Digital Commons Network^™

Fermented Foul Play: A Real-World Forensic Scenario To Enhance Student Engagement And Understanding Of Instrumentation And Analytical Data Analysis, Abigail Hoermann, Laci Joy Walmer, Matthew J. Goss

Student Scholar Symposium

A forensic-style investigation was introduced in an upper-level instrumental analysis course to foster collaboration and application of theoretical concepts in a laboratory setting. Students were provided with kombucha samples collected from a simulated crime scene and tasked with determining ethanol concentrations using Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). By independently preparing serial dilutions, establishing calibration curves, and interpreting mass spectra, they practiced quantitative analytical techniques and engaged in evidence-based problem solving. Notably, Sample C demonstrated elevated ethanol levels (6.4% v/v), suggesting possible adulteration and deepening the forensic narrative. Through this scenario-driven format, students strengthened both their technical competencies and their ability to …

The Correlation Of Fat Mass And Hourly Energy Balance In Male And Female Collegiate Basketball Players, Lily Rogers, Avery Mckinney

Student Scholar Symposium

Student Scholars Symposium

The Effects Of A Stimulant And Non-Stimulant Pre-Workout Supplement On Sprint Performance, Macie Reagan

Student Scholar Symposium

The aim of this study is to compare the effects of a stimulant pre-workout that contains caffeine and a non-stimulant pre-workout that does not contain caffeine on sprint distance. We anticipate that 10 recreationally active individuals will participate in this study, and each participant will act as their own control. Sprint performance will be measured by the distance covered within 10 seconds of allotted time on an Assault Runner Elite treadmill. On the first day, participants will be familiarized with the experimental protocol, so neither pre-workout supplement will be administered. After completing a five-minute structured warm-up, they will complete three …

6ppd-Quinone In Middle Tennessee Waters: Assessing Ecological Impact, Andrew Davis Todd, Raphael Marquise Chandler, Kerolos Gerges Basalos, Denise Lori Loewinger

Student Scholar Symposium

This poster presents the dangers of a toxic chemical used on car tires that is entering aquatic ecosystems and harming fish populations.

End-Of-Rotation Objective Structured Clinical Examination: Proposal To Reduce Grading Bias In The Family Medicine Core Clerkship, Deborah R. Erlich, Amy L. Lee, Anita Mathews, Lauren Boehm, Anna Virani, Shweta Akhouri, Julia Bartolomeo, Lidya Wlasiuk, Molly Cohen-Osher, Tessa Rohrberg, Laurel Witt, Kathryn Rampon

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Problem Statement: In medical education, learner assessment drives learning and documents competency. A drawback of the traditional clinical performance assessment by a preceptor, however, is a potential halo effect. This effect is an unearned positive bias toward a student the supervisor likes, or conversely, a negative implicit bias about the student’s race, gender, or other aspects of identity. These biases, in either direction, can lead to unfair grading. A preceptor’s bias can be particularly problematic in a family medicine clerkship in which a student may be evaluated and graded by a single preceptor.

Background: An end-of-clerkship objective structured clinical examination …

Best Practices In The Conduct Of Community Engagement Studios At Mainehealth Institute For Research, Francesca Piccolo, Emma Daybranch, Carolyn Sullivan, Elizabeth Woods, Neil Korsen, Jan Carney, Jenna Schiffelbein, Kathleen Fairfield

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Problem Statement: Community engagement (CE) Studios are an established method for integrating lived-experience expertise into research at 1 or more specific points within a project. Although many researchers understand the value of incorporating community input, they often lack the tools, skills, or infrastructure to do so effectively. CE Studios address this challenge by offering a structured, consultative approach to engagement.

Background: CE Studios occur at any point across the research lifecycle and are used to inform research design, feasibility, relevance, recruitment, implementation, and translation. In a 1-time, 2-hour consultation, CE Studios bring lived-experience expertise into the research process, helping projects …

Emergency Care Team Comfort And Experience With Harm Reduction For Opioid Use Disorder, Penelope J. Haydar, Tania D. Strout, Faen Faen

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Introduction: Harm reduction strategies are effective in mitigating risks associated with substance use. However, their implementation in emergency department (ED) settings has been limited. This study explored ED care team members’ experiences and comfort with harm reduction provision.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study to assess ED care team members’ experiences and comfort levels (0–10 scale) with providing harm reduction resources to patients. An electronic survey was distributed to 446 care team members at a Level 1 tertiary care ED. Domains included prior harm reduction practice, comfort levels, perceived barriers to harm reduction provision, and perceived importance of various factors …

Evaluation Of Connections Clinic: The Bridge Program Located Within The Preble Street Learning Collaborative, Emily Caron, Emily Follo, Robin E Barnard, Alec Luro, Adam Normandin

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Problem: The opioid epidemic continues, and overdose rates throughout the United States remain high. Only 22% of people diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD) access medications for OUD (MOUD). Bridge clinics may improve access to MOUD, specifically buprenorphine. Individuals experiencing homelessness (IEH) face additional barriers to accessing care, though little is known about bridge clinics specifically focused on IEH. The bridge clinic embedded within the MaineHealth–Preble Street Learning Collaborative, called Connections Clinic (CC), aims to address unmet health care needs of IEH in Portland, Maine, by providing low-barrier health care and access to buprenorphine.

Approach: We analyzed demographics, health access, …

Practicing Curiosity: An Art Museum-Based Course For Medical Students, Samuel Woodworth

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Problem: Although curiosity is essential to medicine, it can sometimes seem expendable or counterproductive. Medical students, however, must be encouraged to develop curiosity skills in order to sustain a lifelong pursuit of knowledge. Incorporating visual art into medical education has been associated with multiple favorable outcomes, including improved observational skills. Undoubtedly, artworks stimulate curiosity. Of the many museum-based courses for medical students offered across the country, none have focused on enhancing curiosity skills. Thus, the development of a curriculum using visual art to improve curiosity skills would be an innovative pedagogical approach to museum-based education.

Approach: A hospitalist at MaineHealth …

Implementing The Card System Distraction Techniques In Pediatric Primary Care – A Practice Improvement Project, Paige E. Lewicki, Tara Palnitkar, Anya Cutler, Kari Guffey, Laura J. Faherty

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Problem: Increasing vaccine uptake is an urgent priority in public health. Often pain and fear are reasons for vaccine refusal, leading to lower vaccine uptake. The Comfort, Ask, Relax, Distract (CARD) system was developed to improve the vaccination experience and has been successfully implemented in school-based vaccination clinics and community pharmacies. The clinic that served as the site of this practice improvement project was routinely using 3 of the 4 CARD techniques (Comfort, Ask, and Relax), but was not offering evidence-based distraction methods to patients eligible for vaccination.

Approach: This practice examined the feasibility and acceptability of implementing CARD distraction …

Bartonella Endocarditis Unmasking Heart Failure, Nephrotic Syndrome, And Pancytopenia In Repaired Tetralogy Of Fallot: A Case Report, Cani Greg L. Garsuta

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Introduction: Bartonella species are notable causes of culture-negative endocarditis, particularly in patients with prosthetic valves or congenital heart disease. These infections can present insidiously, mimicking other systemic illnesses and posing considerable diagnostic challenges due to their fastidious nature.

Clinical Findings: A person in their 30’s with repaired tetralogy of Fallot and a Melody pulmonary valve presented with acute biventricular heart failure, nephrotic-range proteinuria, and pancytopenia. Initial assessments suggested cardiorenal syndrome. Despite negative routine cultures, persistent renal abnormalities and hypocomplementemia raised suspicion for glomerulonephritis. Subsequent polymerase chain reaction analysis of blood returned positive for Bartonella henselae, and positron emission tomography-computed …

Navigating Microaggressions In The Clinical Environment: Follow-Up Of A Case-Based Workshop 1 Year Later, Annie Liu, Christina C. Tsui, Nicole Hudak, Allison S. Chatalbash, Laura K. Snydman, Eliza R. Bullis

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Problem: Microaggressions negatively impact the mental health and wellness of patients and health care workers. Despite efforts in medical education to address this issue, there is limited research on the effect of these strategies in clinical settings over time. We evaluated how a workshop on navigating microaggressions impacts medical students 1 year after the workshop.

Approach: A 60-minute workshop on microaggressions was implemented for medical students (n=85) across 3 clerkship sites. The workshop focused on identifying, responding to, and debriefing microaggressions as recipients or bystanders using a toolkit. Post-intervention surveys measured students’ satisfaction and perceived ability to navigate microaggressions. One …

Uncoupling Agents As A Contributor To Refractory Metabolic Acidosis In A Burn Victim: A Case Report, Kelsie M. Lynch

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Introduction: Uncoupling agents impair mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, which disrupts adenosine triphosphate production and causes high anion gap metabolic acidosis. These agents, linked to environmental toxins or pharmacologic exposures, present diagnostic and therapeutic challenges due to rapid clinical deterioration. Early identification is crucial for intervention.

Clinical Findings: A 64-year-old male with type II diabetes mellitus sustained burns covering 14% total body surface area during a shed fire with suspected pesticides and rodenticide exposure. He had hypotension with severe metabolic acidosis (lactate 20 mmol/L, pH 7.0, bicarbonate [HCO₃] 11 mmol/L) and an anion gap of 35 mEq/L. He was admitted …

Hybrid Multicast Transport Support, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

RFC 6513 and RFC 6514 define NG-MVPN procedures in which PEs use BGP MCAST-VPN routes (e.g., RT-1 I-PMSI A-D) to auto-discover participation and to bind multicast delivery to a provider tunnel (P-tunnel) identified by the PMSI Tunnel attribute (Tunnel Type plus identifiers/labels). In practice, a single PMSI binding typically forces a single transport choice across all leaves (e.g., mLDP P2MP for core-efficient replication or ingress replication for simplified edge requirements), limiting mixed-capability deployments. This document describes techniques that allow heterogeneous P-tunnel transports within one NG-MVPN instance by having an ingress PE concurrently support multiple tunnel types and admit egress PEs …

Tone Mapping Using Negative Values To Represent Luminance Below Reference Black, Yannis Guyon, Nathan Gauër

Defensive Publications Series

High Dynamic Range (HDR) tone mapping traditionally extends brightness above a reference white value but uses a fixed floor of zero for black, which maps to a display's minimum luminance setting. This limits creative control over shadow detail by content creators, e.g., the ability to choose blacks deeper than those for which legacy content was mastered or to choose to keep content at a reference black regardless of a display's minimum luminance setting. This disclosure describes a method for extending the HDR tone-mapping range to include negative values, allowing for greater flexibility in tone mapping shadows. In this approach, the …

Coordinated Bid Optimization For Profit-Neutral Revenue Maximization, Vinnu Bhardwaj

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure is directed to a method that addresses complex coordinated bidding challenges faced by parent organizations that operate multiple advertising entities or sub-brands. This approach is designed to achieve revenue maximization across the entities while maintaining profit neutrality relative to a predefined baseline for a given market. The technology utilizes bid simulation data provided by an advertising platform provider, which generates projected key performance indicators (KPIs) across various bid levels. The method involves modeling campaign performance using Log-Quadratic curves, aggregating these relationships to derive entity- and market-level performance curves, modeling profit-revenue functions using polynomial regression, and employing a …

Automated Multi-Engine Text-To-Speech System With Self-Assessment Quality Control For Long-Form Audio Production, David R P Chiesa

Defensive Publications Series

Current automated text-to-speech systems for long-form audio production suffer from inconsistent quality, limited emotional range, and inability to self-correct output deficiencies. Professional audiobook and radio drama production requires human narrators specifically because automated systems cannot achieve the performance quality, character consistency, and emotional nuance necessary for extended listening experiences. This creates a significant cost barrier for independent authors and small publishers, where professional narration costs £200-500 per finished hour.

This disclosure presents an automated multi-engine text-to-speech system that achieves professional broadcast quality through coordinated engine selection, performance enhancement techniques, and iterative quality refinement. The system employs two specialized synthesis engines: …

"Dual-Ai Orchestration System For Persistent Project Memory In Software Development Environments", David R P Chiesa

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure presents a dual-AI orchestration system that solves the persistent context loss problem in AI-assisted software development. Current AI assistants maintain conversation memory only within individual sessions, requiring developers to repeatedly re-explain project context when resuming work after hours, days, or weeks. This creates significant productivity loss and escalating API costs as complete project context must be reloaded with each session.

The disclosed system coordinates a local AI instance with cloud-based AI services through hierarchical knowledge base integration. The local AI manages a structured vault containing project documentation, code history, and conversational logs organized in hierarchical layers from high-level …

New Quad-Phase Smart Power Stage For Higher Current Density Vertical Power Module, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure is directed to a quad-phase smart power stage (SPS) designed to address the increasing power demands of high-performance computing and machine learning processors such as hardware accelerators, tensor processing units (TPU), graphics processing units (GPUs), and high-performance system on chips (SoCs) in densified data centers. Existing dual-phase power solutions may not meet the rising current density requirements and are limited by a larger physical profile. The present disclosure integrates four power stages into a single, compact package (e.g., 7x7 mm), enabling the creation of a densified vertical power (VPWR) building block. This high-integration architecture can achieve a …

Dynamic Prioritization Of Flight Search Queries To Control Computational Resource Allocation, Christopher Small, Thomas Abraham, Rujith De Silva, Allan Fraser, Jason Letourneau, Kartik Maheshwari, Leonardo Andres Moleiro White, Cedric Poirot, Ramitha Sai Ravishankar

Defensive Publications Series

Systems that utilize real-time offer construction, such as flight search systems, can experience high volumes of computationally expensive queries that may have low conversion rates, potentially leading to inefficient resource allocation. A system for dynamic query prioritization can address this potential inefficiency. The system may intercept an incoming search query and use an analysis engine to assign a real-time priority score. This analysis engine can employ machine learning models trained on historical transaction data to determine the score. Based on this score, the system can apply a set of configurable controls to modulate the computational response. For example, the system …

Optimal Synce Source Selection In Networks Employing Macsec Security, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

A timing-distribution technique is described for telecom packet networks that use IEEE 1588 PTP (e.g., ITU-T G.8275.1 full timing support) for phase/time and SyncE for frequency, where SyncE master selection is primarily based on Quality Level (QL) conveyed via ESMC. In networks that simultaneously deploy hop-by-hop MACsec and end-to-end (tunneled) MACsec domains, operational visibility of the true SyncE “trail” can become ambiguous, leading downstream nodes to select a locally acceptable but performance-inferior frequency reference that traverses additional unsecured/opaque intermediate hops and accumulates more jitter/wander. To bias selection toward more deterministic, regenerated hop-by-hop SyncE paths, the disclosure proposes encoding a MACsec-topology …

Far-End Media Effect Configurations To Avoid Unconscious Hallucinations And Other Far-End Processing Issues, Jieyu Tan, Soya Li, Espen Berger, Wallice Wang

Defensive Publications Series

In video conferencing scenarios, when a user makes a media (video) call, a video/sharing/audio preview viewed on the sender's side may not be what is actually presented on the receiver's side. For example, some post-processing modules (e.g., super-resolution, flicker detection, voice correction, etc.) that operate on the receiver's side can bias the sender's media effects. Techniques are proposed herein that provide for embedding post-processing configuration metadata into a media stream package by a media sender's device. Using the proposed techniques, a media sender can pre-rehearse a meeting and/or perform an in-meeting preview and customize their media stream to avoid hallucinations …

Fasttree-Guided Genetic Algorithm For Credit Scoring Feature Selection, Rashed Bahlool, Nabil Hewahi Prof., Youssef Harrath Dr.

Research & Publications

Feature selection is pivotal in enhancing the efficiency of credit scoring predictions, where misclassifications are critical because they can result in financial losses for lenders and exclusion of eligible borrowers. While traditional feature selection methods can improve accuracy and class separation, they often struggle to maintain consistent performance aligned with institutional preferences across datasets of varying size and imbalance. This study introduces a FastTree-Guided Genetic Algorithm (FT-GA) that combines gradient-boosted learning with evolutionary optimization to prioritize class separability and minimize falserisk exposure. In contrast to traditional approaches, FT-GA provides fine-grained search guidance by acknowledging that false positives and false negatives …

Academic Standards Subcommittee Agenda December 18, 2025, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Welcome and approval of November 20, 2025 minutes
• New Topics:
• Proposal for Academic Grievance Policy rewrite
• Proposal to add Bachelor of Applied Sciences (BAS) academic degree requirements
• Information item: Attendance and Excused Absences policy clarification

Inclusive Constitutionalism As A Framework For Remedying Past Discrimination In Higher Education, Kyle Jordan Smith

Vanderbilt Social Justice Reporter

No abstract provided.

Will This Too Pass? How The Criminalization And Derogation Of Unhoused People Is One Mark Of Our Descent Into Fascism, Michaela R. Martin Strout

Vanderbilt Social Justice Reporter

No abstract provided.

Optimal Planning Strategies For Power Grid Topology Steiner Minimum Tree To Enhance Resilience Capability, Yunpeng Zhai, Dongqi Liu, Haolan Liang, Wei Li

Journal of Electric Power Science and Technology

Energy security is related to the overall situation of economic and social development.In recent years, deliberate attacks and disasters against the power grid have occurred frequently, and the power system has become an important target of attacks in international conflicts.In order to enhance the ability of the power grid to resist deliberate attacks and disasters and ensure the safe operation of the national energy infrastructure, a Steiner minimum tree planning method is proposed for the power supply network topology to the improvement of invulnerability.Firstly, the grid structure strength index and operation vulnerability index are designed for the grid planning problem.A …

Multi-Control Parameter Optimization Method For Dc Microgrids Based On Quadratic Index, Jinyuan Liu, Tianjiao Feng, Xiaorong Zhu

Journal of Electric Power Science and Technology

In DC microgrids, there is interaction between different types of converters, which is easy to be affected by disturbance during operation, resulting in decreased power quality.Therefore, the stability of DC microgrids has become a key issue in microgrid research.In this paper, the small signal model of DC microgrid system including voltage source converter （VSC） and buck-boost DC-DC converter is derived, and the eigenvalues and participation factors of the system are calculated.The stability regions of key control parameters such as PI parameter, droop coefficient, and virtual inertia coefficient are compared with and without grid-connected converter.Then, according to the quadratic theory, the …

The Minutes Of The Marshall University Staff Council Meeting, December 2025, Marshall University Staff Council

Staff Council Minutes

No abstract provided.

Function Of Drosophila Melanogaster Domesticated Transposable Element Protein Dplg3 In Oogenesis And Total Fitness, Aron Herrera

2025 Fall Honors Capstones Projects - Archive

Transposable elements (TEs) are selfish DNA segments capable of self-replication and reinsertion within genomes, often harming hosts. Rarely, host genomes can adopt TEs and use their proteins for new cellular functions through molecular domestication. One example primarily expressed in Drosophila melanogaster ovaries is DPLG3. Previous Betrán Lab students generated DPLG3 loss-of-function flies and found that their ovaries misregulated one primordial and 14 testis-specific genes, leading to variable ovarian malformations. However, it is unclear when during oogenesis these misexpressions occur. We will extract RNA from non-rudimentary ovaries at early and late stages to generate cDNA for qRT-PCR analysis of three …