Digital Commons Network^™

Relational Apophaticism And A Contemporary, Ecumenical Practice Of Christian Spiriutal Direction In The Western Church, Ian Raymond Wilson

Theses

Defining and nurturing Christian spiritual growth and maturity is challenging. This is especially so in a contemporary environment that might be considered individualistic and self-preoccupied and where the meaning of the term ‘spiritual’ has become increasingly vague. This thesis explores the concept of ‘relational apophaticism’ proposing it as a pathway of spiritual growth and the essence of spiritual maturity. A contemporary, ecumenical ministry of Christian spiritual direction in the Western Church, and perspectives on spiritual growth and maturity evident in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s mystical writings The Life of Moses and Homilies on the Song of Songs are drawn on …

The Efficacy Of A Junior Doctor Led Near-Peer Surgical Teaching Program For Medical Students: A Prospective Study, Wendy Liu

Theses

Background Near-peer teaching (NPT) involves teaching by peers who are at a close, but not the same, level of training. This study investigated whether a novel surgical NPT workshop, designed and delivered by junior doctors using simulation models for acute otorhinolaryngology conditions, improved the knowledge and confidence level of senior medical students.

Methods A one-day NPT workshop was held for medical students in their third year of a four-year postgraduate medical degree at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, Australia. Four acute otorhinolaryngology/head and neck surgery problems that might be encountered by junior doctors and require prompt management were chosen. …

Influences Of Professors' Personality Traits, Teaching Styles, And Generational Affiliation On Technology Acceptance: A Mixed-Methods Exploration Of Blended Learning Readiness, Joey K. Freeman

Education Dissertations

The abrupt transition to emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic offered minimal time to prepare, resulting in faculty reliance on prior pedagogical practices in the shift to an online instructional environment. Although the pandemic altered the learning environment in the short-term, it also offered a glimpse of how higher education institutions (HEIs) could transform their learning environments in the long-term. Though a body of literature exists on factors that influence technology acceptance, a limited number of studies have explored personality traits, teaching styles, and generational affiliation. An adapted Technology Acceptance Model considered these variables as antecedents to perceptions, attitudes, …

School Librarians’ Self-Efficacy As Educational Technology Coaches, Becky P. Johnson

Education Dissertations

Although school librarians adapt and continue to thrive through radical changes, one in five school librarian positions are cut due to a loss of funding. One way school librarians can promote their knowledge in digital and information literacy and their skills as education leaders is to serve as educational technology (EdTech) coaches in their school community. With the influx of EdTech in schools, districts are shifting budgets and quickly adding technology-focused jobs, which leaves other positions at risk for job loss. This exploratory mixed-methods study examined the self-efficacy of school librarians to serve as EdTech coaches through the lens of …

Zou V. Annex A Defendants, Northern District Of Illinois

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

Biomechanical Outcomes Of Distinct Tka Surgical Alignments And Implant Designs, Alexis Kathleen Nelson-Tranum

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Introduction. Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) has advanced over the past two decades from traditional post-operative neutral alignment methods with an overall goal of implant longevity to ones that are more personalized to better replicate individual native knee kinematics. Personalizing TKA knee kinematics to better replicate a patient’s native knee kinematics has evolved in response to a reported 20% dissatisfaction by patients with their TKA. These personalization advancements include innovations in surgical alignment techniques include the kinematic alignment (KA) and joint line obliquity (JLO) restoration, in contrast to the mechanical alignment (MA) technique that places everyone into the same mold. Additionally, …

Identification And Characterization Of Auxiliary Factors In Innate Antiviral Immunity, Ruixue Wang

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Upon viral infections, RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs) sense cytosolic viral RNAs and initiate signaling pathways culminating in the activation of IRF3 and subsequent type I interferon (IFN) antiviral response. This intrinsic protective mechanism is orchestrated by a host of positive and negative regulators, which collectively govern the magnitude and duration of antiviral signaling. SRMS (Src-related kinase lacking C-terminal regulatory tyrosine and N-terminal myristylation sites) is an understudied non-receptor tyrosine kinase frequently overexpressed in breast cancers. SRMS restrains autophagy and promotes tumor growth, although its physiological function is unclear. We report that SRMS is critical for IRF3-dependent innate antiviral response in murine …

Justifying Aggression: Russia's 2020 Constitutional Amendments And The Invasion Of Ukraine, Robert C. Blitt

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Beyond the alluring promise of an enhanced social safety net for Russian citizens, President Vladimir Putin's constitutional amendments of 2020 betrayed a distinct preoccupation with fortifying Russia's international standing and crafting a new national identity. By Putin's own account, these amendments were necessary to steel the country against the malevolent action of international conspirators committed to Russia's downfall. As this Article posits, these specific constitutional changes systematically entrenched an exceptionalist vision of Russian sovereignty and a civilizational identity that left the country constitutionally untethered from international norms and institutions, saturated in religious fervor and visions of imperial glory, and poised …

A Global Crypto Code Of Conduct: Crafting An Internationally Centralized Regulatory Body For A Decentralized Asset, Mary Kavaloski

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The advent of Bitcoin in 2009 presented a previously unfathomable possibility for the future of currency and monetary transactions. Now, cryptocurrency is ubiquitous; it is increasingly seizing media headlines, novel swathes of investors, institutional bank involvement, and most importantly of all, the attention of government regulators. Yet governments around the globe have failed to adequately keep up with the pace of cryptocurrency's evolution, particularly because of their lack of expertise in this unprecedented area. This Note discusses how cryptocurrency's truly global footprint warrants a partnership between national regulators and industry actors at the international level. Specifically, by exploring the approaches …

Blinded By The Light: Resolving The Conflict Between Satellite Megaconstellations And Astronomy, David A. Koplow

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The sudden emergence of large constellations of small satellites in low altitude orbits represents one of the most dramatic contemporary innovations in outer space. Promising low-cost, low-latency global communications and spectacular capacities for remote sensing of the Earth, these satellites will soon number in the tens of thousands, sponsored by diverse corporations and countries around the world. But this proliferation of spacecraft comes at a steep cost in unavoidable interference with ground-based astronomy: as the satellites overfly the observatories, they block the views of remote objects and phenomena, leaving obliterating white streaks on the collected imagery, and obscuring access to …

Temporary Protection For Ukrainians In The European Union: Why Now And When Again?, Maryellen Fullerton

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine produced an unprecedented wave of temporary immigration protections throughout the European Union (EU). Within the first few months of the war in Ukraine, over 4 million displaced individuals had registered for temporary protection. EU States distant from Ukraine sheltered hundreds of thousands of displaced families, while Poland and other EU States that border Ukraine sheltered more than 2 million. This groundswell response marked a striking departure from just seven years earlier, when the EU Commission and EU Council failed to use readily available laws to provide a temporary protection program for Syrians displaced …

Addressing Unlawful Cyber Operations In Armed Conflict Through Human Rights Bodies Instead Of The International Criminal Court, Zachary R. Orr

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Although the ICC-or other similarly-situated international criminal tribunals-could soon see the first cyber war crime prosecution, two glaring issues persist. First, the universe of conduct that could give rise to such a prosecution is limited. Second, heavy reliance on the war crimes framework fails to provide a forum for redress of many harms caused by other unlawful cyber operations in armed conflict. The fragmented nature of international law and its enforcement mechanisms requires solutions that harness the full range of the integrated architecture of the international system. Cyber operations might soon feature at the ICC, but only a fraction of …

Environmental Justice As Environmental Human Rights, John H. Knox, Nicole Tronolone

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

For many years, the environmental justice movement in the United States and the evolution of international human rights law concerning the environment have pursued parallel but separate paths, only occasionally noting that they share common concerns. This Article seeks to build a stronger bridge between them, in three ways.

First, it presents the most detailed restatement of environmental human rights law yet published. International human rights bodies have developed a robust environmental jurisprudence setting out concrete obligations on States, including procedural obligations to provide public access to environmental information, decision-making, and remedies, substantive obligations to adopt and enforce effective environmental …

Real-World Pharmacological Anticoagulation And Clinical Outcomes Of Venous Thromboembolism In Adults With Sickle Cell Disease, Ming Chen

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited disease characterized by sickle-shaped red blood cells that can slow or block blood flow. It affects about 100,000 people in the United States, and occurs more commonly in people of African descent. SCD is considered as a hypercoagulable state and venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a serious disease-specific complication. However, there have been limited real-world studies on VTE in SCD patients. This work aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of the risk factors and treatment of VTE in adults with SCD by using longitudinal real-world data. First, a retrospective cohort study on 30-day readmission …

Genotypes Of Snps Of Key Genes Regulate Susceptibility And Drug Sensitivity To Neovascular Amd, Jinglin Cui

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), particularly its neovascular form, stands as a leading cause of blindness globally, with its prevalence in our country on a steady rise. This underscores the critical impact of neovascular AMD (nAMD) management on patient quality of life and societal burden. Current optimal treatments hinge on anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) therapies, though their efficacy varies across different drugs and individuals, highlighting the importance of precise drug selection in clinical outcomes. Research suggests that factors such as baseline vision, age, disease duration, lesion size, central retina thickness, neovascularization type, and demographic differences influence nAMD prognosis. In addition, …

Investigation Of Delta-Focused Ictal Electrical Source Imaging In Refractory Focal Epilepsy, Jared A. Rybarczyk

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Refractory focal epilepsy is characterized by the presence of seizures that cannot be controlled via anti-seizure medications. For patients suffering from this form of epilepsy, accurate identification of the seizure onset zone is a crucial step for many modalities of treatment. Electrical source imaging (ESI) allows for estimation of the seizure onset zone from electroencephalography. EEG feature extraction is an important step that can impact the final accuracy of source estimates. This work provides a review of 23 ictal ESI studies and proposes a delta-focused ictal ESI methodology. Our proposed delta-focused ictal ESI is implemented across 33 refractory focal epilepsy …

Electronics Design For Krepe Atmospheric Entry Capsule Avionics, Matt Ruffner

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

This research documents the design, testing, and implementation of sensing, control, and communications subsystems for small atmospheric entry capsules. Atmospheric entry capsules pose a unique electronics design challenge given mission requirements, environmental constraints, and inherent risk involved in space based missions. Previous work on small satellites developed the CubeSat platform as a means of ensuring reliability after university-led small satellite missions experienced failures. The publication of the CubeSat platform allowed researchers to focus on the payload science utilizing a standardized form-factor and reusable electronics. Environmental and operational constraints of CubeSats and atmospheric entry capsules overlap and best-practices associated with building …

Cross-Layer Design Of Highly Scalable And Energy-Efficient Ai Accelerator Systems Using Photonic Integrated Circuits, Sairam Sri Vatsavai

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has experienced remarkable success in recent years, solving complex computational problems across various domains, including computer vision, natural language processing, and pattern recognition. Much of this success can be attributed to the advancements in deep learning algorithms and models, particularly Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). In recent times, deep ANNs have achieved unprecedented levels of accuracy, surpassing human capabilities in some cases. However, these deep ANN models come at a significant computational cost, with billions to trillions of parameters. Recent trends indicate that the number of parameters per ANN model will continue to grow exponentially in the foreseeable …

Nonuniform Sampling-Based Breast Cancer Classification, Santiago Posso

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The emergence of deep learning models and their success in visual object recognition have fueled the medical imaging community's interest in integrating these algorithms to improve medical diagnosis. However, natural images, which have been the main focus of deep learning models and mammograms, exhibit fundamental differences. First, breast tissue abnormalities are often smaller than salient objects in natural images. Second, breast images have significantly higher resolutions but are generally heavily downsampled to fit these images to deep learning models. Models that handle high-resolution mammograms require many exams and complex architectures. Additionally, spatially resizing mammograms leads to losing discriminative details essential …

Mitigation Of Reflected Overvoltage In Wind-Turbine Generator-Converter Systems With A Smart Coil Concept, Lulu Wei

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

In the recent decade, ultra-fast wide bandgap switching devices such as Silicon Carbide (SiC) Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) have been increasingly utilized in power electronic converters for renewable energy power generation systems due to their advantages of enabling high energy efficiency and high power density. However, the much higher voltage slew rate (i.e., dv/dt) with SiC power converters may induce voltage reflection and reliability concerns in machine-converter systems, especially for medium-voltage systems with long cable connections. In wind-turbine power generation systems, generators are typically located in the nacelles, and medium-voltage power converters are mostly placed at the bottom of the …

Multi-Physics Modeling Of Immersion Cooled Electric Power Apparatuses, Reza Ilka

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electric power conversion apparatuses such as electromagnetic transformers and power electronic converters play a backbone role in the global power and energy industries, such as power transmission and distribution, electrified transportation vehicle systems, industry automation, and the like. To investigate the performance (efficiency, reliability, etc.) of such critical power conversion apparatuses, high-fidelity multi-physics modeling becomes critical which involves dedicated coupling among multiple physical domains, including electrical, magnetic, thermal, mechanical, and material engineering. Nevertheless, the majority of the existing models for these power conversion apparatuses focus only on one or two physical domains, and the modeling fidelity needs to be further …

A Novel Processor Architecture Implementing The Stacked Error Diffusion Algorithm And Its Zynq-Based Realization, Qishi Hu

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Digital halftoning reproduces continuous-tone images using patterns of black and white dots, while multitoning extends this concept by incorporating inks with intermediate intensities. These techniques are extensively utilized in the printing industry to accommodate the limited range of inks available in printers. Stacked error diffusion is a high-quality multitoning algorithm that adheres to the blue-noise dithering standard. This thesis research studies the potential parallelism inherent in the algorithm and introduces the design of a novel processor architecture optimized for efficient execution. The architecture is realized on an FPGA development board featuring a Zynq SoC. Additionally, the hardware prototype can also …

Information-Theoretic Learning Framework Based On Covariance Operators On Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces, Jhoan Keider Hoyos Osorio

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Information theory provides tools to quantify uncertainty, dependence, and similarity between probability distributions, which are crucial for addressing various machine-learning problems. However, estimating these quantities is challenging because data distributions are usually unknown, and only observations are available for analysis. In this dissertation, we advance the field of information-theoretic learning by developing a comprehensive framework using kernel methods for analyzing probability distributions using reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS). By leveraging covariance operators in this representation space, we propose approaches to estimate a set of fundamental information-theoretic quantities, that, because of their resemblance with conventional quantities in information theory, we call …

Optimal Control And Evaluation Of Shipboard Power Systems, Musharrat Sabah

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electric warships are involved in complex missions consisting of multiple simultaneous operations. In order to ensure mission success, future ships must be designed in a way that optimizes their performance in the presence of complex mission loads. The focus of this research is an effort to optimally control the performance of shipboard systems during missions involving multiple scenarios or vignettes. The evaluation of the performance of mission-oriented power systems is based on the degree to which these systems deliver power to the loads required to perform the mission at hand. The performance of such systems involves a dynamic interplay between …

High Reliability Motor-Drive Systems For Electric Aircraft Propulsion, Majid Tahmasbi Fard

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The transition towards electric propulsion in aircraft applications requires significant advancements in enhancing the efficiency and power density of power transmission and distribution systems. Among the critical power components in electric aircraft propulsion systems, power electronic converters hold paramount importance as they provide a pivotal interface between batteries and propulsion motors while providing a high degree of controllability and flexibility to the system. Integrating medium voltage DC (MVDC) and the emerging wide bandgap switching devices into power converters not only amplifies converter performance but also unlocks multifarious system-level benefits, including reduced power losses, weight savings, and the utilization of high-speed …

Inclusive Publishing Strategies For Journal Staff And Prospective Authors In The Digital Humanities, Rachel Schrauben Yeates

Master's Projects

In this project, I will share the inclusive strategies and solutions to common pitfalls I observed in my exploratory review of a selection of DH online journals and share Inclusivity Guides tailored to journal staff and prospective authors to perform a quick audit of journal site design and content. I paid special attention to the information available to researchers considering submitting their work for publication. Which journals leave a good impression and provide potential authors with enough information to confidently submit their work? How can prospective authors assess a journal’s commitment to furthering and practicing inclusivity in their field, and …

Prepared Foods Photos V. Chicken Joes, Southern District Of New York

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

Ryanair V. Booking, District Of Delaware

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

People V. Sol Ecom, California Superior Court

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

Ligon V. Facebook, Northern District Of Georgia

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.