Digital Commons Network^™

Intercultural Education From Ancestral Logic: Application Of The Ayni Method Multi-Neutrosophic To Strengthen Mixed Methodology In The Waorani Community, Johanna Estefanía Calle Imbaquingo, Karen Milagros Díaz Salambay, Jordy Alexis Vargas Yumbo, Kevin Christopher Carrasco Azogue, Otto F. Von Feigenblatt

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Research aimed at determining the Ayni method Multi-Neutrosophic by which a successful blended learning experience enhances multicultural education respecting Ancestral Logic of the Waoranis to create a hybridization of Ancestral Logic and institutional and classroom learning to preserve their cultural identity. A qualitative descriptive-legal research approach was utilized. The results of the documentary analysis included requirements from Ecuador (Constitution, ILO Convention 169) and semi-structured interviews with Waorani leaders and teachers, Triangulation through participant observation of the educational activities taught in the Waorani community. The Ayni method Multi-Neutrosophic was cultural reciprocity and neutrality established through indeterminacies in the blended Ancestral teachings …

Scholarai Scholarly Article Search Strategies With The Ayni Method Multi-Neutrosophic For Ethical Information Management In Ai, Ennio Jesús Mérida Córdova, Elizabeth Esther Vergel Parejo, Raúl López Fernández

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

In a digital world where scientific articles are published at an unprecedented rate, an additional step in the research process to facilitate discovery is an effective search and filtering for worthwhile articles. Thus, this study aims to solve the following research problem: how to search for scientific articles using artificial intelligence (AI) while applying ethical considerations and ancestral knowledge? The topical relevance is that as AI is a great vessel to seek potentially accessible knowledge, searches can be guaranteed through accuracy, inclusivity, and ethics. While many studies exist on the topic of AI related to searching, few, if any, extend …

Knowledge, Attitudes, And Practices Concerning Water, Sanitation, And Hygiene And Related Diseases Among University Students In Malaysia, Renee Ng Jeffrey, Aida Soraya Shamsuddin, Farah Diyana Ariffin, Aziemah Zulkifli

Makara Journal of Health Research

Background: Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices are fundamental components of public health, being crucial in preventing disease transmission and promoting healthy living environments. In this context, university students play an essential role as future professionals and community advocates in fostering proper hygiene behaviors and preventing disease outbreaks. Understanding knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) in regard to WASH among individuals, particularly university students, is crucial for promoting proper hygiene behaviors. This study aimed to assess the KAP in regard to WASH and related diseases among undergraduate students from the Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).

Methods: …

Low-Dimensional Signatures Of Neuronal Activity Associated With Long-Term Operant Conditioning In Aplysia, Sara Vanaki, Nicholas O Gonzalez, Curtis L Neveu, Yuto Momohara, Behnaam Aazhang, John H Byrne

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which a behavior is reinforced by reward. Operant conditioning has multiple temporal domains, ranging from short-term, lasting a few minutes, to long-term, persisting for at least 24 h. The extent to which short- and long-term operant conditioning memories rely on shared or separate neural mechanisms is poorly understood. Voltage-sensitive dye (VSD) imaging has been used previously to record the activity of a large number of neurons simultaneously in the buccal ganglion to measure changes in neuronal activity during short-term operant conditioning. We examined neuronal activity using VSD 24 h after operant conditioning …

Enviromental Dna (Edna) Tools For Invasive Mosquitofish (Gambusia Affinis) Surveillance At The Shoshone Pupfish (Cyprinidon Nevadensis Shoshone) Refugium, Yusuf Olamilekan Umar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Spring-fed aquatic ecosystems of the North American Southwest and U.S. Great Basin hosts a plethora of endemic fish species due to the effects of hydrologic fragmentation that resulted from Pleistocene aridification. Threats to endemic fishes worldwide include human intentional or unintentional release of exotic species into their habitats. Early detection of invasive species, while corrective actions are still possible, is critical for management, yet traditional survey methods are often disruptive to sensitive ecosystems, costly, and limited in sensitivity. The recent development of environmental DNA (eDNA) approaches offers powerful alternatives for invasive species monitoring in aquatic systems. In this study, a …

Targeting Kinesin Family Member 20a Sensitizes Stem-Like Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells To Standard Chemotherapy, Yayoi Adachi, Weilong Chen, Cheng Zhang, Tao Wang, Nina Gildor, Rachel Shi, Haoyong Fu, Masashi Takeda, Qian Liang, Fangzhou Zhao, Hongyi Liu, Jun Fang, Jin Zhou, Hongwei Yao, Lianxin Hu, Shina Li, Lei Guo, Lin Xu, Ling Xie, Xian Chen, Chengheng Liao, Qing Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), being both aggressive and highly lethal, poses a major clinical challenge in terms of treatment. Its heterogeneity and lack of hormone receptors or HER2 expression further restrict the availability of targeted therapy. Breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs), known to fuel TNBC malignancy, are now being exploited as a vulnerability for TNBC treatment. Here, we dissected the transcriptome of BCSCs and identified kinesin family member 20A (KIF20A) as a key regulator of BCSC survival and TNBC tumorigenesis. Genetic depletion or pharmacological inhibition of KIF20A impairs BCSC viability and tumor initiation and development in vitro and in vivo. …

Development Of Broadly Protective Vaccines Against New World Arenaviruses, Brian B. Gowen

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

The Implementation Of Tact And Bidirectional Intraverbal Training In Teaching A Foreign Language: A Systematic Replication, Karen Parra Caballero

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The current study replicates and extends Yamaguchi and Matsuda (2024) to evaluate the effects of foreign tact and bidirectional intraverbal training on teaching foreign-language vocabulary to adults. An adapted alternating-treatments design was used to evaluate the effects of learning vocabulary of a foreign language through tact teaching (tacting a picture in French), foreign-native intraverbal teaching (vocalizing a French word in the presence of the Spanish word), and native-foreign intraverbal teaching (vocalizing a French word in the presence of the Spanish word). Each teaching condition had an assigned stimulus set for teaching, and an additional stimulus set was included as a …

Oxytocin Varies Across The Life Course In A Sex-Specific Way In A Human Subsistence Population, Abigail E. Colby, Dominik C. Jud, Valerie Baettig, Jordan S. Martin, Camila Scaff, Michael D. Gurven, Benjamin C. Trumble, Bret A. Beheim, Paul L. Hooper, Daniel K. Cummings, Hillard Kaplan, Jonathan Stieglitz, Arnulfo Cary Ista, Adrian V. Jaeggi

ESI Publications

Oxytocin, a hormone linked to reproduction and health, may mediate life-history trade-offs across the human life course. Yet, how oxytocin naturally varies with age remains poorly understood. Here, working with the Tsimane, forager-horticulturalists of lowland Bolivia, we collected the largest sample of oxytocin measurements to date (n = 1,242 samples, n = 405 individuals, age = 2 to 84 y, 51% female), and i) examined how oxytocin varies throughout the life course in females and males, and ii) investigated potential drivers of age- and sex-specific variation. Our sample provides rare insight into the relationship between oxytocin and age in a …

Decisions That Shape Supply Chains, Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Michael L. Smith, Erin Robinson

Purdue University Press Books

What drives consumer decisions, and how do those decisions ripple through our food and agricultural systems? In Decisions That Shape Supply Chains, readers are invited to look beyond conventional models of behavior and explore the complex, sometimes counterintuitive factors influencing real-world consumer choices. Drawing on behavioral science and applied research, this volume examines how decisions made in grocery aisles, drive-through lines, and online shopping carts ultimately inform what gets planted, processed, packaged, and promoted across the food-supply chain. From attitudes toward GMO foods to parenting as a form of consumerism and emotional decision-making under stress to the environmental tradeoffs consumers …

Markets We Thought We Knew, Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Michael L. Smith, Erin Robinson

Purdue University Press Books

Markets We Thought We Knew explores the evolving nature of markets and how they shape—and are shaped by—consumer behavior. From essential life necessities such as water to everyday commodities and products including locally sourced foods, this book covers a variety of topics and invites readers to examine a diverse range of markets through a reflective lens. By revisiting past market dynamics and real-world examples, readers are encouraged to rethink how preferences are formed, how opinions shift over time, and how value is assigned—sometimes in unexpected ways. What insights might you gather from a deeper understanding of local and global markets, …

Soil And Water Education For Grades 3-12, Natalie J. Carroll, Christian Y. Oseto, Timothy J. Gibb

Purdue University Press Books

Soil and Water Education for Grades 3–12 was written for youth who enjoy learning about science and two critical natural resources: soil and water. Level 1 introduces basic terms and concepts, and is intended for youth in grades 3–5. Activities focus on understanding important soil and water processes. Designed for students in grades 6–8, Level 2 offers readers more concrete examples of advanced soil and water concepts. The exercises in Level 3, which is geared toward grades 9–12, are divided into sections based on how readers might use the information they have learned, placing them in the shoes of homeowners, …

Laozi’S "Daodejing": A New Translation With Environmentalist Commentary, Steve Hallett

Purdue University Press Books

Laozi’s “Daodejing”: A New Translation With Environmentalist Commentary offers a new translation and fresh interpretation of the eighty-one-verse Daodejing, one of the central texts of Eastern philosophy. Likely written during the late Zhou Dynasty between 600–400 BCE, this foundational work is generally attributed to an individual named Laozi, although it is unlikely that any such person actually existed. Here, author Steve Hallett employs contemporary poetic form when translating the document’s approximately 5,000 Chinese characters and provides short analytical essays that illuminate the verses with a specific focus on the teachings they offer about social and environmental sustainability. His examination of …

Early Pottery At 11,200 Years Ago In The Southern Mongolian Plateau, Xiangge Zhang, Xujiao Zhang, Haoyue Zhang, Martin Stokes, Zhihu Sun, Jingwen Xu, Yifin Wang, Junlei Li, Haoshu Rao, Long Deng, Jingmin Guo, Xin Jia

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

he invention of pottery played a crucial role in human history, promoting human settlement and the transition to an agricultural society [1,2]. Pottery first emerged in East Asia during the Late Pleistocene/Paleolithic across a diverse range of environmental settings, becoming more widespread with the climatic warming of the Holocene/Neolithic [3]. The relatively cold Mongolian Plateau was a key region for early human adaptation. Here, numerous archaeological sites have been discovered since the Upper Palaeolithic, including the earliest pottery sites dating back to approximately 12,000 years ago in the northern areas [4,5]. However, no pottery sites predating 10,000 cal a BP …

Spinach (Spinacia Oleracea L) Flavonoids Are Hydrolyzed During Digestion And Their Bioaccessibility Is Under Stronger Genetic Control Than Raw Material Content, Michael P Dzakovich, Alvin L Tak, Elaine A Le, Rachel P Dang, Benjamin W Redan, Geoffrey A Dubrow

Children’s Nutrition Research Center Staff Publications

Spinach (

Development And Validation Of A Pronation-Supination Testing Protocol For Rat Elbow Joint Function, Genevieve Jarrell

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Independent Study

Post-traumatic joint contracture (PTJC) of the elbow results in pain, stiffness, and loss of motion that can substantially impair daily function. While flexion-extension deficits in PTJC have been well characterized, the effects on pronation-supination remain poorly understood due to limited testing capability. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a method for quantifying rat elbow pronation-supination motion to better characterize elbow dysfunction. An existing load-controlled cyclic testing protocol was adapted using a rack-and-pinion system to convert linear displacement into forearm rotation, generating torque-displacement curves from which range of motion (ROM) and stiffness were evaluated. The protocol was …

Role Of Recreational Fisher Information In Fisheries Management, Rebecca M. Krogman, Stephen M. Taylor, Aaron J. Adams, Ross E. Boucek, Steven M. Lombardo, Chelsey A. Crandall, Susan F. Steffen, Alejandro Acosta, Eduardo Bone Moron, Sepp Haukebo, Kieran Hyder, Zachary M. Radford, Warren M. Potts

Books & book chapters

Fisheries managers work with the three components of fisheries—biota, environment, and people - to achieve recreational, stewardship, and socioeconomic goals. Although manipulation of biota and the aquatic environment remains popular (e.g. harvest regulation, protecting or enhancing habitats, and guarding water quality), the human dimension of fisheries must also be considered throughout the fisheries management process. Managers can and should engage fishers in a myriad of ways, from identification of problems to guidance on alternatives, and from measurement of change to evaluation of success. In this chapter, we review common fisheries management goals and objectives; detail information needs stemming from those …

Catherine, Reagan Christie

Theses

A golden lamb sleeps peacefully in a quiet meadow, showcased in an intricate golden frame. She wakes up and slowly begins to stand, her knobby knees trembling all the way up. She steadies herself, turning toward the viewer, blinking. Catherine looks at her reflection in a grimy sink full of water. The sink drips, reflection dissipating. She looks up into the mirror above the sink in an endless bathroom, tucks a loose curl of hair back into her habit, and exits the bathroom. Catherine makes her way down a long spiral staircase, humming a hymn to herself. In the kitchen, …

Liminal Arts And Business: An Autoethnographic Analysis Of A New Arts Venture In An Entrepreneurial Startup Accelerator Program, Jill Schinberg, Rebecca A. Ferrell, Dan Sandfelder

Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Education

In this study, we explored the intersection of performing arts and entrepreneurship through an autoethnographic study of a new arts venture, theLAB*, which participated in the Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship's accelerator program at the University of Kentucky. In creating theLAB*, we investigated the feasibility of establishing a dance-forward performing arts presenting organization within a profit-driven entrepreneurial ecosystem. As a multi-generational team of arts managers, we analyzed the experience utilizing scenario-planning and the DIEP (Describe, Interpret, Evaluate, Plan) model of reflection to assess the challenges and benefits of participating in this environment. Key findings reveal a significant disconnect between the …

Biophysical Simulation Enables Segmentation And Nervous System Atlas Mapping For Image First Spatial Omics, Lina Mohammed Ali, Aldrin Kay Yuen Yim, Emanuel Gerbi, Thien Nguyen, Nicholas Tu, Faith Ikede, Remi Sampaleanu, Diana Grigore, Jason Waligorski, Colin Kremitzki, Liya Yuan, Wendy Dong, Robi Mitra, Jeffrey Milbrandt, William Buchser

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Spatial omics (SO) produces high-definition mapping of subcellular molecules within tissue samples. Mapping transcripts to anatomical regions requires segmentation, but this remains challenging in tissue cross-sections with tubular structures like axons in peripheral nerve or spinal cord. Neural networks could address misidentification but are hindered by the need for extensive human annotations. We present SiDoLa-NS (Simulate, Don't Label-Nervous System), an image-driven (top-down) approach to SO analysis in the nervous system. We utilize biophysical properties of tissue architectures to design synthetic images of tissue samples, eliminating reliance on manual annotation and enabling scalable training data generation. With synthetic samples, we trained …

Protocols For Antioxidant Testing: A Mini Review Of Common Assays And Approaches, Abdulsalam Halboup, Sameer A. Alkubati

AUIQ Complementary Biological System

Antioxidants play a pivotal role in mitigating damage caused by oxidative stress, which is implicated in aging, inflammation, neurodegeneration, and various chronic diseases. With the growing interest in natural and synthetic antioxidants across nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and food industries, the need for reliable, reproducible, and standardized testing methods has become increasingly urgent. This mini-review provides a structured overview of the most widely used antioxidant testing protocols, categorized into in vitro chemical-based assays (e.g., DPPH, ABTS, FRAP, metal chelation), cell-based assays (e.g., DCFH-DA for intracellular ROS detection), and in vivo biomarker-based models. Each method’s principle, experimental protocol, advantages, and limitations are critically …

Prevalence Of Giardia Infection: A Cross-Sectional Study In Basra Province, Iraq, Sarah Kamal Naser

AUIQ Complementary Biological System

Giardiasis is a common parasite infection that is seen more frequently than any other parasitic infection worldwide. This infection is especially prevalent in tropical areas and in developing nations that have a poor standard of living and poor health conditions. The Giardia parasite is able to infect people of any gender, as it enters the body by the mouth, passes down the oesophagus, and finally reaches the stomach, where it is not negatively impacted by gastric acids. The goal of this study is to determine the extent to which patients who were treated at Al-Zubair General Hospital in Basra, Iraq, …

Application Of Adversarial Volumetric Cnns To 3d Face Generation Using Latent Space Gaussian Embeddings, Ali Raad Abdulkareem, Marwa Jabberi, Islem Jarraya, Tarek M. Hamdani, Khmaies Ouahada, Adel M. Alimi

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

Although 3D face generation is extensively studied in computer vision, most existing methods prioritize reconstructing 3D geometry from available 2D or 3D inputs rather than generating novel faces directly from latent representations. To bridge this gap, we present the application of Adversarial Volumetric Convolutional Neural Networks (AVCNN), a tailored adaptation of the vanilla 3D Generative Adversarial Network (3D-GAN), to 3D face generation using latent space Gaussian embeddings. We first assemble a custom 3D facial dataset to provide the requisite facial characteristics and to ensure sufficient coverage of geometric variation across identities. The generator, implemented as a decoder, maps latent space …

Midlife, Michael Sevcik

Poetry MFA Theses

Abstract

Midlife by Michael James Sevcik is a collection of poetry that explores issues of age, gender, sexuality, identity, desire, family, and loss within a predominantly domestic space while addressing broader social, cultural, and philosophical issues using a phenomenological poetics grounded in everyday experience. The collection is organized into three distinct yet interrelated “movements:” the first movement, “Anchored,” establishes an existential yearning amidst professional and amorous stasis and familial pressures. The second movement, “Liminal,” explores temporality and its relationship to place and memory. The third movement, “Renewal,” incorporates travel, family history, and art, transforming them into critical modes of aesthetic …

The Hidden World Of Evil: Documenting Serial Killers Through The Centuries, An Evolution., Semieca Wilson

Master of Arts in Human Services

The following is an analysis of the phenomenon of serial killers from their development over time, and why it mattered due to how they operated on society. Cases reported from the past to present century were read and analyzed in search of recurring psychological patterns, changes in methods of inspecting cases and the effects of cultural, technological transformation on both felons as well as those who trailed them. The site is a product of my professional interest in the area of criminal psychology and forensic analysis and reflects my objective to provide myself and other interested professionals, academics, law enforcement …

The Sexual Assault And Violence Experiences Questionnaire: Community-Developed Items For Gathering Sexual Violence Histories With Displaced Women, Meredith A. Blackwell

Psychology ETDs

Improving measurement of sexual violence has contributed to major policy changes in the United States. However, research on sexual violence largely overlooks those exposed to conflict and displacement: a population especially at risk. Assessment measures often ignore contextual features and use phrasing that is vulnerable to underreporting. This community-based participatory research project collaborated with cultural experts from Mexico/Central America and Afghanistan to develop a preliminary item list for a self-report measure of prior sexual violence. Analysis of focus group data from 30 women revealed a range of sexual violence experiences, and provided critical phrasing used to form an item list …

176th Commencement, Fall

Commencement Programs

Commencement program (graduate and undergraduate exercises) for fall 2025

Protein-Nucleic Acid Language Model-Assisted Design Of Precise And Compact Adenine Base Editor, Jingxuan Ren, Jiawei Yao, Qiuyu Cao, Yinuo Li, Yang Li, Ziyi Zhang, Xiyu Ge, Shengfang Wang, Yang Zhang, Xiaogang Wang, Xiaohui Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Adenine base editors (ABEs) are powerful tools for gene therapy. However, efficient version of ABEs (e.g. ABE8e) always induce excessive bystander and off-target editing events and are large in size, hindering their potential in clinical disease treatment. Here, we develop a pre-trained Protein-Nucleic Acid Constrained Language Model to design ABE8e with high activity, reduced editing window and decreased size. By further engineering, the smallest ABE8e- PNLM-pcABE- with a 27% size reduction, exhibits high activity, precise 3-nt editing window, and reduced off-target events near background level in HEK293T cells. Compared to ABE8e, PNLM-pcABE has up to 133.5-fold precision improvement in pathogenic …

Neurobehavioral Mechanisms Of Psychotic-Like Experiences And Cannabis Use, Ethan Campbell

Psychology ETDs

As cannabis use has increased steadily over the past decade, there is critical need to evaluate early cannabis use as a potential risk factor for the development of psychosis. Neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying novelty salience could clarify how cannabis exposure may influence subclinical psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). The present study leveraged dynamic functional connectivity and task-fMRI to assess the role of novelty processing in cannabis use and PLEs. A group of brain regions dynamically tied to the salience network while viewing short films were found to increase their activation as a function of stimulus novelty during a novelty bandit task. PLEs were …

Testing Tocqueville’S Troops: American Democracy At War In Mexico, Corbin V. Cali

History Theses

This thesis explores Alexis de Tocqueville's theory of democratic armies through the lens of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), testing his predictions about how democratic social conditions influence military institutions and performance. Tocqueville argued that armies in democratic societies would face tensions between egalitarian ideals and military discipline, with citizen-soldiers resisting hierarchy while professional officers, often isolated from civil society, grew dangerously ambitious for war. He predicted that democratic armies would show energetic initiative but struggle with weak formal discipline, and that equality would fundamentally change the relationship between the military and the broader society. The Mexican-American War serves as an …