Diego County, investigated the effect of real-time visual audio feedback plus coaching interventions on SHS, by gathering air particulate matter (PM2.5) data over the course of three months in the homes of 298 smokers in low-income households with children under 14 years of age. The sample consisted of participants who only …

Assessing Access To Art Therapy Programs Among Individuals In The Foster Care System, Diya Patel

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Research shows that youth in foster care who exit care, struggle with education, employment, and overall health compared to the non-fostered general population. Despite being useful, there is minimal research on art therapy being used as a resource for youth in foster care. This research assesses access to art therapy programs among youth in foster care. If art therapy resources are offered, the study aims to determine if they generally improve children's attitudes and outlooks toward the future, and whether these resources ought to be implemented or referred to youth in foster care. Seven professionals working with youth in foster …

Computational Logp Calculations And Determination Of Lipophilicity Values Of Fluorinated Morphine Derivatives, Mirabella Romano, Allison Vu, Emily Chen

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The addictive effect of opioids impacted 60 million people globally in 2023. This opioid crisis necessitates the development of opioid derivatives that maintain analgesic efficacy while minimizing addictive effects from opioid use. The present work focuses on morphine, a commonly prescribed opioid with high affinity to the mu-opioid receptor (MOR). Morphine binds non-selectively within both healthy and inflamed tissue. By modifying morphine’s structure through fluorination to counteract its non-selective binding, the drug’s pharmacological ability to provide effective pain relief comes with a lower risk of addiction. Specifically, the addition of fluorine to differing beta positions of the main binding site …

Nuclear Nightmares: The American Fear Of Iranian Nuclear Attacks And Foreign Policy, Tyler Coker

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In an age of escalating tensions in the Middle East, the American public has to watch with a wary eye for a conflict in which the United States has to get involved overseas. In this paper, I examine the extent to which religiosity influences Americans’ fear of Iranian nuclear attacks. Using Chapman University’s Survey of American Fears, a nationally representative survey asking Americans about what scares them the most, I find an increase in the fear of Iranian nuclear strikes as a respondent’s religiosity increases. In religious circles, fears can be greatly manipulated by the words of a single authority, …

Evaluating The Role Of Wetland Habitat Features In Shaping Bird Residence Patterns For Effective Conservation Strategies, Josie Lester

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

As climate change continues to impact ecosystems worldwide, wetlands have been disproportionately affected because they are close to human settlements. Wetland degradation is an essential focus for habitat restoration because increased connectivity of these sensitive habitats can significantly improve ecosystem function. The Los Cerritos Wetland (LCW) is an urban wetland fragment in Southern California in the pre-tidal restoration stage. Neighboring waterways are home to many animals, including sea turtles, fishes, and birds. We set out to understand the current use of LCW habitats pre-restoration to better track the impacts of tidal restoration on this wetland fragment. We focused on native …

Fall 2024 Student Scholar Symposium Abstract Volume, Chapman University Center For Undergraduate Excellence

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

No abstract provided.

Predictors Of Longitudinal Symptom Trajectory In Young Adults With Low Back Pain, Abby Borlovan, Julia Leigh, Jo Armour Smith

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Predictors of longitudinal symptom trajectory in young adults with low back pain. Severity and frequency of painful episodes change over time in individuals with chronic low back pain (LBP). Recalling previous episodes’ severity/frequency is often considered inaccurate. This study’s purpose was to determine if recall of LBP history or psychological characteristics are predictors of future symptom trajectories in young adults with LBP. The 57 young adult participants had a year or more history of LBP and were not currently in pain. At baseline, LBP history was characterized by recall of pain severity and frequency during symptomatic episodes. Participants completed measures …

Effects Of Simultaneous Smartphone Texting And Auditory Stimulation On Gait, Sebastian Herrera Vargas

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

More often than not, pedestrians around busy college campuses, business parks, and shopping malls are seen walking while using their phones and listening to music or having earphones in. Activities on pedestrians’ phones that captivate them more and require higher cognitive processing demonstrated a higher detriment to their gait kinematics than less cognitively complicated activities (Brennan and Preloff, 2021). This study aims to establish whether or not gait parameters are affected by walking while engaging in cognitively demanding activities such as texting and listening to green noise. Green noise is a deviation from white noise, which amplifies the mid-range frequencies …

From Vinyl To Viral: Rock 'N' Roll's Timeless Comeback In Today's Digital Age, Victoria Lucas

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Rock 'n' roll from the 1950s-1980s–a category of music often referred to as “oldies”–is experiencing a remarkable comeback among younger audiences, even being favored over today’s music trends. While nostalgia may play a role, it is clear that this genre offers something unique that modern music often lacks. As a Gen Z rock ‘n’ roll lover myself, I explore the reawakening of rock 'n' roll among Millenials and Generation Z and examine the reasons why this genre resonates so deeply with my peers, even half a century later. In this paper, I discuss how the music of that era shaped …

Montana Kaimin, December 5, 2024, Students Of The University Of Montana, Missoula

Montana Kaimin, 1898-present

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.

Liar-Dependent Gene Expression Contributes To Antimicrobial Responses In Group A, Luis Alberto Vega, Misú Sanson-Iglesias, Piyali Mukherjee, Kyle D Buchan, Gretchen Morrison, Anne E Hohlt, Anthony R Flores

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The ability to sense and respond to host defenses is essential for pathogen survival. Some mechanisms involve two-component systems (TCSs) that respond to host molecules, such as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), and activate specific gene regulatory pathways to aid in survival. Alongside TCSs, bacteria coordinate cell division proteins, chaperones, cell wall sortases, and secretory translocons at discrete locations within the cytoplasmic membrane, referred to as functional membrane microdomains (FMMs). In group A Streptococcus (GAS), the FMM or “ExPortal” coordinates protein secretion, cell wall synthesis, and sensing of AMP-mediated cell envelope stress via the LiaFSR three-component system. Previously, we showed that GAS …

How To Design A Program For The Poor That Is Not A Poor Program: Explaining The Political Sustainability Of The Guaranteed Income Supplement, Daniel Béland, Patrik Marier

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Created in 1967 as a temporary program aimed at supporting low-income people during the maturation of the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans, the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) has since become a permanent policy that remains a central component of Canada’s multi-layered public pension system. In this article, we explain why GIS is a popular and politically successful program that challenges the common wisdom in political science and policy analysis that “programs for the poor are poor programs.” The article shows that the success of GIS stems from its policy design (e.g., income-tested rather than means-tested benefits), the social construction of …