Digital Commons Network^™

A Spine-Specific Lexicon For The Sentiment Analysis Of Interviews With Adult Spinal Deformity Patients Correlate With Sf-36, Sf-36, And Odi Scores: A Pilot Study Of 25 Patients, Ross Gore, Michael M. Safaee, Christopher J. Lynch, Christopher P. Ames

VMASC Publications

Classic health-related quality of life (HRQOL) metrics are cumbersome, time-intensive, and subject to biases based on the patient’s native language, educational level, and cultural values. Natural language processing (NLP) converts text into quantitative metrics. Sentiment analysis enables subject matter experts to construct domain-specific lexicons that assign a value of either negative (−1) or positive (1) to certain words. The growth of telehealth provides opportunities to apply sentiment analysis to transcripts of adult spinal deformity patients’ visits to derive a novel and less biased HRQOL metric. In this study, we demonstrate the feasibility of constructing a spine-specific lexicon for sentiment analysis …

Assessing Local Public Officials' Roles, Challenges, And Opportunities Encountered When Integrating Newcomers: A Case Study To Evaluate The Cities Of Rochester And Worthington., John Dassou

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Immigrants’ integration plays an important part in policy concerns and goals in many local governments since it is a major issue for local officials to integrate immigrants and incorporate them into the host community successfully. Concurrently, it is important to know the roles of local public officials, host communities, and immigrants in the process. The purpose of this study is to assess the challenges that local officials face, and how they handle these encounters effectively and efficiently. Greater collaboration between all stakeholders, social cohesion, and collective efforts implies the idea that immigrants’ integration depends on many players and factors. It …

The Rise And Fall Of Religion: An Agent-Based Model Of Secularisation, Security And Prosociality, Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, F. Leron Shults, Ross Gore, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski

Center for Secure and Intelligent Critical Systems (CSICS) Publications

The relationship between religion, society, and individual behaviour has been a subject of extensive inquiry, drawing upon a rich collection of historical and contemporary perspectives. The scientific study of religion at the social level has often found its roots in the foundational work of Durkheim (Durkheim, 1912), who posited that religion serves as a catalyst for social order and the promotion of prosocial behaviour. At the same time, Malinowski’s observations regarding the connection between ritual and anxiety have led to a number of lines of inquiry that have come to extend to other aspects of religion. Yet, taken together, these …

Community College Leadership At The Intersection Of Strategic Planning And Resource Management, Roxy Traxler

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to determine the competencies that college leaders need to possess in the intersection of finance and strategic planning. For this purpose, I am using resource management as a construct to define the competencies. This is important because one area rarely mentioned in the research is how the budgeting process, policies and practices that guide financial decisions are used to support student success and the strategic plan. There is literature related to the need for financial or fiscal leadership skills but not about what those skills are and how they are used to accomplish strategic goals to improve …

Leadership In Behavioral Health, Rebecca Mccoy

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Leadership in healthcare is difficult when dealing with human contact in its most raw and vulnerable way. Leadership in behavioral health is just as challenging as direct practice practitioners tend to be the ones who move up into these roles. This study will exam “Identifying factors that promote successful leadership and challenges that cause barriers to having successful leadership in behavioral health.” This includes soft and hard skill knowledge, growth opportunities and the strengths and struggles in moving into leadership roles in this industry.

The study is based on phenomenological research to gain an understanding of the individual experience …

Examining Disparities In Pre-Conviction Detention: A Race And Gender Analysis Of Criminal Charging And Detention Practices In Ramsey Countyention Practices In Ramsey County, Gabriel P. Exman

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Race and gender disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system are well documented, primarily in sources of national post-conviction data. However, localized and pre-conviction studies remain limited. This study examined race and gender disparities in pre-conviction detention outcomes and charge severity in Ramsey County, Minnesota, between 2017 and 2019. Using a descriptive, exploratory quantitative design and a retrospective single-cohort analysis, the researcher analyzed trends in arrests, charge severity, and pre-conviction incarceration duration across race and gender groups. Findings indicate disparities in both charge rates and pre-conviction detention durations, with Black men and Native American women experiencing longer periods of incarceration. …

Minnesota's Path To Prosperity: A Single Case Study Examining The Evolution Of Children's Programs And The Birth Of The Department Of Children, Youth And Families (Dcyf) - Implications For The Well-Being Of Minnesota Families, Shaneen D. Moore

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

This case study research inquiry delves into the possibilities of restructuring children's programs, with a specific focus on the establishment of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) in Minnesota. The goal is to address and rectify ongoing challenges in the current system by employing a human-centered design approach. These challenges encompass program silos, restricted access to essential resources, and the pervasive scarcity mindset that detrimentally affects the well-being of Minnesota families. The study endeavors to investigate how the restructuring, realignment, and innovation of children's services can result in an adaptive, transformative, and people-centric system capable of providing holistic …

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Debugging The Trademark Laws Part Ii: Criminal Penalties For Trafficking In Counterfeit Microelectronics, Patricia E. Campbell

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Counterfeit microelectronics have been a persistent problem in government and industry supply chains for many years. Counterfeit electronic parts (e.g., integrated circuits, transistors, capacitors) pose serious risks to human health and safety, harm the economy, and jeopardize national security. Trafficking in counterfeit goods and services was first criminalized in 1984, and Congress has acted on several occasions to increase the corresponding penalties. Nevertheless, the trade in counterfeit microelectronics continues to evolve to meet market demands, and relatively few criminal cases have been brought for trafficking in counterfeit microelectronics. While several factors may contribute to this apparent lack of enforcement, the …

The Artificial Intelligence Trolley Problem: Governance In The Post-Chevron World, James M. Cooper, Kashyap Kompella

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

This Essay addresses a growing Constitutional challenge in public governance: the increasing delegation of consequential decisions to algorithmic systems that encode value trade-offs between liberty and security, equity and efficiency, and expression and control, without visibility, legal justification, or institutional oversight. We view this hidden normative choice an example of the “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trolley Problem.” Like the classic moral dilemma, it involves unavoidable sacrifices among competing goods. Unlike its philosophical counterpart, however, algorithmic trade-offs occur silently. They are embedded in data proxies, optimization logic, and model design, and insulated from scrutiny by claims of technical neutrality. This Essay argues …

Perspectives 2025, Oberlin College Libraries

Perspectives Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Systemic Risk And The Social Contract, Kevin Frazier

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

The stability of the constitutional order turns, in part, on a stable economy and reliable advances in technology. Political order cannot withstand economic collapse or a massive technological failure. Such crises chip away at the collective will to adhere to the social contract because they indicate the government may not have the capacity to uphold its end of the bargain—protecting individual liberty from broad threats. “Unprecedented” economic downturns, however, have a precedent of emerging from the very deliberate decision of some actors to pursue extremely risky behavior in their self-interest at the expense of the public. Societal disruption from over-dependence …

In From The Cold: Notes On Sixteenth-Century English Catholic History, Freddy Cristobal Dominguez

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

English Catholic history continues to tread new ground, revisit old theories, and draw together theoretical and geographical frameworks. However, it continues to struggle to be accepted as part of the “mainstream” narrative of English history. In this review essay, I explore three key areas of growth related to the study of sixteenth-century English Catholicism: returning Catholics to the “high politics” of England; a renewed emphasis on gender, particularly the role of religious women; and an international/transnational orientation that reaffirms the close ties between Britain and the Continent. Recently reviewed works include Lillian Lodine-Chaffey, A Weak Woman in a Strong Battle: …

The Radical Potential Of Consumer Financial Protection, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers a novel retheorization of consumer financial protection that surfaces its radical potential. That retheorization is motivated by two developments. The first is the rise of debtor movements over the last decade demanding the abolition or cancellation of debt, such as the recent national campaigns against student debt and medical debt. The second is an emerging view this Article identifies in sociological and legal scholarship. Recent scholarship understands consumer financial protection as in tension with the radical ambitions of debtor movements and neoliberal in its orientation: it operates to sustain market logics as opposed to contest them.

This …

Time Is On Story’S Side: Story Development Impacts Daily Shares Of Viral Advertising Videos, Keith A. Quesenberry, Michael K. Coolsen

Journal of Business, Industry, and Economics

Past research on viral advertising videos has studied what factors contribute to total shares and views, but little has focused on how videos are shared over time. A previous content analysis of YouTube viral advertising videos found that more fully developed stories on a 0 to 5 act drama scale increased total shares and views. From that previous study’s data, a growth curve model of 105 videos regressed daily video shares and views over a 23-day period. Results found a significantly sharper linear decline (dropout rate) for videos that tell a less developed story (lower number of acts) compared to …

The Dark Side Of Leadership: Finding Where You Belong, Bo Yu Dds, Phd, Steven Milgazo Ba, Ms, Elizabeth O. Carr Dha, Facd (Hon), Sreenivas Koka Dds, Ms, Phd, Mba, Mas, Facd

Journal of the American College of Dentists

Leadership—whether as a parent, healthcare provider, soldier, or business executive—requires intentional effort to master its art and science. Just as we would not expect a physician or a soldier to learn their craft entirely “on the job,” we should not expect leaders to develop their leadership skills the same way. Society demands years of preparation for physicians and soldiers before they assume their professional responsibilities. However, when it comes to leadership, we often accept that individuals take on leadership roles with neither formal leadership training nor the “education of experience,” despite the profound and life-changing consequences of good and bad …

The Role Of Research In Fostering Dentistry’S Partnership In Healthcare, Scott Tomar Dmd, Drph, Facd

Journal of the American College of Dentists

In 2000, the landmark report Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General highlighted the magnitude of oral health disparities in the country and emphasized the importance of oral health for overall well-being, calling for a health infrastructure that effectively integrates oral health into overall health. More than two decades later, dental and oral diseases remain prevalent among parts of the American population, key strategies for disease prevention are under attack, and dentistry remains largely isolated from the rest of the US healthcare system. While many factors need to be addressed to change that status, it is widely …

Towards The Abolition Of The Immigration Detention Of Children In The United States, Lauren E. Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

For over a decade, international human rights mechanisms have been calling for the prohibition of the detention of children based solely on immigration status. Human rights experts agree that the detention of children for immigration purposes is never in the best interests of the child, it leads to long-term harm, and it is a clear human rights violation. Until recently, the United States has detained hundreds of thousands of migrant children in cages each year and we have still not outlawed the inhumane practice. This article argues that engaging with international human rights mechanisms on this topic, including during the …

The Value Of A Statistical Life: From Skin In The Game To Vision Zero, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay discusses justice issues surrounding occupational safety and health and assesses the ethical legitimacy—the justice—of regulatory cost benefit analysis when the costs in question involve the risks and realization of workplace injury and fatalities. The current “value of a statistical life” for legal-regulatory purposes is 13.1 million dollars. While economists are careful to say that this figure does not “really” represent an attempt to value any particular life, the purpose of even calculating the number is to provide an “aggregated” statistical justification for saying “no” to rules requiring safer work. This seems acceptable until you, or someone you love, …

Pharmaceutical-Telehealth Confederacies, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

Access to prescription pharmaceuticals has historically been controlled by a physician’s pen. As a result, pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on advertising and promotion to mitigate this barrier: first and primarily, to physicians and other prescribers, and more recently, to the general public through direct-to-consumer advertising. The success of these promotional efforts can be seen in greater prescribing of costly brand-name medicines, even in settings where lower-priced generic alternatives exist. Brand-name prescriptions now make up only 10% of all prescriptions written yet account for 87% of drug spending. Despite these substantial returns on investment, companies continue to seek opportunities …

An Indecent Exposure Of The Rules Of Legal Ethics, Lauren E. Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

Thousands of attorneys experience rape and sexual assault by clients, as well as indecent exposure, public masturbation, unwanted touching, verbal threats, and stalking. These incidents are not often publicly reported, but client sexual violence against attorneys is not uncommon. The ethical rules currently fail to account for an attorney who has experienced client sexual violence, whether to allow for termination of representation or to mitigate future harm to other lawyers. While the ethical rules are usually thought of as neutral, this Article critically examines the gender stereotypes and structures of oppression corseting the rules. Relying on a fifty-state survey of …

Text, Fairness, And Efficiency: The Case Against The Plausibility Standard For Affirmative Defenses, Jessica Marks, Marcus A. Gadson

Faculty Publications

Lower federal courts have struggled to answer the following question without any guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court: Does the Iqbal and Twombly plausibility standard apply to affirmative defenses? In this essay, we explain why the answer is no. We aim to provide practical guidance to the countless judges deciding whether to strike an affirmative defense. First, we argue that Rule 8’s text makes using the plausibility standard to evaluate affirmative defenses improper. Judges should pay especially careful attention to our textual analysis because the Supreme Court has placed great weight on the text’s plain meaning in recent civil procedure …

Certificate Of Need Laws' Effect On Provisions Of Uncompensated Care, Connor Anthony Mostek

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Certificate of need (CON) laws are regulations that require healthcare facilities to seek permission from a state government board to enter a market or expand/modify their established business. Proponents of CON laws claim that, among other things, CON laws protect hospitals and other healthcare providers from competition, allowing them to charge private or fully insured patients more in order to use the profits to “cross-subsidize” free care for low-income and uninsured patients. By employing an unbalanced panel dataset on hospital cost reports for the years 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2019, this study finds that there is no strong evidence that …

The Relationship Between Principals’ Transformational Leadership And Teachers’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior Within Public Primary And Middle Schools In Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, Chuxuan Yin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This non-experimental causal-comparative study was designed to explore the relationship between principals’ transformational leadership and teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior within public primary and middle schools in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, as well as the differences in principals’ transformational leadership and teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior based on demographic characteristics. A sample of 142 principals and 675 teachers was recruited. Data collection utilized two validated instruments: the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire for evaluating principals’ transformational leadership level, and the Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale for Primary and Middle School Teachers for measuring teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior level. Both descriptive statistics (frequency distribution, mean, standard …

Examining Rural Second-Graders' Literate Identities In Relationship To Reading Proficiency: A Mixed Methods Case Study, Ashley R. S. Olsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although the act of reading is inherently multi-faceted, encompassing an array of interrelated cognitive, social, and cultural processes, the bodies of reading research typically align to either qualitative or quantitative methodologies. This routinely bifurcated approach to reading research reflects the ongoing disagreement surrounding best practices for literacy instruction. Numerous quantitative findings have supported the use of systematic and explicit foundational skill instruction to improve students’ reading proficiency. On the other hand, previous qualitative studies have emphasized the existing identities that children bring to any learning community and the benefit of nurturing literate identity formation in the classroom. Intersecting a modified …

Positive Allosteric Modulation Of Glun1/Glun3 Nmda Receptors, Mia Ruth Johns

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are ionotropic glutamate receptors that mediate excitatory neurotransmission in the central nervous system (CNS) where they play critical roles in normal and pathological brain functions and neurodevelopment. While the glutamate/glycineactivated GluN2-containing NMDA receptors (GluN1/GluN2) have been extensively studied, the physiological roles and pharmacology of glycine-activated GluN3-containing receptors (GluN1/GluN3) remain less understood. Although GluN1/GluN3 receptors exhibit unique functional properties and play distinct roles in neuronal development and synapse maturation, studies of their precise roles in neurophysiology and circuit function are impeded by limited availability of GluN3-selective pharmacological tools. This study describes UCM-A86, a novel GluN3-selective positive allosteric …

Theory Of Planned Behavior And Suicide Screening In Family Medicine, Jennifer Villa

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

General medical healthcare settings, particularly primary care and family medicine practices, serve as critical access points for addressing mental health concerns. This is especially true in rural communities, where specialized behavioral health services are often limited or unavailable. Given the elevated suicide risk in these settings and the shortage of mental health professionals, primary care providers are well-positioned to identify patients at risk through suicide screening. However, research shows that many established providers do not routinely screen for suicide, representing a missed opportunity for prevention, and little is known about resident attitudes towards suicide screening and prevention. Guided by the …

Hormonal Decay After Death: Evaluating Dhea-S As A Potential Molecular Marker For Postmortem Estimation, Marisa Lydia Novak

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Post-mortem interval (PMI) estimation is a central component of forensic anthropological investigation, but traditional methods for estimating time since death lose accuracy after ~72 hours. Recent research indicates that some steroid hormones may undergo predictable degradation patterns after death, offering potential use as biochemical clocks for PMI estimation beyond this threshold. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and its sulfate form (DHEA-S) are of particular interest due to their metabolic stability, systemic influence, and association with trauma. This study investigates whether DHEA-S hormonal degradation patterns correlate with time elapsed since death and body temperature, evaluating their potential as biochemical PMI markers. 160 mL of …

From Plumes To People: Constraining The Emissions, Chemistry, And Health Impacts Of Western U.S. Smoke, Lixu Jin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildfires are a significant source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the western U.S., emitting hundreds to thousands of species that play key roles in tropospheric oxidation, ozone production, and secondary organic aerosol formation. Many VOCs have only recently been identified and quantified in laboratory burning experiments, leaving uncertainties about their emission estimates from wildfires, their roles in plume OH oxidation chemistry, and their evolution during smoke aging. This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of the emissions, chemistry, and health impacts of VOCs in wildfire smoke using detailed in-situ measurements made during the summer 2018 Western Wildfire Experiment for …

Sports Facilities, Trails, And Travel Cost: A Non-Market Valuation Case Study Of Parks In Montana, Clemens Walter Wilson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study applies the travel cost valuation method to urban parks in the State of Montana in an effort to determine whether parks with attributes related to exercise have greater value for recreationalists. By observing real recreation behaviour of urban park visitors through the use of cellphone mobility data, recreational demand for varying parks can be ascertained. To model recreational demand, the random utility model (RUM) and multinomial logit model (MNL) are leveraged to understand choice probabilities of parks, based on the attributes of parks, including sports facilities and trails. This study finds that there are positive and significant relationships …